MISSION LOG – SOL 109
Well, that was a lot of work!
There were about a hundred square meters of potatoes- about three hundred and sixty potato plants- planted in the cave farm. Today we dug them all up- and I mean all of them. Three hundred sixty plants, each with either three or four small tubers, for a total in the ballpark of fifteen hundred potatoes. That is a lot of spuds.
I had to supervise this- hell, I did most of it myself. We want to keep as many potato plants alive as possible, so that the next crop will grow faster and larger than these little hand-held calorie packs we got today. The ponies aren’t good at gentle because of their hooves and teeth, and Fireball isn’t good at gentle, period. But between me, the dragon, and the pony with a sling on her spacesuit hopping around the cave, we got the job done and didn’t rip off too many leaves or roots.
Fifteen hundred potatoes, each with between six and ten eyes, is a lot more than enough to seed the Hab and the remaining hundred square meters we had reserved for them in the cave. But since potatoes have a shallower root system, I decided to plant the potatoes on either side of the water runoff sluice, which has already eroded a good trench into the cave soil. The space where they were going to go will get some of our remaining alfalfa seed. Based on this harvest, we’ll be in potato surplus long before hay surplus, so giving the good spot to the alfalfa seed only makes sense.
In all honesty, I’m not counting on the new cave potatoes for much. We didn’t cultivate the soil downstream using our improvised manure. It’s got some bacteria and water leeching from the main farm, but it’s going to lack a lot of nutrients and amino acids. So the best we can do is bring the shit box tomorrow, spread the contents on top of the two patches of newly planted potatoes and hope for the best.
The Hab is a different story. We’re leaving the new seed crop of spuds to dry a little, because we’re going to plant them after we harvest the hay over the next couple of days. Most of the time spent is going to consist of ferrying loads of hay about twenty kilos at a time from the cave to the Hab. (Twenty kilos is about all our largest available airtight containers can carry. After the ponies’ experience with the small harvest after the Hab blew out, we’re being careful to minimize any possible exposure to Mars conditions. Normally dried hay is one thing, but freeze-dried, dessicated hay is another. Or it might be that the hay grown in the Hab tasted bad because the plants were stressed, but we’re taking no chances.)
When I get back to Earth I’m going to propose a design for NASA’s first ever interplanetary combine harvester. Or, at the least, a rover with a pickup bed.
Anyway, once all the replanting was done, we still had- I counted them- one thousand, three hundred, and fourteen little spuds. Each one is only about a hundred calories, if that. I’d need twenty of them for a daily minimum recommended calorie count. But 1314 potatoes divided by twenty equals just under sixty-six days of food for one midly-active person.
This is our first successful harvest on Mars, the product of the Hab post-breach notwithstanding. So we celebrated with a little tater feast.
We stuck the unused taters in Airlock 1; they’ll freeze-dry there, but freezing doesn’t hurt potato flavor nearly as much (apparently) as alfalfa. But we brought two hundred spuds into the Hab, washed ‘em, and began cooking ‘em in the microwave, five at a time. (Five is all the Hab microwave can hold, and if these were average sized potatoes it’d be more like three or four.)
Normally you don’t feed potatoes to horses. Part of this is that horses are particularly sensitive to the toxic amino acids in green potatoes, but microwaving breaks those down for the most part. But the main problem is that horses are stupid and will try to swallow potatoes without chewing, so they either choke and die or get colic from poor digestion and die. My guests, not having been raised in a barn (see what I did there?), don’t have those problems, so potatoes are just fine for them.
So… yeah, they were potatoes. Plain, microwave-baked potatoes. Very, very plain, starchy, skin-and-all, microwave-baked potatoes.
We didn’t come close to eating all two hundred. Or even one hundred. Right now my stomach is churning at the idea that I’ll have to eat thirteen to fifteen properly sized spuds PER DAY before too long.
I’ve been rationing the ketchup as if they were Captain Queeg’s strawberries, but today... not so much. In fact, not at all.
After the fourth potato around, I got onto Pathfinder while the transmission window was still open and sent a message:
[18:14] WATNEY: Memo to Bruce Ng at JPL: send ketchup. Send LOTS of ketchup. Also butter, chives, sour cream. Not to eat; by the time they get here I probably won’t want to see another potato so long as I live. But after five hundred sols of spuds, when the ketchup and butter and other stuff gets here, I am going to BATHE in them, because at that point I will have TURNED into a potato.
