Sol 240
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 242
ARES III SOL 240
[08:09] JPL: Good morning, Mark, Cherry, Starlight, Spitfire, Fireball. This is Bruce Ng in Pasadena. We’ve begun work on planning the modifications you’ll need to make to the Ares IV MAV when you get to Schiaparelli. It looks like it’s going to take a very long time, because we have to experiment with and simulate all sorts of scenarios we normally wouldn’t consider for an instant.
We’re looking for any possible way to use your ship engines. They produce a respectable specific impulse as per your static test a few days ago. Unfortunately, in terms of mass they’re nowhere near as efficient as the methane-oxygen rocket system we’re using, so we can’t just replace our engines with yours. If we’re going to use them at all, we have to add them to the existing engines somehow.
Our favorite scenario at this time is to use the MAV landing stage as a zeroth ascent stage. But that only works out if we can get the full three minutes the lander engines are rated for. A fully fueled MAV cannot get off the ground using lander thrusters alone, and adding the pony engines and batteries will leave the ship very sluggish on liftoff. If we can’t use the pony engines on it for a full three minutes we have to discard that option entirely.
After that option things get pretty uncomfortable. Our second favorite option is to replace the center first stage engine with one of yours. Our third favorite is to strap all three engines on the first ascent stage the same way we’re currently hoping to do to the descent stage. We really don’t like either of them because it adds weight to the ascent stage, hurting the efficiency of the existing rocket system. If your engines produced the same specific impulse as ours, it’d work, but they don’t come close.
Our least favorite strategy is to throw out all backups entirely (and I DO mean all) including the Sparkle Drive and bet everything on the Hermes rendezvous being absolutely successful. We don’t want to do that, because things happen, and our luck as regards Mars has not been the best recently.
There’s one other option we considered- replacing the single engine on the second stage with one of your engines and three tons of batteries. It would cost a bit of specific impulse, but the trade-off would be that you’d have engines that slowly regenerated. But the difference in speed is too great. We absolutely have to get a ship going to 5.8 kilometers per second that was designed to burn out at 4.1 kps. That leaves us no budget for backups or for slowly regenerating fuel.
Finally, although the Rich Purnell plan called for using the Sparkle Drive liberally to achieve the desired velocity, we’re reluctant to try it unless absolutely necessary. The Sparkle Drive is still experimental, and none of us know what will happen if it’s used in atmosphere or how it will function- if at all- in our universe without the power cascade that caused you to crash in the first place.
So, for any of our preferred plans to be workable, both these things have to be true…
Can you make much bigger batteries, capable of storing proportionally more power, using the salvaged electronics from your ship?
And can you synthesize hydrazine to refill the MAV descent stage’s tanks? We use hydrazine monopropellant for the descent stage because it’s our most reliable engine in terms of ignition. The MAV fuel plant isn’t built to make more, and in any case Mars’ atmosphere has very little nitrogen.
[08:51] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer speaking. I can try to transmute hydrazine, but it’d be extremely dangerous. The transmutation process would heat up the hydrazine, and that might make it blow up in the tank. Also, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t be pure hydrazine. I’ll have to pass that on to Twilight back home.
As for the batteries, it’s possible. Back home most enchanted artifacts or magic-powered devices have a battery function built in to power things.
It’s very seldom that anyone makes a magic battery for the sole purpose of having a battery. The enchantment is very basic, and yes, the bigger the stone the more it will hold.
The main problems are as follows.
First, the meters on the battery casings are calibrated for a roughly 60 kg cubical crystal. We can make them taller, but the charge readouts will be highly unreliable.
Second, the crystals available are a lot more prone to flaws and cracks than the ones back home. I can’t just pick any big crystal. I’m going to have to search the cave and go after the biggest unflawed crystals I can find. It’s a big cave and there are a lot of huge shafts, but finding a big clear crystal here is already a challenge.
Finally, the casings are designed to protect the crystals if they’re dropped or struck. A hard enough blow will crack a battery, severely diminishing its power if it still functions at all. An outright broken crystal loses its enchantment. A too-large crystal slid into the casing will lose the protection.
