back to 100%. One I reach 100% that means I’m completely south of the storm and I can start going east again. We’ll see.
If there were no storm, I’d be going directly southwest toward my goal. As it is, going only south, I’m not nearly as fast. I’m traveling 90km per day as usual, but I only get 37km closer to Schiaparelli because Pythagoras is a dick. I don’t know when I’ll finally clear the storm and be able to beeline to Schiaparelli again. But one thing’s for sure: My plan to arrive on Sol 495 is boned.
Sol 549. That’s when they come for me. If I miss it, I’ll spend the rest of my very short life here. And I still have the MAV to modify before then, too.
Sheesh.
Air day. A time for relaxation and speculation.
For relaxation, I read 100 pages of Agatha Christie’s
As for speculation, I speculated on when the hell I’ll get past this fucking storm.
I’m still going due south every day; and still dealing with efficiency loss (though I’m keeping ahead of it). Every day of this crap I’m only getting 37km closer to the MAV instead of 90. Pissing me off.
I considered skipping the Air Day. I could go another couple of days before I ran out of oxygen, and getting away from the storm is pretty important. But I decided against it. I’m ahead of the storm enough that I can afford one day of no movement. And I don’t know if a couple more days would help. Who knows how far the storm goes south?
Well, NASA probably knows. And the news stations back on Earth are probably showing it. And there’s probably a website like www.watch-mark-watney-die.com. So there’s like a hundred million people or so who know exactly how far south it goes.
But I’m not one of them.
Finally!
I am FINALLY past the god damned storm. Today’s power regen was 100%. No more dust in the air. With the storm moving perpendicular to my direction of travel, it means I’m south of the southernmost point of the cloud (presuming it’s a circular storm. If it’s not then fuck.)
Starting tomorrow, I can go directly toward Schiaparelli. Which is good, cause I lost a lot of time. I went 540km due south while avoiding that storm. I’m catastrophically off course.
Mind you, it hasn’t been that bad. I’m well in to Terra Meridiani now, and the driving is a little easier here than the rugged ass-kicking terrain of Arabia Terra. Schiaparelli is almost due east, and if my sextant and Phobos calculations are correct, I’ve got another 1030km to get there.
Accounting for air days and presuming 90km of travel per sol, I should arrive on Sol 505. Not too bad, really. The Nearly-Mark-Killin' storm only ended up delaying me by 7 sols.
I’ll still have 44 sols to do whatever MAV modifications NASA has in mind.
I have an interesting opportunity here. And by “opportunity” I mean Opportunity.
I got pushed so far off course, I’m actually not far from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It’s about 300km away. I could actually get there and pull a Pathfinder on it. It would take about 4 sols.
Thing is, it’s not worth it. I’m only 13 sols away from the MAV. Why go out of my way to dig up another broken-ass rover to use as a makeshift radio when I’ll have a brand new, fully functional communication system within a couple of weeks.
So, while it’s kind of neat that I’m within striking range of another rover (man we really littered this planet with them, didn’t we?) it’s not relevant.
Besides, I’ve defiled enough future historical sites for now.
I need to put some thought in to the bedroom.
Right now, I can only have it set up when I’m inside the rover. It attaches to the airlock, so I can’t get out if it’s there. During my road trip that didn’t matter, because I had to furl it every day anyway. But once I get to the MAV, I won’t have to drive around anymore. Each decompress/recompress of the bedroom stresses the seams (I learned that lesson the hard way when the Hab blew up) so it’s best if I can find a way to leave it out.
Holy shit. I just realized I actually believe I’ll get to the MAV. See what I did there? I casually talked about what I’ll do after I get to the MAV. Like it was nothing. No big deal. I’m just going to pop over to Schiaparelli and hang with the MAV there.
Nice.
Anyway, I don’t have another airlock. I’ve got one on the rover and one on the trailer and that’s it. They’re firmly fixed in place, so it’s not like I can detach one and attach it to the bedroom.
But I can seal the bedroom entirely. I don’t even have to do any bullshit hatchet jobs on it. The airlock attachment point has a flap I can unroll seal the opening with. Remember, I stole the airlock attachment from a pop-tent. It’s an emergency feature for pressure loss while in the rover. It’d be pretty useless if it couldn’t seal itself off.
Unfortunately, as an emergency device, it was never intended to be reusable. The idea was people seal themselves in the pop tent, then the rest of the crew drives to wherever they are in the other rover and rescues them. The crew of the good rover detaches the pop tent from the breached rover, and re-attaches it to theirs. Then they cut through the seal from their side to recover their crewmates.
To make sure this would always be an option, mission rules dictated no more than 3 people could be in a rover at once, and both rovers had to be fully functional or we couldn’t use either.
So here’s my brilliant plan: I won’t use the bedroom as a bedroom anymore once I get to the MAV. I’ll use it to house the Oxygenator and Atmospheric Regulator. Then I’ll use the trailer as my bedroom. Neat, eh?
The trailer has tons of space. I put a fuckton of work in to making that happen. The balloon gives plenty of headroom. Not a lot of floor space, but still lots of vertical area.
Also, the bedroom has several valve apertures in its canvas. I have the pop-tents to thank for that again. I just needed swaths of canvas so I stole it from wherever I could. I stole a lot from the pop tents, and they had valve apertures (triple redundant ones, actually). NASA wanted to make sure the emergency shelter allows the crew on the outside to get air in to the crew on the inside.
In the end, I’ll have the bedroom sealed with the Oxygenator and Atmospheric Regulator inside. It’ll be attached to the trailer via hoses to share the same atmosphere and I’ll run a power line through one of the hoses. The rover will serve as storage (because I won’t need to get to the driving controls any more) and the trailer will be completely empty. Then I’ll have a permanent bedroom. I’ll even be able to use it as a workshop for whatever MAV modifications I need to do on parts that can fit through the trailer’s airlock.
Of course, if the Atmospheric Regulator or Oxygenator have problems, I’ll need to cut in to the bedroom to get to them. But I’ve been here 492 sols and they’ve worked fine the whole time, so I’ll take that risk.
I’ll be at the entrance to Schiaparelli crater tomorrow!
Presuming nothing goes wrong, that is. But hey, everything else has gone smoothly this mission, right? (That was sarcasm.)
Today’s an Air Day and for once, I don’t want it. I’m so close to Schiaparelli, I can taste it. I guess it would taste like sand, mostly, but that’s not the point.
Of course, that won’t be the end of the trip. It’ll take another 3 sols to get from the entrance to the MAV, but hot damn! I’m almost there!
I think I can even see the rim of Schiaparelli. It’s way the hell off in the distance and it might just be my imagination. It’s 62km away, so if I’m seeing it, I’m only just barely seeing it.
Tomorrow, once I get to Entrance Crater, I’ll turn south and enter the Schiaparelli Basin via the “Entrance Ramp.” I did some back-of-the-napkin math and the slope should be pretty safe. The elevation change from the rim to the basin is 1.5km, and the Ramp is at least 45km long. That makes for a 2-degree grade. No problem.
Tomorrow night, I’ll sink to an all new low!
Lemme rephrase that…