[18:21] HERMES: And this would change your stunning personality… how, again?
[18:29] JPL: We’ll begin testing to see if we can make a couch out of ketchup packets, just for you, Mark.
Yep, that’s NASA. Can’t ever let a guy have the last word.
ESA: To Fireball. Message begins. Quote. By power of the Bloodstone Scepter you are ordered to not die, nor allow anyone with you to die, until we come to rescue you. You will demonstrate superior dragon strength, courage and wisdom by protecting your crewmates and keeping them safe from harm. This is a command from your lawful Dragonlord, and you shall obey! Got it? End quote. Over.
AMICITAS: Message received, over.
ESA: Sorry, that was more blunt than we’d expected. Over.
AMICITAS – FB- that’s about as pony-mushy as we get, actually. Over.
INTERVIEW #3
What is your name? Dragonfly!
What did you do on your ship? I was the ship’s engineer. If anything broke besides the Sparkle Drive, it was my job to fix it. Also, I’m helping with the other crew members’ English.
How did you get into space flight? My queen said we were going to space, so I volunteered immediately! I’m the fastest bug-pony flier in the group!
Who do you have waiting for you back home? My queen and the rest of the bug-ponies, of course!
What are your impressions of humans? Well, if you don’t count television, I’ve only met the one, but he’s pretty nourishing.
Do you look forward to visiting Earth after your rescue? Of course! I want to meet Venkat and Irene and Mark’s crew and everybody else who made this neat base!
What will you do when you finally go home? Whatever my queen tells me to, of course!
What is your favorite disco song? “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love.”
If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? A button that I could push to call a ship. Mars is not a nice planet and we all want OFF.
What message do you have for the people of Earth? Flying in space is fun! But not being stranded on Mars. That part sucks. (Is that how you use that word, Mark?)
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Diamond Tiara don't used her cutie mark for a long time. Most likely for years. Same with Coloratura. While in case of DT there a chance that she been a bitch partially because she ignore her cutie mark she still quite sane. And Coloratura at worst just feel unhappy.
Oog. Plain potatoes for months on end? Yeah, I'd be sick of them too. Better that than dying of starvation.
Did you just have a dragon make a Legend of Zelda reference? Because I'll be honest, that's pretty metal.
How long until Starlight uses her "mineral vaccum" spell to get some salt?
Should the ponies be able to synthesize something from raw chemicals they can pull from martian soil to help their food? Like sodium glutamate or pink salt? (Not the Hymalain salt thing, I mean the nitrate one used to cure hams and all.) It would make the potatoes more palatable.
Mark: Soon, everyone in this HAB is gonna know how it feels to live in my world. A world without power. A world without mercy. A world without...Ketchup.
Cherry: Welcome to my world...
wait wait wait i have to ask this and am not the only person in this world that think this....... would they be rock salt on mars?! given they fact there used to be water and vocian action
becasue if so that would be a little fun sad mission for them!
8788169
2/3 of a LoZ reference. The Triforce is Power, Courage, and Wisdom. This was Strength, Courage, and Wisdom.
8788171
there on mars so there should and the keyword should here, that mars will have salt given it used to have water and volcanic action
8788183
Power and Strength are synonymous as far as I'm concerned. Power in Ganondorf's context is magical strength.
8788171
And then she just pulls out a pile of pure Sodium from the ground
8788197
>Starlight's Atomic Vaccum Spell
>Can separate numerous chemicals from solutions and mixed enviroments into piles of 99.9% purity
>Side effect: Only works with unstable chemicals
8788197
they can't eat pure salt all the time they have to put some iodine in it for healthy eating
BTW, can anyone aside from Starlight read English?
I was just wondering if NASA's care package will include e-book pdfs in addition to music and TV shows, and what the character's literary preferences are.
Extra-silliness if Twilight finds out NASA is sending e-book pdfs and feels conflicted because she has to put the stranded ponies' mental health ahead of her own literary desires.
Twilight: "A whole planet of books and I can't read them!!!"
Chrysalis:
8788215
meanwhile
pinkie pie:all the video games in the world and i can't play them or learn how to code them into my own games!!
as they copy they data of that usb drive.... fireball on his own laptop open up a file that say "metal" and he click the 1st song on the top of the window and he put it at full volume to hear this
So far, for the potatoes, the eyes have it?
