AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 235
ARES III SOL 233
[10:42] WATNEY: Engine test completed. Rock sample scale read as 483 kilograms on loading. We activated the engine and gradually ran up the throttle until the scale read 183 kilograms and did some fine adjusting until it held at that reading for ten seconds. We then eased down the throttle to zero and dismounted the engine from the cradle. Throttle setting for nine hundred kilograms of thrust is just above six percent of rated thrust. Test ran for one hundred and seven seconds on a single magic battery which began at 100% charge and ended at 11% charge. Sorry I can’t give you any more power consumption data than that.
[11:01] JPL: Thanks, Mark. It’s good to see you’re back on the job. Can you tell us how much “just above” six percent the setting is?
[11:27] WATNEY: Less than half is the best I can do. The one percent marks on the pony throttle controls are smaller than a millimeter. Analog readout.
[11:58] JPL: Okay. We’ll treat that as seven percent and make sure the MAV ascent program remembers to correct for excess thrust. We’ll let you know how that goes.
By the way, could you take Sojourner with you? If you’ll take it inside the cave, we can take some photos of Dragonfly with it and then let it roam around the interior. Rover 2’s computer can run the probe automatically and provide data dumps through Pathfinder when you return to the Hab.
[12:24] WATNEY: Sure. Or I could use one of the hand-held cameras. That I still have.
Sojourner had three cameras, but it didn’t really see with them. The cameras weren’t video cameras; they were digital still shot cameras, two black-and-white and one color, all with a rather low resolution. Insofar as the little rover “saw” anything, it saw with four infrared laser emitters and receivers that detected obstacles in its way. One of those emitters had broken during its forty years of slumber, but the other three worked adequately enough, and Sojourner’s software supplemented them with the occasional still shot and very recently updated object-recognition software stored on the rover computers.
Thus, although the little rover only “blinked” its eyes once every minute or so, filing the images in the half of its mind that currently resided in Rover 2’s computer, its lasers told it that it was being held up in the air, and that it should not run its wheels at the moment.
It had no thermometer- all environmental tools had been mounted to Pathfinder, and they remained in Ares Valles where the thing that held Sojourner had left them. Thus, it did not notice the warmer temperature and higher air pressure as the cave’s airlock filled with air to let the astronauts inside.
It had no microphone or sound-detecting equipment of any kind. Its builders had reasoned, with justification, that a robot on Mars needed ears about as much as it needed pontoons. Thus Sojourner did not hear Mark say, “Good morning, Dragonfly. We brought a visitor.”
But at the one-minute interval, its aft camera, the only color camera of the three, took a photo of the cocoon. And the pattern-recognition software in the rover interacted with the navigation software hard-wired into the probe body and came up with a deduction that represented the absolute limit of the robot’s reasoning skills.
I don’t know what that is, but it’s not a rock.
“NASA wants Sojourner to poke around the cave for a few days,” Mark said. “It’ll sleep at night and wake up in the morning. If you hear strange noises at night, it’s probably the robot sniffing at the cherry trees.”
Sojourner didn’t hear any of this, but it knew when it was set down.
The bottom of the cocoon sat about a foot off the cave floor. Sojourner took another photograph as it began planning its exploration of the cave, but its updated software decided that nothing could be more interesting than that non-rock object. It adjusted its wheel bogies, angling the chassis of the rover, trying to lift its tail, with the color camera and the spectrometer, up towards the cocoon.
Mark took a photo of what looked, at first glance, like Sojourner staring up at the cocoon.
The right image, at the right time, can change the world- or prevent it from changing.
The next day NASA released Mark's photo, in reduced resolution to save bandwidth, along with a handful of others selected by Mark from Rover 2’s memory. The image caught the eye of several news editors, but it was USA Today who made the connection that the being inside the cocoon was responsible for the rover’s reactivation.
And thus, although most news outlets ran the photo, the headline that defined the meme ran on USA Today’s front page: “THANK YOU – Pioneering Mars rover given new life by alien.”
Within days the little probe became the symbol for Dragonfly’s fans and apologists around the globe. Art of the probe standing watch over the cocoon, or bringing valentines to it, or guarding it from green antennaed Martian interlopers, popped up everywhere. When xenophobes tried to fight back by turning Sojourner into a zombie probe mind-controlled by a sinister disembodied alien menace, Dragonfly’s fans fought back with adorable minion Sojourner, zombie Sojourner taking lessons from not-that-long-dead Opportunity, and one editorial cartoon that swept the world: zombie Sojourner holding a sign that said She Lost Her Mind Giving Mine Back to Me.
Most of the voices which had questioned the wisdom of welcoming the aliens to the Hab after Dragonfly’s collapse went silent in the overwhelming wave of support. The xenophobes, though of their own opinion still, had discovered that, to paraphrase the Bible quote, perfect cuteness casts out fear. In the end support for the rescue of Mark and the aliens increased, and years later multiple students seeking a doctorate in the communications sciences and arts would base thesis papers on one grainy photograph of a probe looking up at its savior.