How tall do you need the batteries?
[9:17] JPL: Our math, using your revised figures for performance, says that running all three of your engines at full throttle for three minutes would require seventy-two normal sized batteries. That’s too many to mount on the exterior without some disaster happening. We’d prefer fifteen batteries five times as tall as normal if we used your engines on the MAV descent stage. If we strap them to the first ascent stage, they’d need to be at least twice as tall.
[09:46] WATNEY: You don’t ask much, do you? In theory I can do the first one. I really, REALLY don’t know about the second. But I’ll need to do a lot of searching to get them.
[10:13] JPL: Okay. Please get back to us as soon as you can on that. We don’t want to chase dead ends on this. The clock is ticking down.
The last name on the office door in Meteorology was Carter, so obviously some wag had used masking tape to cover the first name and replace it with “John.” The memo taped to the wall next to the door (“QUIT CHANGING THE NAME ON MY DOOR! IT WASN’T FUNNY THE FIRST TIME.”) suggested that this happened often.
Inside the office Mindy found a worried-looking man whose first name was Randall. “Good morning, Miss Park,” he said. “What did you find?”
“I tracked the storm back for two days,” Mindy said. “At least, I think I did, but there really wasn’t much else in the area in the days and locations indicated, so I’m fairly confident. The storm began as a squall on the southeastern edge of Tempe Terra. It proceeded due west until it passed through the gap between Alba Mons and the Tharsis Montes line. It then plunged southwards along the west side of the Montes to circle around Olympus Mons, dropping into Amazonis Planitia and building strength.”
Randall nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what we got, too.”
“What??” Mindy tossed the printouts she’d brought with her onto Randall’s desk. “You already knew? Then why did you have me do it?”
“Because it’s impossible,” Randall said, a little heat in his own voice. “Tharsis rips apart weather systems. It’s like the great wall of Martian weather. And this storm system had way too much energy to begin with, and it barely lost anything crossing Tharsis.” He saw a map of Mars among Mindy’s printouts and traced the route of the storm. “This track is like a typhoon hitting and then crossing the Himalayas… and picking UP strength in the process. It just doesn’t happen.”
“But it is happening.”
“Yeah, but we needed an outside viewpoint to verify it. This is something we’ve never observed before.”
“Except for Sol 6.”
“Even then. The Sol 6 storm was out of season, but it moved at a normal speed and reasonable strength until the morning of Sol 6. We’d tracked it for three days, ever since it dropped off Arabia Terra. It started out ordinary and turned weird, but this,” he waved an irritated hand at Mindy’s paperwork, “this is weird from the get-go.”
“Okay,” Mindy said, calming down a bit as she began to understand where Randall’s mind was. “So, what’s the forecast?”
“Too soon to say, so far as Watney is concerned,” Randall said. “Right now the storm’s due south of Elysium Mons. If it maintains this blistering speed, it will hit Isidis Basin or the eastern edge of Arabia Terra in about two and a half days. A normal storm would get weakened or caught in the basin, or else turned north around Arabia and forced into the mid-latitude westerlies, turning it back towards Alba Mons.”
“But you don’t think this one’s going to do that,” Mindy said.
“Nope. The way this one’s acting, and the way luck has been lately, I’m betting this has Watney’s name on it. Or if you like, ‘Mark Watney or current resident, Ares III Hab.’ And as soon as I can get an appointment, we’re going to put all of this on Dr. Kapoor’s desk and recommend that we get started.” He picked up a handful of papers and began straightening them.
“Started? Aren’t we already started?”
“Started on hardening the Hab for another Sol 6 storm,” Randall said. “Watney and the aliens have to ride this one out. There’s no MAV available for an abort this time.”
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It really does look like Mars is making conscious attempts to kill them.
Hmm...this might have already been mentioned before, but I'm wondering if this storm might damage the Hab to such an extent that they'll have to move to the cave and live there instead. Perhaps the comment a few chapters ago about them being Hobbits was a bit of foreshadowing?
