The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet

Sol 191

[08:08] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Venkat here. I’m sorry I haven’t been on the last couple of days. It’s been extremely busy here, and it’s going to be busy again today. But I finally have news for you.

[08:32] WATNEY: It’s about f-ing time! If you hadn’t got back to me today I would have begun using this chat to practice my Klingonese profanity. (And don’t tell me there’s no such thing as cussing in Klingonese. If you’re mad enough any language has cussing.)

[08:59] JPL: It’s Klingon. How would anyone tell the profanity apart from the rest of it?

Anyway, here’s the deal. Hermes has executed a maneuver which will slingshot it around Earth and then the sun to return to Mars on Sol 551. The trajectory will bring it back to earth 211 days after that.

The thing is, for all this to work, Hermes can’t orbit. This is strictly a fly-by. That means no Ares 3B MAV. You’re going to have to go to Schiaparelli Crater to the Ares IV MAV, hauling your friends and tons of gear you’re going to need to modify the MAV to make it capable of Mars escape velocity.

We also need your friends to make a new Sparkle Drive capable of running in multiple modes: MAV first ascent stage, MAV second ascent stage, MAV capsule, and Hermes plus docked MAV capsule. If we can get that to work, you could be on Earth as soon as a week after meeting Hermes.

There’s other things we need, but that’s the broad outline.

[09:28] WATNEY: Re: Klingonese: touché.

Re: the rest of it: are you out of your fucking minds??? Is anyone on Hermes listening in right now? Did you choose this? What were you thinking?? I mean, nobody would be happier than me to be off this rock two hundred sols quicker, but not at the risk of the rest of my crew!!

[09:51] HERMES: Lewis here, Watney. First off, it’s MY crew. Second, NASA presented us the facts, and we decided the risk to us was manageable. The risk to you isn’t. The decision was unanimous. We’re coming back to get you, like it or not.

[09:56] JPL: There’s a lot of risk involved, we know, Mark. But there are too many things that can go wrong on Mars. We want you off the planet as soon as possible, and we think the Hermes flyby is the best way to do it.

In the next day or two we’re going to send you procedures for proper and thorough testing of the pony ship’s engines and surviving maneuvering thrusters. In particular we need precise masses for the engine systems and the magic battery systems they use, maximum specific impulse per engine, and physical dimensions. Actually performing these procedures can be slotted into your schedule at your convenience over the next thirty sols or so.

After that our next priority is working out the procedure for the journey. It’s going to be a lot of work- we have to get the six of you, life support for the six of you, food for the trip and for about fifty sols at Schiaparelli, electricity, heat, and all the pony rockets, batteries, and Sparkle Drive components across 3200 kilometers of Mars.

Finally, I have bad news for you. We need you to sequester seven days of food packs for each of you to be stored in the MAV as contingency rations in case the planned rendezvous fails. Our backup plan is to use the Sparkle Drive either to attempt a second rendezvous or make a run for Earth, depending. We also want to reserve all remaining food packs for the trip to Schiaparelli, since they are easier to pack and store than potatoes. That means no more eating from food packs until you leave, Mark. I really am sorry about that.

[10:25] WATNEY: My depression at spending the next 250 sols with no flavor in my life is mitigated by the photo I just put in the upload queue of Cherry Berry dancing and singing, “I’m gonna fly again.”

[10:27] WATNEY: Starlight here. Bear in mind that we need some battery power to make more batteries and other things like that. Every test we run that needs magic power sets back that schedule. Also, Twilight Sparkle developed an adjustable Sparkle Drive about three months ago as part of rescue efforts. Multiple settings are not a problem.

[10:51] HERMES: Looking forward to getting to say, “Ahead Warp Factor 1, Ms. Glimmer, engage.”

[11:17] WATNEY: And that’s story time for tonight sorted out, I guess. Blank stares all around. Thanks for that, Commander.

[11:42] HERMES: You haven’t told them about Kirk, Picard, etc. yet, Watney? Does NASA have rules about dereliction of duty?

[12:06] WATNEY: You can dock my pay for insufficient nerdiness as soon as my feet are back on planet Earth. Looking forward to those procedures, Venk.

Heavy equipment rumbled through JSC Building 5 as the mock-up sets for the space station, the standard Ares HAB setup, and Hermes were rolled away. By tomorrow they would be replaced by two test-bed Ares rovers and a rough mock-up of the half-stripped, battered alien spaceship.

