Sols 402-403
MISSION LOG – SOL 402
Seventy four point three kilometers!
For any of you diligent, detail-obsessed future historians who would never skip a bunch of entries looking for the good bits, the above number is the distance traveled, according to the rover computer, from leaving the Hab this morning to when we pulled back up to the rover charging station with power levels reading 4%, three and a quarter hours later.
Sirius 5C is in the books as an unqualified success, and we’re celebrating with… goddamn hay and fucking potatoes, because that’s all we have left to celebrate with. But we’re still celebrating, because today is a major milestone.
It’s about 3200 kilometers from here to Schiaparelli. If we made seventy kilometers every sol, we’d get to the MAV in forty-six sols. Even allowing for losses of time or power due to elevation changes or obstacles, that gets us there with plenty of time to modify the MAV and make our Sol 551 rendezvous with Hermes.
To make things even better, Starlight came up with a brilliantly simple fix that will let her turn some crystals into heating elements for the cave farm. Right now, without the pony life support, the sole source of heat for the cave is the solar relay crystals… which, obviously, don’t work at night. So if you make the additional heating elements light-sensitive, they’ll run at night but not during the day, keeping temperatures in the cave more stable and preventing overnight freezing. It’s not as good as a thermostat, but it’s pretty close.
All in all, that’s two pretty nice Christmas presents.
We discussed giving each other Christmas things made out of crystals, scrap metal, etc. In the end we decided against it. We won’t be able to take much with us when we leave on Sol 551, and whichever homeworld we get to first will have much better stuff in the shops anyway. So tonight we’re settling for me teaching them all the Christmas carols I know. (They have all sorts of questions about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.) And, of course, we have the traditional holiday family dinner of fucking hay and goddamn potatoes, because, etc.
Tomorrow we’ll take the combined Whinnybago out to the cave, get production started on Starlight’s heater crystals, and then have our slumber party in the trailer. There’s no reason to wait, after all, and the cave will make just as good shelter as the Hab if something goes wrong with the life support in the trailer.
And if all goes well with that, then a couple days from now we’ll attempt Sirius 7: the full dress rehearsal. Out in a straight line as far as we can go, set up the extra solar panels for recharge, stay overnight, then back the next day. If that works, then we’re ready to roll.
To be honest, I don’t know whether I hope that it works or that something fucks up. On the one hand, I’d like the peace of mind that having everything apparently working would bring. On the other hand, I’d rather find the glitch here close to comparative safety than a thousand klicks from nowhere in the middle of Arabia Terra.
Well, whatever I’m hoping, here’s hoping it.
MISSION LOG – SOL 403
Well, fuck.
I’m writing this on a laptop in the cave. It’s close to midnight Mars time, and we’re all huddled around the pony life support unit and the RTG, both of which we uninstalled in record time when we decided to bail out of the rolling ice box.
In retrospect this was the obvious result. The RTG, by itself, is sufficient to heat the rover interior- a bit more than sufficient, since I had to rip out part of the rover’s insulation to keep from roasting. But the open interior of what remains of the pony ship is more than four times the volume of the rover interior, with a corresponding larger surface area.
And the pony ship has no insulation whatever. For reasons which I guess seemed good at the time, the ship insulation was all between the inner and outer hull layers, wrapped around the cooling system pipes and things. When we stripped off the outer hull for scrap metal, we pretty much destroyed the insulation, too. We didn’t keep very much of it. One of the largest pieces acted as the makeshift door between the farm and Tangled Hallway.
And now we’re regretting that decision, because without that insulation what’s left is a naked, highly conductive metal hull that sucks heat out of the interior. By the time we decided to bail out, we could see our breath condensing, it got that cold inside.
There’s still a heater inside the ship, but that’s for emergencies only. It draws 200 watts, and 200 watt-hours during the overnight hours, less the 100 watts of electricity the RTG produces, is still a bit more than one whole pirate-ninja every night that we won’t be using to drive on come morning. The goal is to get through the night on nothing more than the 100 watts the RTG puts out, so that the batteries stay full for the morning’s driving.
I’m already working on ideas for fixing the problem. I don’t think we can re-insulate the whole ship, and anyway we’d want to stick the insulation on the inside of the hull instead of the outside. That’s going to require a lot of work. To save on work, and to concentrate the heat into one place at night, I think we’ll focus on just insulating the habitat deck. We’ll close the pressure door to the bridge at night and shut off air circulation to the bridge and to the rover, concentrating all the heat sources into that one chamber.
It’s going to get cramped; the sleeping bags normally hang from the cabinets, because sleeping is done in zero-G. Also, all the magic batteries except the big ones are in the habitat deck for maximum recharge. Floor space is at a minimum.
Question: where do we get more insulation? What we saved isn’t even close to enough to paper the walls of the hab deck. Dragonfly has flatly refused to try spitting up insulation- and I don’t blame her. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy puking non-stop for a week or so.