8936532
And, there is a reason the sparkle drive would have an advantage in meeting up with hermes: It can cheat their way out of the martian sphere of influence. So, instead of having to match hermes at 11 km/s, they can match whatever relative speed it has in the sun's sphere of influence (A lot less).
8936561 The original Sparkle Drives were built to a single mass specification, with varying performance if the ship became lighter or heavier than that. The design Twilight worked out for the Angel probes can adjust its power levels for multiple masses of ship.
As for TWR, Weir, right wrong or indifferent, makes the point that both it and the MDV come down with the absolute minimum power required for a soft powered landing. I'm trying to keep to that. (And in particular I'd point out the difference between the LM and any MDV; the Lunar Module was built to be its own ascent vehicle as well and to land on an airless surface. It required the extra thrust (and weight) for both powered descent all the way down and for potential abort scenarios. With the MDV there is no abort- once committed to re-entry it is land or crash. There's an atmosphere for aerobraking and drogue parachutes to get below two hundred meters per second. And there's a separate MAV, which means there's less to brake.
The MAV landing stage has to be equally minimal. It takes a lot more power to get off Mars than it does off the moon, which means more weight. So you're already talking about a very heavy object which has to be boosted from Earth's surface all the way to Mars as a single unit. Every possible weight-saving option for the re-entry systems will be taken, and that includes using the least amount of thrusters and fuel tolerable to NASA safety margins.
My guess of what Weir had in mind remains low-powered, long-burn thrusters to allow the pilot time to pick a final safe landing zone while bringing the ship to zero. I'm sticking to my best guess of his vision except when it becomes too damn ludicrous (for example, taking LCD-screen laptops, unprotected, to Mars, when they'd be killed by vacuum the instant the packing container was opened).
8936612 The MAV still has to match trajectory relative to Hermes, and that doesn't change depending on sphere of influence.
Jesus, this thing is going super sonic for Martian storms. If anything, the Sol 6 storm can be explained as getting super-charged by the Amicitas breaching the atmosphere and plunging through the storm. The air, super-heated by the craft would be effectively nitrious oxide for a storm, so the magic from the craft wasn’t entirely responsible for making Sol 6 a superstorm. This monster however is bad news, precautions I can think of right now is strapping down what’s left of the MDV, Amicitas, as well as Rover 1 and Rover 2, plus Pathfinder, although Sojouner is safe where it is, no need to worry about it becoming a missile, hell it would be wise to store Pathfinder in their as well. Removing as many rocks as possible from around the Hab and putting them some place safe would also have to be done. The deployable airlocks from the Rovers need to be brought inside as do the solar panels, checking how well anchored the weather stations are will also help, biggest worry is Airlock One. That thing even with lord knows how many potatos in it could become one hell of a missile. Putting something up to cover the windows on the Rovers, Amicitas and the Hab needs to be done as well, plus the Water Reclaimer and the Oxgyenator needs to be anchored down as well as they can.
For the entirety of the storm, all survivors should also wear their suits and helmets just in case the worse happens and the Hab breaches. That should cover all the bases for preparations. Not to mention, Mark needs to be warned and so does Equestrian Space Agency also, someone should tell the ponies about the European Space Agency and see if they get the joke with acyromn since both programs have ESA as the shorthand term.
Cue us meta-knowledge loaded readers yelling "SOMEONE TELL THIS TO SPITFIRE ASAP! SHE'S A PEGASUS! SHE KNOWS STORMS!"
8936622
True. However, hermes's velocity is very different at its periapsis around mars, relative to the rest of its trip.
"The martian"s craft had to match its speed there. With a sparkle drive, your ship can match Hermes in a much larger area.
Hm, when and if it's discovered that the storm is magically influenced, I can't imagine people being terribly happy to see the Sparkle Drive reach Earth. Or the ponies for that matter.
That is 99.4mph, a Category 2 hurricane...
This could ramp to a Cat. 5 (equal to a Super Typhoon) very easily due to nothing but flat lands to go over, and with the lower sound barrier, Spitfire is going to have to do her own version of a Rainboom to break it apart.
