MISSION LOG – SOL 290
Today NASA finally insisted on the damn inventory, so we spent the day counting pretty much everything, inside and out.
Starlight’s new arm- right foreleg- patch is much better than the emergency job that failed after almost two hundred sols. Dragonfly spat up three different layers of material at various points during the suit refurbishing task day before yesterday, with the result that the new patch is both more durable and more flexible. It’s still not perfect, though. We discussed adding a Hab canvas patch as a protective overlayer, but Dragonfly finally said it would get in the way if and when a new patch needed to be made.
One of the things NASA was worried about in particular was the disposable CO2 filters. They wanted to make sure, with all the EVAs I was doing, that I wasn’t running out. Well, the good thing is, when the suit life support isn’t running, the air flow to the filters is shut off cold, so that the absorption power of the filter isn’t used up while riding in the rover or while in the Hab where other systems will take care of things. Also, any time the Hab’s air tanks get a bit low, the ponies just vent their home-grown air into the Hab, and the atmospheric regulator sucks up the excess gas, splits it into its components, and stores it.
So I’ve had the luxury of leaving filters in my suit until they’re saturated, then bleeding CO2-laden air out and letting the suit backfill with good air for the rest of whatever EVA it is when the alarms go off. And, of course, I very seldom go anywhere in the rover (which also uses those filters) without at least one pony to provide suit environmental systems. I think I’ve only swapped filters in Rover 2 five times total since Sol 6.
As a result, I have, as of today, exactly 200 filters remaining, not counting the ones currently in the suits and the rovers. That’s 1600 hours of EVA time without bloodletting the air. If I used one filter per sol for EVAs, that’s two hundred sols worth of EVAs… and one way or another, we have only two hundred sixty-one sols remaining on this rock. So barring some truly lethal circumstances, I’ve got more than enough filters for the rest of the mission.
Most of the other news from the inventory is good. We’ve only cheated a little bit on the food packs, to the point that I can go back on a full food pack diet (well, two-thirds ration) around Sol 430. And believe you me, I am counting the days. I’ve even picked out my celebration meal for Sol 430: the last bacon breakfast pack, and one of the four remaining spaghetti with meat sauce dinner packs.
During a much less pleasant lunch than spaghetti, we finished Fellowship of the Ring today. Discussion time was… interesting. Dragonfly argued, and argued well, that Boromir was doing what he thought was right when he tried to get Frodo to bring the Ring to Gondor. The ponies, of course, argued right back that Boromir was wrong, that he was under the influence of the Ring. And then Dragonfly won the argument by pointing out that Boromir’s sense of duty to Gondor- his pride and love for his country- was what made it possible for the Ring to take hold in the first place. That, after all, was what Gandalf and Galadriel had been afraid of- that the Ring would twist what was best about themselves and use that to betray them.
And she ended with a bit of wisdom which I don’t think the ponies had heard before: “Everybody is the hero of their own story, in their own mind.” The conversation shifted into pony-language for a bit as they discussed their baddies, but Dragonfly was able to defend her position pretty well. The ponies weren’t happy about it, but they were definitely thinking about it. At the end only Starlight Glimmer argued the point to say that there was one pony who didn’t think themselves a hero- herself.
At that the subject quickly changed to Frodo on the Hill of Sight, which everyone agreed was a fucking dumb thing to do.
Anyway, we should finish the inventory tonight, after which Starlight is going to help Dragonfly roll up an original character for the new campaign. We need a fighter; I’m playing a bard and Fireball is playing a monk, with Spitfire as an elven cleric and Cherry Berry as a druid. That’s a party that’s just crying out for a tank. But we’ll see what Dragonfly wants to do…
“A paladin??” Starlight gasped.
“Paladin,” Dragonfly replied. “Lawful good. Smiting evil. Smiting the insufficiently good. Smiting the indifferent. Smite makes right.”
Starlight Glimmer put her face into her hoof. “Do we really look like that to you?” she asked.
“You mean you ponies? Psh! Of course not!” Dragonfly said. “You ponies would all be clerics with vows of nonviolence except for the princesses and Twilight Sparkle’s friends! Nah,” she continued, grinning, “I just want an excuse to bash things.”
“Have you ever played Ogres and Oubliettes? Or this Dungeons and Dragons?” Starlight asked. “Trust me, you’re not going to need an excuse.”
“Bash all the things,” Dragonfly said. “But in a lawful good way. For the glory of Insert Deity Here.”
Starlight sighed, mentally consigning her tale of intricate balancing of shades of political grey in a fallen kingdom to the scrap heap.
Hackfest? I can do that, bug. Bring it.
And that day, Starlight Glimmer, the Killer DM of Mars, was born.