In one of Building 5’s conference rooms, cleaned out for the task, Venkat Kapoor faced a team of NASA’s best engineers- men and women from various teams, experts in habitat construction, in EVA systems and protocols, and in mechanical engineering in general.

“All right,” he said. “here’s the situation. Sometime after Sol 400, Mark Watney and the aliens have to leave the Hab, travel thirty-two hundred kilometers across multiple elevation changes to the Schiaparelli Basin to reach the Ares IV MAV. They have to arrive around Sol 500 to give them plenty of time to modify the MAV to reach Hermes during its Sol 551 fly-by. Those modifications will be JPL’s job to work out. Your job is to get the crew and all the parts needed for the modifications there on time.

“So- six people.” Venkat wrote the item on a whiteboard. “Food for six people for one hundred fifty sols, approximately one ton.” He wrote that down. “Shelter, heat, and electricity for the trip and for their time at Schiaparelli.” He wrote that down, too.

“What about air and water?” one of the engineers asked.

“We’ll be relying on the alien systems for most of that,” Venkat said. “We can steal the main life support systems from the Hab if we have extra cargo capacity, but considering all the other things we have to move, that’s not likely.” He wrote down ALIEN ENGINES next. “We don’t know exactly how much they weigh, but we need them all if they work.” ALIEN BATTERIES came after that. “They weigh about seventy kilograms each, and we need all the aliens can rebuild.” Next came HARDWARE, TOOLS, CABLES, and PATHFINDER.

“All of these are mission critical,” Venkat said. “If anybody sees something I’m missing, speak up.”

“Fuel and tanks for the MAV,” one engineer volunteered. “They’ll need every bit of delta-V they can cram onto the ship to reach escape velocity. And even if the MAV makes extra fuel, it’ll need someplace to put it.”

“Good thinking,” Venkat agreed, and wrote EXTRA FUEL FOR MAV on the list.

“Living space,” said another. “Ask Dr. Shields for confirmation on this, but remember how every Ares crew reacts to the Mars Low Orbit Abort scenario. Three days in the MAV capsule with almost no room to move. The two rovers put together have passenger space for eight astronauts combined except for emergency scenarios. That’s less space than the MAV for fifty times the duration of the Mars Low Orbit simulation. You need to give them elbow room or they’ll kill each other.”

“Is this a luxury we can afford?” Venkat asked.

“It’s a necessity,” the engineer insisted. “Consult Dr. Shields.”

Venkat shrugged and added LIVING SPACE.

“EVA suits,” another engineer piped up. “By Sol 400 their existing suits will be pretty worn out.”

“That’s true.” Venkat recognized the face, but not the name, of the head of EVA Operations. “They’re already patching the pony suits, and Mark’s gone through two suits himself. We’ll need two full suits as spares on the trip in case of a failure that can’t be patched.”

Venkat tapped the whiteboard thoughtfully. “We won’t be able to take spares for everything,” he said.

“You don’t get much more mission-critical than EVA suits,” the EVA Operations chief said.

Venkat shrugged and added it to the list. “Anything else?”

This time none of the engineers spoke up.

“All right,” Venkat said. “Mark Watney and Starlight Glimmer got eighty kilometers per day out of the modified Rover 2 on their trip to Pathfinder. But there was barely room in the rover for the two of them and all the supplies they needed for the trip. Obviously both rovers would have to be used, and most of the supplies for the trip would have to ride on the outside of the rovers. They’d be a lot heavier, and thus a lot less energy-efficient.

“The other alternative is the ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ option the pony commander proposed three months ago. The alien ship can’t make re-entry again, but it might be possible to reconfigure its engines and cut off the engineering section to make a lighter craft capable of VTOL flight. The drawback is that the alien engines rely on magic batteries that, in our universe at least, only recharge in the presence of life. It’d essentially need to be a one-shot flight, and it would take a very long time without the cave farm to recharge those batteries for use on the MAV. The ship also has working landing gear and can be towed, but based on past experience the towing would be extremely slow.”

One of the engineers raised his hand. “We have specifications on the rovers,” he said. “3.5 tons empty, 1.5 tons rated cargo, shock loads of up to 10 tons. Do we have these numbers for the alien ship?”