We have the hab canvas from the top of the pop-tent we sliced off to provide an electrical ground for the cave farm for the Sol 247 storm. Hab canvas is a better than average insulator. It’s built to be, since it not only has to block cosmic radiation but retain heat in the Hab. But that bit of canvas would be about enough to drop like a little doily across the old docking port, which is in the top of the habitat section of the ship. The only other sources are the second pop tent and the Hab, and it’s a little early for us to cannibalize the place that’s mostly kept us alive for four hundred sols.
The other source for insulation is the Rover 1 cabin. Remember, that was removed intact from the chassis and became a permanent radio shack connecting Pathfinder with the Hab. We wear space suits on the rare occasions we go inside anyway to save on air, since the only life support remaining inside is an air tank. The problem is that it’s foam insulation, nearly impossible to remove or transport intact.
There’s one other possibility; taking whatever hay the ponies aren’t going to eat and turning that into insulation. It’s not going to smell pleasant after one hundred and fifty sols, but it might help, so it’s worth thinking about, provided there’s enough of it.
Maybe the problem will seem simpler when I wake up in the morning. Maybe all we have to do is shut air circulation down, and the RTG will be enough to keep just the habitat deck warm.
Maybe the Princess of Mars will appear, command me to be her concubine, and make the others her ladies-in-waiting.
But for now, I’m going to find a spot in the sleep-pile with the others and hope body heat keeps us comfy tonight.
MISSION LOG – SOL 403 (2)
Hi to humans. I am Spitfire. I write this because Mark is hurt. He got in way of my rear hooves when I felt something poke me in rump. I am sorry but can’t help it.
Starlight Glimmer won’t stop laugh. She says I thought it funny when happen to her on Pathfinder trip. I remember not that way.
MISSION LOG – SOL 403 (3)
Mark here. She got me right in the solar plexus. Made breathing real interesting for about half an hour. I don’t think anything’s actually ruptured, though. If I start seeing blood in my urine, then I’ll begin worrying.
It’s about three in the oh-my-god-ning. Maybe we can get through three hours of actual sleep without a jackhammer to the gut…
Stats
Page generated in 0.04 seconds
Total duration
738 users online
733,106 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Watch where you sleep, I guess?
Mark should be very glad she didn't kick lower.
A whole genuine I Told You So?! Score! A handful those and I'll have a lifetime pass of Why Doesn't Anyone Listens!
Poor Mark...
In other news though, I am now up to 23 smug points. I wonder what other items are in the shop.
9091580 Unfortunately August 5 passed in the story quite a ways back; today's chapter was Christmas and Boxing Day.
9092180 No, it was more along the lines of, "We might need the computer to do other things than just frob the switch for the Sparkle Drive."
Where is my pointless filler of the ponies talking about how raindeer in Equus aren't like that? I want pointless worldbuilding filler!
9092336 I had no ideas that would make it interesting pointless filler. None of the Equestrians have been in Rudolph's place. Cherry Berry comes closest, if Rudolph had kicked in Santa's office door and said, "Guess what? I'm going to solve all your problems for you." Which is to say, not very close.
Maybe the Princess of Mars will appear, command me to be her concubine, and make the others her ladies-in-waiting.
A very disgruntled Fireball in a poofy dress serving tea with a Kratos-tier scowl
You know, with an unlimited water supply and a few spare parts, it probably wouldn't be all that difficult to build a simple steamer pot with a heating element. It's not much, but it could change up the texture of the potatoes at least a little.
That's okay, I'm sure that Pinkie would be more than happy to set up a celebration-by-proxy. Cardboard standees would probably be involved.
thanks for the laugh!
I'm glad to note that you thought of using the hay as insulation. However, one possibility would be to make a hay mattress with hab canvas covering the hay. Then a super thick "comforter" made of hab canvas with hay filling. The human, pony, changeling, and dragon pile might suffice with momentary running of the heater when they wake. Of course any water might freeze, so this is probably a no go.
If Starlight is making magic crystals to heat the cave, can't she make magic crystals to heat the Whinnybago also/instead (while I approve of the sentimentality about the cave farm, them surviving is more important).
A second option would be to just take down the hab and use the material for insulation. They wont really need it anymore.
Adding insulation, particularly if they use the hay, is going to increase the weight they have to carry.
9092298
This maybe true, but unless NASA goes, "Hey Starlight...our CPUs are a little faster then the Sparkle Drive was designed for, you took that into account right" forgive me if I doubt nothing will go wrong when ramped up like this.
I mean even ignoring the fact that every powerful spell cast on mars proves that some sort of 'magical entropy' exists, this is not to different from putting a Begati Vayron engine into a Ford Model T (1,200 bhp compared to 20bhp) and expecting the stock standard radiator to be fine.