And as the myth blew up that Sojourner loved Dragonfly for fixing it, and as this myth was relayed to Mark from NASA, the marooned astronaut decided not to mention to anyone the fact that, no matter how far Sojourner wandered in the cave, no matter where in the farm chamber it was placed, it was always next to the cocoon when the castaways arrived for their visit in the morning.
It might just be coincidence. After all, the cocoon was next to the entrance, where the cave walls were at their thinnest and where radio signals from the rover outside were strongest. And then again, it might be another thing touched by pony (or bug-pony) magic.
But that was in the future. For today, after Mark took the picture, Sojourner approached as closely as it could to the dangling cocoon, not quite able to reach, and took an inconclusive reading with its spectroscope. It then rotated, lifted the other end of its body, and took a grainy stereo image in black and white of the structure, or as much of it as could fit within its narrow frame of view.
And the only thought or feeling Sojourner chose to reveal to JPL and humanity at large was: Nope, still not a rock.
Meanwhile, the wind produced by the test of the dismounted Amicitas main engine joined the feeble, uncertain Martian trade wind, swirling first northwest and then southwest along an atmospheric boundary line. It blew up the fine, talcum-like surface dust of Mars and sent it high into the sky. More air gathered in the wind, as the weak summer sun heated the air and gave it more energy.
Magic thrusters in an alien environment had unpredictable consequences.
I claim first comment this chapter. :D
Also: Oh no.
Edit: Re-reading this 5 and a half years later (on Christmas 2023), it tickles me that this many people disliked a first comment. It's so benign, but apparently people really didn't like it.
-The Wisdom of Sojourner.
Dawww, Sojourner is adorable. Reminds me of that XKCD about Spirit.
Also, dust storm incoming.
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Nobody cares, Yamcha.
I know I'm wrong, but the more mars seems to hate on the crew the more I get the feeling that mars is a petulant child that's having temper tantrums as its slowing starting to be brought back to life by the magical shenanigans of its unwanted guests
I teared up a bit at this.
That's just what Opportunity wants you to think. It's coming for them.
https://xkcd.com/1504/
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i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/005/609/800px-Yamcha_found_dead.jpg
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Same... So sweet...
I want to see this.... its hillarious.
Mars, if you promise to not try to kill Mark and the equestrians, I will give you all the cookies ever.
...yeah... didn't think that'd work.*sigh*
Seems to me that those thrusters may have been the cause of the original storm that stranded Mark in the first place.
This needs to be drawn.
SHIT!
*Alert sounds*
THE MARTIAN WEATHER SERVICE ON EARTH HAS ISSUED A SEVERE DUST STORM WARNING FOR THE FOLLOWING AREAS: ACIDALIA PLANITIA, ARABIA TERRA, AND THE THARIS VOLCANIC PROVINCE. A DUST STORM HAS BEEN DETECTED BY SATELITE IMAGERY MOVING NORTHEAST AT SEVENTY KILOMETERS PER HOUR. LIGHTNING IS CONFIRMED TO BE WITHIN THE STORM, SECURE ALL LOOSE ITEMS AND STOW ALL STATIC SENSITIVE GEAR. IF THE STORM APPROACHES YOU, SEEK SHELTER IN THE CENTER PART OF YOUR HAB OR IN A CAVE, STAY AWAY FROM WINDOWS OR THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAVE.
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Everything the light touches is ours.
What about that part?
That there is Opportunity's land. You must never go there.
I knew this line was going to come back and bite them!
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Wisdom of Maud
all love the hug bug
Oh FFS. Now a new magical dust storm? Can't they catch a break?
Sojourner a.k.a. Robo-Lewis a.k.a. Maudbot never ceases to be a font of geologic acumen.
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I'm actually hoping for a magically induced cascade reaction resulting in terraforming... hopelessly optimistic, I know.
Sure, I'll ship it.
Ah crap. I somehow forgot the first attempt Mars made to kill them all.... Naturally given similar conditions......
Alright, what's this dust storm going to break? Obviously, it won't be good for their solar power capacity, but at this point I seriously doubt you'd let them off that easily. I'm already thinking the rescue will have to come from the ESA/CSP side, considering the state of their flight engineer, so I wouldn't be surprised if this magic-fueled storm, like the last one, becomes powerful enough to knock over a MAV- and because it's this story, it'll be that powerful at Schiaparelli, the only place on the planet that currently has one of those.
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Not possible. The storm was underway when they arrived.
8928206 Not quite. There was already a storm, unusually strong and well out of its normal time frame. But Amicitas's thrusters supercharged it enough to cause the Ares III abort and what followed.
"charge.Sorry I can’t give you"
"charge. Sorry I can’t give you"?
"And as the myth blew up that Sojourner loved Dragonfly for fixing it, and as this myth was relayed to Mark from NASA, the marooned astronaut decided not to mention to anyone the fact that, no matter how far Sojourner wandered in the cave, no matter where in the farm chamber it was placed, it was always next to the cocoon when the castaways arrived for their visit in the morning."
Well, I mean, we did already have this on Sol 228:
"Next to him Sojourner sat, facing the airlock, its little probe arm extended to touch the door."