Rainbow would be soooooo jealous
Probably one of my bigger concerns are the potatoes (which to my knowledge are being stored in a container outside to preserve them) and the solar cells; if Mark is easily capable of carrying them (albeit awkwardly), that would also mean that a strong enough wind should be able to (at the least) tear it from its connectors to the Hab, and likely cause irreparable damage to said connections. Both food and power supplies need to be secured sufficiently against winds of the same magnitude as Sol 6.
Pathfinder is also another crucial concern; it's too large to fit into the Airlock, and unless Starlight can muster enough batteries to teleport it into the Hab (and personally I find that extremely risky, considering the delicate electronics, not to mention the Hab canvas would block Pathfinder's signal to Earth), it would have to bear the full brunt of the storm. If Pathfinder gets struck by any sort of flying debris, it likely wouldn't survive, especially if it was struck in the high gain antenna.
"Inside the office Mindy found a worried-looking name whose first name was Randall."
This typo got a chuckle out of me.
8936628
A Pegasus whose wings are always covered in an EVA suit when she's outside the Hab; she wouldn't be able to sense any air currents whatsoever. She was able to detect the Hab about to pop because she wasn't wearing her suit in the confines of the Hab at the time.
While she may know Equestrian weather, at best she could only give general advice about storms, and not this specific storm.
8936658
Even observational advice from a pegasus could provide vital insight. Especially since Spitfire has overseen weather management before.
Not that I fault them for not thinking about it, given how they're still wrapping their head around magic being a thing, but it's one of those things where you just want to be able to reach into your screen and drop a note.
I believe the storm is addressed 'To Whom It May Concern. This Means YOU!' Hopefully they can do more than bend over, place head between knees, and kiss butt goodbye.
Another fine chapter, and another fine disaster for the group to deal with. And if the question of hobbits comes back up, I am going to mock the foreshadowing.
8936646
except Spitfire cant fly without a magic rich environment and even if she could, her space suite doesnt have wing sleeves. probability of using a rainboom to break up the duststorm is negligible
It would be awfully nice if this was Spitfire’s chance to do something useful. She may not know squat about medicine, but she DOES know loads about weather.
I blame Starlight.
What if you strap the pony engines to the 1st ascent stage, load a portion of the magic batteries to the descent stage, and have the pony engines fire alongside the descent stage engines during initial liftoff? Have the magic batteries strapped to the descent stage drain first. Then the descent stage can decouple when it's spent, taking the spent batteries with it, leaving a lighter 1st ascent stage with the benefit of the pony engines and full remaining batteries.
8936624
Strapping/securing everything outside like you said is absolutely a must. But I'm thinking Amicitas may actually need to be moved, or at least pointed into the wind to protect it as much as possible, especially the engine bells. There's unikely to be major structural damage, but exposing the delicate bits to what's basically going to be a sustained sand blaster would be a huge concern.
I'm actually thinking seal or move to the cave as much as they can from the Hab and depresurize it (so if part of it gets torn away it won't be so explosive, this does depend on if the Hab's structural integrity relies on internal pressure a lot though), and ride things out in the cave. I'd trust the near-concrete inner layer more than the Hab structure that's WAY past its intended lifespan and has already failed once by itself. Plus there's still a lot of permafrost and simple sand depth above to shelter it more. Plus the airlock from Amicitas in it's housing is likely a lot more structurally sound itself than any part of the Hab. And you can make the somewhat darker argument that if the cave goes they're likely all dead anyway...
8936644
Between changelings having a tendency of going feral when starved (or in the presence of abundant food, would a human city qualify?) and magic apparently being able to awaken the genius loci/machine spirits of things then letting any Equus natives reach Earth seems a very bad idea.
Just consider:
- if the machine spirit of a seemingly benign RTG, created with the innocent purpose of generating energy, screams incessantly about death, can you imagine what the machine spirit of a ICBM would scream and/or try to do?
- what would the genius loci of an old battlefield or concentration camp be like?
Actually, would the genius loci of Earth itself even tolerate the presence of xenos? Mars apparently hates all invaders.