In fact its worse as that's not even 1000x more. Assuming a sigle core 3Ghz processer.... which it certainly isn't.. the Sparkle Drive is now casting 12,000 time more frequently then it did on the pony vessel.
Nah if Deja shows up it will be air ships and piracy along with bunch of sapient cutie marked thoats. 🤣
Also going to bed after invoking the Princess of Helium is probably what lead to the unfortunate business later 😂
Given that they're integrating the life support box into the trailer anyway; they should probably look into kludging together some kind of water radiator, hooking it up to the water ports, and having the ESA pump in hot water, like they previously did for the cave farm.
9092425
Not a bad idea with how one could just exhaust the "spent" fluid outside, but I could see the issue of punching a hole in the containment vessel being a key counter argument to that idea.
9092346
Have you seen Barsoomian dress, poofy doesn't describe it😁
9092393
This scenario seems unlikely to me. Remember that Starlight isn't programming the computer. She asked NASA to write a program to produce 250,000 pulses per second. How that program works is pretty much irrelevant to her.
Of course, we've established that they have no way of testing this in atmosphere, which means there's no way to test it prior to first use. Thus, there's all sorts of other horrible ways it could go wrong, but something as simple as "we forgot what rate you told us to pulse the drive at" seems a bit implausible.
9092393
9092298
9092474
to all of you that are seeing a problem with the CPU being faster than the drive needs to function right, and the author, I have one word for you "Ultrasound"
9092462
They don't need to punch a hole in the trailer; the life support box has two separate water feeds, which are able to be run in reverse. I was suggesting they recreate the cave heating solution, where they ran the heating loop between both water ports, using one to bring in hot water, and the other operating in reverse to remove the water, creating a completely sealed system on the Martian end.
You would think herd animals would be a little more accustomed to communal sleeping arrangements...
SUBJECT: Sparkle DriveDATA: This is the big pure crystal piece that enchanted in mana-rich environment to perform as high-frequency low-distance omnidimentional teleportation device. While active, it using mana in linked batteries to relocate itself and mass attached to it from it's current location to destination location. Because energy requred to relocation scales with distance exponentially, Sparkle Drive using series of low-distance relocations to lessen battery discharging. Fail-safe prevents relocations to solid objects, changing destination coodinates to avoid collision. Because Sparkle Drive only relocate vessel, it isn't changing it's velocity vector, that may end in collision with celestial body and Bad Day.SUMMARY: This blink-jump drive can get you everywhere, if you have sufficient battery power. However, you still need convectional engines to perform acceleration maneuvers.Well, Dragonfly certainly wont split a week worth of insulation, but surely she would be able to barf a little bit each day, isn't it?
Because, if that is possible, we could have 95% Hay + 5% Insulating goo as coagulant = Barfkrete
EDIT: Yes, I know, the ratios are actually the other way around, but I couldn't resist using the pun.
lh4.googleusercontent.com/-XIzKfL-Sysc/TXOqhXsnz_I/AAAAAAAAAMw/vdsW3JM02QY/s1600/No-Prize.jpg
9092384
I thought about this myself but I realized it probably isn't feasible. The crystal enchantments rely on magic to perform, and there will be very little of that on the rover since half the inhabitants will be walking outside in the daytime and there won't be any live plants.
Its always teh little things that get you. Insulation depends on surface layer of static air which is about one millimeter thick at most, which is why one design for liquid hydrogen tanks uses lots of thin metal layers. The metal doesnt insulate, its the non existance of metal in the thin layers between. The biggest problem with any effiicnt layering insulation, even a thin sheet has a massive effect on metal, is condensing water from the humidity between the layers. Thats why double glazed windows work while sealed, theyre dry inside.
Pity they cant use Mars low atmospheric pressure to vapour expand blobs of changeling goop into foam, would reduce teh amount needed to only a few percent otherwise and only need a couple inches? Sorry.
I...I caught up.
Glory, Glory. Now I can start tracking without having 100 Gazillion unread chapters!
Once again, Spitfire demonstrates her good aim.
One more time, and Mark will have to start calling her Deadeye. Or something along those lines.
9092756
Congratulations. I know the feeling well.
Now, welcome the boredom of only one chapter a day.
You'll get used to it.
We sleep in a great big pile,
An arrangement that makes me smile.
And Spitfire’s the sexiest of the lot,
With the poll-winning ass she’s got.
And when we sleep, with nothing between us,
I wake poking her with my Oh god, my solar plexus...
Up until last thursday, i saw this coming. The original plan was to put the farm heating system back in place right?
But then it got hot enough in there that fireball thought could get away with claiming it was to hot for him in there. So i readjusted my mental model away from that, considering the thermal inertia of such a massive object, But, after looking at the numbers, i can see where this is coming from. My guesstimates stil sit well above freezing temperature in the morning, so ponies with pony fur would be fine. Mark as well, with proper bedding. but if you make more pessimistic assumptions, sure, fear that cold.