“Roughly, yes,” Venkat said. “We’re trying to tighten the numbers now. Using the rough conversions worked out by Watney and the ship’s engineer, the ship weighed approximately sixty tons at launch, not counting crew and supplies. Ten tons of that were the original power system and the Sparkle Drive, which were destroyed during the crash-landing. With most of the outer skin removed, the current estimated mass is forty-five tons. The landing gear were built to withstand landing impacts of up to ten meters per second, so a shock load of sixty tons per wheel set is a reasonable estimate.”

The same engineer spoke up again, saying, “But the alien ship isn’t structurally sound as it stands, right? They ripped out their aft airlock. And there’s a hole in the hull underneath.” He shook his head. “A long-distance tow will make that worse.”

“Can they cut off that section?” another engineer spoke up. “We didn’t send welding torches or saws with the Ares supplies.”

“Are we all familiar with the alien claims of ‘magic’?” Venkat asked. After heads nodded, he continued, “Based on Watney’s reports, we can conclude that at the least they have heavy lifting and cutting capabilities, at least for short periods. I assume they also have welding and even transmutation abilities on a limited scale, but we don’t have confirmation of those yet.”

“Okay.” The engineer stepped up beside Venkat, took a marker, and drew a rough outline of the alien ship on the board. “We have them cut off the tail entirely,” he said. “Remove the engines, then scrap everything else aft of the bulkhead for their engine room. Even if we add the engines back on, what does that get us down to? Thirty tons? Thirty-five?”

Another engineer spoke up. “What kind of acceleration can we count on from these engines?”

“Our last rough numbers were four meters per squared second for a fifty-ton ship,” Venkat said. “Those are very rough, and we hope to get better ones soon from Watney.”

“So what kind of acceleration do we get for a thirty-five ton ship?”

The engineer at the whiteboard did a bit of quick math and came up with about 5.6 meters per squared second. “That nets us 1.8 meters per squared second above local gravity,” he said. “What about fuel?”

“Magic power,” Venkat said. “Two seventy-kilogram batteries power the engines at full throttle for three and a quarter seconds.”

The room went silent. “Do the batteries get any lighter when drained?” the engineer at the whiteboard asked.

“No, they do not,” Venkat replied firmly.

“That’s a lot of weight to get any reasonable flight duration, Dr. Kapoor.”

“I know. Previously we scratched the Phoenix flight for that exact reason.”

One of the female engineers pushed her way to the front. “Here’s your solution,” she said. “We don’t fly, and we don’t tow. We build an RV.”

Ignoring the confused mutters of her colleagues, she drew a rover underneath the sketch of the alien ship. “Take Rover 1 and strip it down to the chassis,” she said. “Pressure vessel, gone. Computers, controls, benches, life support, all of it gone. We don’t need it. Leave the linkages for towing, the chassis and the wheels, and you’ve got a two-ton trailer that can carry eight additional tons on-”

“And we pile the equipment on the trailer! Good idea!” one engineer said.

“No, no, no,” the woman said. “You’re forgetting that the testing and checkouts for the loads were all performed on Earth. Mars gravity is two-fifths Earth’s.”

“Mass is mass wherever you go,” another engineer said.

“But in this case that only applies to shock loads,” the woman said. “If we had a flat highway on Mars, that trailer could carry twenty-four tons of mass.”

“Even if what you say is true,” Venkat said, “that’s still less than the ship.”

“We sent two spare wheels for the rovers up with the presupply missions,” the woman said. “We replace the front landing gear wheels with our spares. Mount the ship on the rover chassis backwards so that the nose hangs off the rear and is supported by the landing gear. That supports the full load, keeps us beneath weight limits, and allows the whole caravan to travel at speed. Watney will have to avoid sudden bumps or steep changes in elevation, but if he’s smart he’ll do that anyway.

“We get living space, cargo space, all of it. And bonus, we can bolt solar panels to the roof of the alien ship without compromising the pressure vessel, using all the attachment points for the outer skin and cooling system. That’s more power while rolling and less work on EVAs during recharge cycles. And it gives the crew about the same habitat space as the old space shuttles. This,” she said, tapping her sketches on the board, “is the way to go.”

Venkat looked around the room. “Does this work out?”

Some heads nodded. Some shook negatively. Others weren’t looking up, because they were doing things to phones or scratch pads.

“Well, this sounds like a good idea to me,” Venkat said. “Tell me if the math works. If it does, then start writing up the assembly procedure. Always remember, we can only use what Watney has up there plus cutting power and lifting power. Anything else is questionable. Contact me directly if you need data.”

With that Venkat left engineers to do what engineers do best: argue about why something can’t be done until, suddenly, they’ve done it.