8936635
And the speed of the MAV (during normal operation/ascent) will match Hermes roughly one hour after periapsis, so time is not a problem
8936628 *cue pegasus mentally calculating the number of pegasi required to tame and break up the storm
* cue pegasus realizing she is the only pegasus on the planet and, moreover, that she has practically zero magic here
* cue pegasus looking for the deepest hole she can find
8936644
I don't think the equation is "ponies plus our dimension equals storms." I think the equation is "planet that actively hates plus power to actually do something about it equals increasingly fucked astronauts". Which makes me curious, now, what effect magic would have on planets other than Mars or Earth (which I assume would be quite welcoming). Venus, for instance, I imagine skips straight to "instant death aura"...
The book happened to pick the one name for which I can say, "You know, I do know of one guy named Randall who worked at NASA."
Every time someone posts the comic about Opportunity, this is the one I think of as being even more relevant to this story.
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/orbital_mechanics.png
8936611 If that happens...
Spitfire, with her reputation on Earth, having to live in the cave with the rest of them.
Suddenly someone who looks an awful lot like Mitch Henderson is all over the internet again
78.media.tumblr.com/1e2d1598fd8b54b3da444279a004431b/tumblr_n4l77pyhcS1s5qyvoo2_500.gif
8936697 No clean way to disconnect the battery cables when decoupling.
8936730
8936677
8936646
I think I may have the answer to both the big problems mentioned in this chapter:
Strap the rocket engines to Spitfire!
8936732
I wouldn't bet on Earth being peaceful if empowered with magic, Gaia's vengeance and all that being taken into consideration.
8936744
Earth already has all the magic it would ever want, it being produced by life and all. Just that we never developed the proper senses/organs to interact with it.
8936715
This still hinges on the assumption that those things weren’t already there and awake. Remember that Dragonfly’s past experience with these things has all been in the presence of significant background noise. It could well be that she’s just never been able to hear them before because they were being drowned out.
Keep in mind also that Mark’s universe has magic — just extremely rarified — so it’s not only possible, but even likely that these things have always had their own geniuses/spirits and it was just that very few people could ever interact with them.
Granted, I feel this would paint Nikola Tesla in a completely new light.
8936343
Well, definitely as a PDF, when I'm completely finished. And if I can, a MIDI on Mediafire or an MP3 on Soundcloud. The only thing I'd want to put on YouTube is a polished version with full instrumentation and multiple (or at least 1 male and 1 female) singers using character voices.
8936703
I completely agree, I live in hurricane country and thus I know what it’s like to prepare for Hurricanes and thus the proper procedures must be done here. But yeah the Amicitas needs to be moved so that it’s pointed into the wind, anchoring it down would help as well as would some ballast in it’s belly. Although you can kiss it’s pretty looking paint job goodbye.
Also, I do agree that the Hab should probably be emptied and depressurized, storm will probably tear it to shreds anyway. Pathfinder needs to be moved as well, preferrably to the cave, same goes for all of the solar panels. You also need to cover the windshield for Rover Two otherwise it’s going to get sandblasted opaque and thus be unusable. Hell, depending on the thickness of that near-concrete wall, it could probably stop a two-by-four. The Water Reclaimer and Oxgenyator also needs to be moved to the cave or at the very least put inside Amicitas, my biggest concern however it the remains of the MDV, at best the thing will get mostly buried and apart from being a bitch and a half to dig out will be alright but at worst the thing gets thrown around and goes crashing through the Hab. The airlock one and the pop tents need to be moved or something similar.
you know starlight glimmer, for being a smart person you can be stupid, you need to create a magic dense environment at least once a day, meaning at that time you have magic and fireball has fire breath, get some carbon and MAKE A DAIMOND!
8936837 What for? Diamonds are brittle and flammable. The only more ideal gem for the purpose than quartz is ruby/sapphire.
8936737
My god man... Have you been reading Penalt's "Thruster" series lately to come up with that?
I can never remember the names of the stories, but I think it was an Ian M Banks one. The Very Stupid Gun. When fired at a mountain, it destroyed it, the scientists celebrated, the shot continued round the world, and hit the gun from the back, blowing it, and the scientist up.