I can see the tinfoil hat group on Earth jumping all over this one; Space Vampires! Add an "artist's rendition" of a mean/hungry changeling and you have xenophobes the world over buying all the Raid and swatters they can find. Poor Dragonfly, all she wants is a hug... or two.
p.s. Has the idea of ponies meeting Earth ponies ever come up? I can only surmise that would get awkward real fast. Not unlike humans meeting Neanderthals (or an even further evolutionary throwback) on Equestria.
also side note mark just be gald its that and not soylent ok, at least you can cook them however you like and your farts won't smell like a toxic gas bomb gone off in the hab
8788231
and then the kits of killing them would be sold in every gun store
i.pinimg.com/originals/76/00/1d/76001d11d15a501c66ddeb1fdc858be5.jpg
btw i hope on that usb drive there be some old-time classics like
8788166
come on you know it was about to happen soon
I'm amazed that this story keeps making me smile, every day. Kudos to the author.
Cue NASA psychologists violently scribbling notes in the background.
8788169
I think we have established that dragons are pretty fucking metal.
8788169
could be worst dude, it could have been soylent
8788296
all we need now is a fleam thower some metal music and a dirt bike as it being ride fireball as he play a metal solo
8788207
No, I'm talking about pure elemental sodium, which is explosive
8788222
*looks at her hooves; then at a controller*
One thing i have been meaning to ask for quite a few sols is what is this "buffer" you speak of?
8788340
It's Pinkie. She'd find a way.
Remember Too Many Pinkie Pies?
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8788335
Look at my table salt....... "I GOT MY EYE ON YOU!!!!"
8788354
8788340
great you have to remind me of that creepy ass thing from hell, beside by 2030 cyber limbs would be like buying pc parts in you local shop or ebay
8788341
Chapters that have already been written and are being saved up instead of published immediately. Most authors that update daily have a buffer, in order to keep the steady flow of updates uninterrupted if something comes up and they can't finish a chapter that day for whatever reason.
8788377
Aaaah so thaaats what it is... Gotcha... And thank you btw
8788341
A buffer is the chapters you write to post on a schedule. Hopefully you get several chapters lined up so that you can take a day off once in a while without missing a scheduled posting. Kris needs to have lots of applause for his supercalifragilistican effort.
YAY
º›º
edit: Though he'd probably 'preciate PayPal tips, too.
8788385
Already answered but thanks anyways
8788383
Ikr i want at least a plush toy of our favorite cuddle bug
8788341
He means how many chapters ahead of the current one he has written and ready to publish, but isn't so he can submit 1-2 each day instead.
8788297
Ehh?? what would a very weak concentration of perchlorate taste like and would it be harmful in a very low concentration? Like what could be made into seasonings? Could Starlight do something similar to the perchlorate fiasco a few kilometers away for sodium chloride and needed trace elements?
8788414
soylent is great food item but man when it get into gas mod out of the human body it could be used like a toxic bomb
8788297
I think I could handle it as long as it was any color besides green.
8788305
You alright there mate? You went from good grammar, good grammar, straight to drunk-ese.
8788414 I have been wondering if a low-level enchantment could act as a catalyst and split the oxygen from the perchlorate ion, leaving only chloride behind and whatever metal ion it has along with in in the compound.
8788231
I feel like that meeting between horses and magical ponies would indeed be incredibly uncomfortable. worse than meeting a neanderthal, since I think the gap is further for the magical ponies to earth ponies than for us and early man. Has anyone taught horses language? cause I feel that Neanderthals would at least be Koko the Gorilla levels of communicable.
How planned is this story? Do you have major plot points all the way to the end or are you figuring it out as you go along.
Great job either way, this is such a fascinating read and it's great how much effort you put into the science of the story
8788183
Eh. Mechanical power is work divided by time.
Strength allows more work to be done more quickly.
Close enough.
8788205
That right there sounds like your run-of-the-mill Useless Super Power, all right.
"The ponies aren’t good at gentle using hooves"
"The ponies aren’t good at gently using hooves"?
8788354
You are correct, good sir. We must not question the Pink One. That way lies madness...
Dragonfly... dammit. Why must you be transparently adorable. It's like yes I'm being manipulated but is there a loser here? No... no there isn't.