9092393
As long as they aren't connecting the drive directly to the clock circuits of the PC (which would be incredibly stupid), the higher clock speeds are a complete non-issue. Writing a program to output a train of clock pulses of a given frequency is trivial, especially if the PC is way faster than the needed output. In fact, this sort of program is the first thing I teach kids in Arduino classes. Make an LED flash once per second (1Hz). The Arduino runs at 16 MHz so that's a 16M division essentially. Which is a way greater division than what is needed for the Sparkle drive.
I'm actually more curious about the physical interface. I'm hoping there are some general purpose digital I/O lines on these perhaps custom laptops. An old fashioned parallel port would be ideal. USB is way more complex and unless some very clever hacking of the internal controller is possible it's not really an option. Though there might be some interface modules to be scrounged from some equipment that provides a USB to general I/O interface. Such things are pretty common in lab environments. Tho Mark has been able to connect up most anything he's wanted to so that's probably taken care of.
9092547 That's not how the water heating system worked. Unlike the air system, which circulates air, the water system just dumps water- it does NOT take it back. That's a function they didn't foresee the need for. In the cave the spent hot water was used for irrigation.
Didn't think of that issue, but it does seem obvious in hindsight. As Mark noted, at least they caught it now rather than during the actual trip.
If everything fails, they can use equestrian water to compensate for lackluster insulation. They get scalding hot water for free, it cools down, and they pour it overboard. It's incredibly wasteful (think hundreds of tons of water for the trip), but it's always an option.
Make moar solar relays? Also it's a bit weird to call it "infrared and stuff" when most of solar energy is not in infrared.
RTG outputs ~1.5kW of heat.
Any problem with being too hot/too cold inside is solved by forced circulation and air conditioning (if needed) on Equestrian side (although it may be difficult to sleep with air noise).
9092924
Huh... well, i'm an idiot then; looks like Thibi is right, they'd have to put in an purge vent for a water radiator to work....
Although, that wouldn't be quite so big an issue would it? I doubt the Amacitas was going to store crew waste on board for it's mission, and it didn't have any water reclaimation systems, so one would expect that one or more purge valves where built into the ship for waste dumping. And since they won't have any farms to soak up the output from the water telegraph, they're going to need a way to jettison excess water anyways.
They could also ask the ESA to pre-heat the air supply being sent through the box at night.
Hum. I'm at 10 Smug Points.
I do believe this entitles me to grin smugly, as if I know things noone else does.
In related news, the hay insulation will be nothing but trouble in the end.
9092924
Would the suits have means of *water* disposal? Dash did have *that* talk with Rarity.
9092899
9092529
9092474
Looking back at my history, I realise that somewhere along the way it began to look like I was saying this was a major issue. Let me correct the record with a quote from my first post on this topic.
From the very start, I was aware this wasn't a problem if caught. This chain has more been a, "Well if they didn't catch it, what could happen."
While I suspect the completely untested under these condition Sparkle Drive is going to cause some issue in the inevitable launch, due to the fact that NASA cannot test it at all, I highly doubt its going to be because our Computers are to fast. Putting a counter or other timing code to decrease Sparkle Drive firings is going to be easy.
The idea that NASA wouldn't think of this is so unlikely I think its more likely that Pinkie Pie's chips don't use Binary but instead the Transistors have 13 different states and so the fundemental computer language is written in Base13, (Cause Pinkie) thus making our computers and theirs incompatible. (And lets be clear, all jokes aside, Kris isn't going to do that. The fact of that matter is that a Compatibility error is not something you can Science your way out of mid flight. And The Martian and the Maretian are both about overcoming problems.)
I will make one final comment to Wasch, although not because he is wrong, but because he is right for the wrong reason. Starlight IS doing the coding, at least on the Sparkle Drive end, as she claims to have altered both its distance per jump and cycles per jump. NASA is doing other programing on their end. But because both will be checking each others work, nothing like cycling speed should slip through.
Even if it’s just a sentence, a one off statement or a hmmmm. ANY male without sex for more than a year surrounded by intelligent creatures is going to at least go “well maybe....nah.” It could just be a throw away line like “Another year and I might go native”
Hell after like three months without warm company or “stimulating material” I would be attempting to fuck the walls.
It also depends on what the processor needs to do. if it's just provide a steady pulse a clock generator would do a better job. And i am sure there is some fancy electronics equipment in the lab, that could generate some more diverse signals.
9092756
Welcome!
9093357
Whoops! You're right, of course. Starlight will be setting up the Sparkle Drive.
9093764
I'm just waiting for the awkwardness when one goes into heat.
Yeah, funny change the Cuddlebug into a Barfbug.