:)
...
Oh come on! Mars is lining up its next shot already? :)
"I'm looking forward to you reactions when I post it"
"I'm looking forward to your reactions when I post it"?
One thruster =12 billion butterfly flaps?
ºUº
^U^
Godfucknodamnbaddayalert
I both dawwed and teared up at this chapter.
Oh shit the hab is next
Next time on Mars Hates Life!...
Ah phooey!
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If only we were so lucky.
I love this soooo much! It's poetic, it shows that good things can come from bad circumstances, and it's better than simply having Dragonfly magically get better. It was already a miracle that Mark recovered so quickly; to have Dragonfly get better almost as fast would feel too convenient. But this takes her situation and adds a new dimension to it, helping the story by reigniting support, possibly making it even stronger. The photo situation sounds so much like other shot-round-the-world photos of history, single frames that just hit everyone right in the feels and seem to move humanity. I can buy that. It feels real. And it's such a good way to play this without just focusing on the depression of the crew over not knowing how to save their friend (yet).
Oh, and now we get magical sandstorms! THE EXCITEMENT NEVER ENDS
8928329 That reminds me, I need to edit that first thing. I got Sojourner confused with the unfortunate Beagle 2. Sojourner doesn't have an arm. What instruments it has are all on its chassis.
Oooh~
Look what you made Mars do.
So I am greatly concerned, because the words "Unpredictable Consequences" are used here. Everyone is just going, "Fuck its another storm" but SOMEONE at this point is studying the meteorological data of Mars to explain the initial freak storm. While its not news yet because their are bigger things going on, its likely that they will look at the data from all 3 Ares Missions and see thruster activity increasing Mars weather activity.
So its not unpredictable enough.
SO, we have a huge release of magic in an environment without magic, thus turning unusual Martian weather into strange/impossible Martian weather.
Rain? Chocolate Rain even? Doesn't really seem a threat, but I am not sure how waterproof everything is. It should be waterproof because lack of air, but some wires that NASA considered unimportant could somewhat exposed perhaps. Of course that should be impossible, cause liquid water cannot exist at that Atmospheric pressure.
Hail...or snow. Chocolate again cause why waste a theme....snow should be fine since the Hab survived a impossible dust storm, and snow isn't that much sharper then dust, but highly accelerated chunks of Chocolate could damage the Hab or the Solar farm.
Lighting? It already occurs on Mars and isn't really a big deal in that regard, but the magic could create clouds that would allow for a greater variety of lightning. Doesn't seem that fancy and can't have chocolate added to it, so 1/10.
Chocolate Fog? Cool, but not dangerous.
After that we have the development of Tornado and Cyclonic cells on Mars. The Hab is rated for neither of those, and honestly I don't see how they can solve either without Spitfire strapping on a battery and putting on some weather pony shoes. Honestly if either happened, NASA's suggestion will likely be, "Abandon the Hab till this is over and hide in the Cave Farm."
Of the two Tornado is more likely, due to the visual nature of such things and the amount of energy released, I think. Cyclones are insanely large storm cells and I suspect not enough magic was released to turn a dust storm into a cyclonic cell.
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8928274 And, somewhere in another universe, Starlight Glimmer creates the Genesis Device.
Beware anyone selling fine Corinthian leather.
I want Sojourner fan art now. That's so freaking adorable I think I'm having a heart attack.
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I dunno, I can see Kris writing an epilogue after they leave Mars, detailing what remains, Obligatory Sequel Hook style, finishing with a zoom in on a patch of cave dirt, where a crystalline sprout pushes itself free... And leaving it to the readers to wonder what the bright red color means.
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Ah, okay! Glad I mentioned it, then.
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Hmm doubt it would go THAT far.
But the issue with snow is that it's HEAVY and tends to stick. So things that are not supposed to bear weight find themselves with a LOT of weight on them.
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Toot-toot-tootootoot
8928101
This is akin to discovering a pen in a library and scribbling on the cover of an encyclopedia:
LOL books
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https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mst3k/images/3/37/Moonmen3.PNG/revision/latest?cb=20150610095050
First off, I thought that Spirit was the recently deceased rover in this story?
Second, that photograph you described... it's not often that I decide to draw something, but the photo of Sojourner "looking" up at Dragonfly's cocoon happened to be just the inspiration I needed. Here's the link... be warned, it's a pencil sketch, with a bit of inking to really define the harder lines. Also, fair warning that I'm not the greatest artist out there; I probably didn't do the scene justice
https://randomly-reasonable.deviantart.com/art/Sojourner-the-Faithful-745178352?ga_submit_new=10%3A1526448688
So...not just a dust storm, but a dust storm with actual malicious intent. Anyone else remember Caradhras for how well that goes?
Actually Mars is almost exactly like Caradhras. It's limited in it's ability to OVERTLY break the laws of physics. but it's perfectly capable of ruining your day all the same.
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"One raindrop raises the sea."
"Yes! So just think of what two raindrops could do!"
"*collective groan*"
If you have not seen this movie, you really should.