As for not having enough engine thrust to get out of the atmosphere, theres a trick from a Motie story? Pandoras Box or something? Where crazy people use weather patterns to fly ultra advanced hyper dynamically ajustable gliders on Mars in an attmpt to exceed atmospher and go up, over Olympus Mons.
Im proposing, fire the thrusters in various locations for various durations to build a mega storm like in The Core, then Surf the planetary Typhoon hyper front like the wave in 2012?
As for how to save weight in the MAV. Take off all the front cover and use Fireball as the ablative shield? Attatch batter cables with elactic secured connectors? That way under vibration etc the connectors remain in place, but when stages are dropped, the connectors come under stage weight stressing and the elastic fails, letting things fall away? even better if the next stage engines sets fire to the elastic, burning it away as well?
8936871
still doable, just need to change the gas needed.
8936871
Ruby + Sapphire is good but Peridot + Lapis is even MORE shippable...
Lets have Chrysalis explain this to Occupant, the same way Venkat explained it to Anny. Also, keep in mind i am in no sense a writer. Just having a bit of fun.
Let's forget about the craft they plan to send, and design a hypothetical lander, Lets call it the Hug 1
Hug 1 has a simple job, Deliver food to Dragonfly,
The affection and its container has a mass of 1000 kg. You know how heavy and fragile crystallized affection can be, and she will need a lot of it on her way the that other spaceship. After attacking them she can no longer rely on her crew to feed her. We can only hope those nurseries can produce it in time.
To do this, Hug 1 will have to use parachutes and engines, The parachutes will slow it down to 200 m/s, after which it could execute what's called a suicide burn, This is the most efficient way to slow down the craft, but without any margin for error. Instead, Lets include a small margin for error. I’d want enough fuel for roughly 10 seconds of basically hovering to put it down gently.
Now, let us estimate numbers for the engine, and assume we could scale it linearly. Of course would they use add multiple engine, but that would not make nice numbers.
Specific impulse: 450 s This is the most efficient human engines get, I don't know if they can produce small engines that efficient, but I hope so. (Authors note; we do not. Smaller engines are less efficient.)
Weight 0 kg
Yes, lets ignore its weight, at least initially. It is tiny compared to the fuel and to the cargo. I don't know how they do it.
Here is a small graph showing fuel mass to engine T/W
Up to 1,38 It can not be done, You'd have more fuel then the engine is capable of slowing down. Martian gravity will take the craft,
at 1,4 T/W, you need to burn for 227 seconds and bring use 280 kg of fuel. 5,2
At 1,5 You only need to bring 185 kg of fuel, and burn for 145 seconds
At 1,6 you bring 160 kg of fuel, and burn for 110 seconds
As you can see in the graph, The gains are a lot smaller once we get to a ratio of about 2,5
preview.ibb.co/fuGw1T/TW_ratios.png
And that is why they need such a big engine.
Next time ask one of the minotaurs to check your numbers before you make a fool out of our hive.
8936330
I did not know that... guess I can file that one under TIL
Is it just me, or is anyone else experiencing a sensation of impending doom?
8937085
Well, there is another MAV on mars. We all know what storms like this to do to MAV's.
8936607
- Mars
8936874 Sorry, can't say I've read that one. But we have a pegasus in need of thrust, and thrusters in need of something to be thrusted. So, Spitfire the rocketpony launching herself into a cyclone, here we go?
john carter, i really liked that movie. shame it didn't get much positivity.
So.
Are we looking for Artemis style hardening?
That would be dope.
8937208
The one where Disney did the usual 'No! We think it should be like THIS!' thing and mutated the plot of the first three books together?
8936735
Excuse me for asking again.
Does explosion count as decoupling? Most of the ship and probably the crew wil still be going upwards.
Alive.
Probably.
My guess:
Storm is unnatural, because it's magical. Sol 6 storm was caused by the magic burst of the sparkle drive, this storm is caused by the sparkle drive tests. (I don't remember if ponies actually arrived on sol6 or later, but that's what I'm going for)