MISSION LOG – SOL 437
Over the last couple of sols I’ve pulled out the video camera and done a ton of documentary shots of the Hab and the cave. Today I went one step farther-, or, rather, ten kilometers farther.
Without the 4.5 tons of Mars rocks we used to simulate the jumbo batteries for the test runs, and with the two Hab hydrogen batteries installed, Rover 2 has enough range to get from the Hab to Site Epsilon and Trans-Epsilon (the mountain ten klicks the other side of Site Epsilon) and back. This time I took Cherry Berry with me, partly because she hasn’t seen the valley on the other side, and partly to get her out of the cave farm for the day.
Since we had the juice, after we drove up to the Beauty Spot and took some footage, we drove a couple kilometers around the south rim. The valley is a spot where one of the gullies that criss-cross Acidalia widens and deepens for some reason. I suspect the gradual effect of the rare water seeps like the one we witnessed the first time we came here. We didn’t get to see running water today, but we still got some pretty pictures. It looks a bit like some of the flatter parts of northern Arizona.
Just making this trip, it occurred to me that we never got around to giving proper names to any of the features around the Hab. I checked with NASA, and it turns out they’ve stuck with the placeholder names given in the mission briefings.
So I discussed the matter with the aliens, and we decided to fill the gap ourselves. I mean, why not? I’ve already named a valley after Commander Lewis during the Pathfinder trip.
So, let’s go down the list of features, beginning with the five geology sites we trained for. Site Alpha was just the flat ground the Hab sits on. That already has a name, though none of us ever used it except Lewis: Fertility Base. (Acidalia means “named for Venus”, Roman goddess of love and fertility. And since I was along as a botanist, performing the first experiments with live plants on the Martian surface, some higher-up decided it rhymed with Tranquility Base. But none of us liked it, so aside from Lewis declaring Fertility Base fully operational at the end of Sol 2, we all just called it the Hab.)
Site Beta was going to be the nearest gully. The problem is that the eight gullies that run across the path between the Hab and the cave farm are pretty much interchangeable and uninteresting. So are the ones we crossed going south on the Pathfinder trip until we got into Chryse Planitia. Neither I nor the ponies feel like they deserve names, but if we don’t somebody will. So we officially name them after dwarves: Doc, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey and Tyrion, for the gullies going west to east from the Hab to Site Epsilon. If the others need naming, between the Lord of the Rings and Terry Pratchett there’s plenty of names. Just use Bombur for a really wide gully, okay?
Site Gamma is the crater behind the Hab- well, technically Site Gamma and Site Delta both. Gamma was the outside of the rim, and Delta was the dunes inside the crater proper. The crater is nothing in Martian terms- only a few hundred meters across. There are millions like it around the planet. But this one is ours, so it gets a name. The ponies have no attachment to it, so I’m calling it Martinez Crater, after our pilot who used it as a landmark on the way to sticking a perfect landing.
That leaves Site Epsilon, the old volcano where we found the crystal cave. I let the ponies have that, and they’ve decided to name it after their ship, Mount Friendship. Actually, they asked me to give it a Latin name like Acidalia. I think “friendship” in Latin is something like amicitas. So Site Epsilon, once we leave, shall forever be Mount Amicitas. The cave gets its own name: Salvation Cave, because it definitely saved our asses.
Finally, there’s the trans-Epsilon mountain. Since our name for the crest of the mountain is “the beauty spot”. I’m naming it Mt. Johannsen. The big weathered rock on the outcrop overlooking the valley is Vogel Peak, after our silent stone man from Germany. And, since it gets my naming-shit-for-my-crew task over with at one shot, the valley the Beauty Spot and Vogel Peak both overlook will be Beck Valley.
Tomorrow I’ll send in my naming requests, along with the requests for that flood channel in Ares Terra that I named for Lewis. We’ll see how many NASA and the astronomical community approve. I suspect the names for the Ares III crew won’t stick. Naming features for wives and kids works sometimes, but the bureaucrats frown on us naming stuff for ourselves. And, of course, NASA will be gun-shy about lawyers from Disney or the George R. R. Martin estate.
But if they say no to Mt. Amicitas, we’ll go to the mat for it. The ponies are strongly for it, and I’m on their side; more than anything else except the existence of that cave, friendship is the reason we survived this long. And friendship deserves a name on a map.
It deserves that at the very least.
Yes, yes it does.
See, the lawyers aren't going to have much to work on. Without further context, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey are just various emotions, and Doc and Tyrion are just random names. Tyrion Lannister is copyrighted, probably, but it's not like George Martin can just sue anyone named Tyrion currently alive.
Mark will probably get his way, because naming things is really all a big popularity contest, and who's the public more likely to side with, a bunch of no-name academic bozos in nerd labs, or the one and only man who survived on Mars and made first contact with aliens? Mark has more influence than he realises.
I think it's actually the International Astronomical Union that gets the final say on naming stuff outside Earth's atmosphere, not NASA. Though they'll sometimes go along with names used by space agencies like NASA when there's no compelling reason not to, like copyright claims.
Then again, a number of Charon's features were actually officially named after sci-fi stuff - there's Gallifrey Macula, Vulcan Planum, and Chasmas called Serenity, Macross, Nostromo, and Tardis. And don't get me started on the major craters - so maybe copyright wouldn't apply in this situation.
And maybe we can push the IAU for Mount Amicitas...
Friendship FTW. Mount Amicitas and Salvation Cave? I like it.
А будет момент когда Марк прелитит на их планету?
9121136
Names are too short to meet certain qualifying requirements for copyright (TL;DR: Something that short is incapable of being sufficiently original to qualify), but, on the other hand, you risk losing your exclusive claim to a trademark if you don't defend it adequately. (eg. "escalator" and "dry ice". See Wikipedia for more.)
That said, trademarks are restricted to a specific type of good or service, so it's possible to have a protected trademark overlapping with a generic word or another protected trademark if, in the eyes of the law, a "reasonable person" would not be at risk of confusion. That's why it's possible to have "Apple Computer Inc." despite "apple" being the name for a fruit that we've known since antiquity.)
That's right!
Friendship is magic, and NASA will have to live with it.
Mount Amicitas and Salvation Cave, I like it alot. I also like that Tyrion is now on the offical Dwarf lists.
But now I'm imagining future visitors to Salvation Cave (after Terraforming, because screw Mars. Seriously), and it's just like any other cave tour where they're pointing out the human use marks from the mining for food and batteries. And it'll be a bit weird and surreal because on the one hand: mining an unprecedented natural wonder. But on the other, it's freaking Salvation Cave. It's a site of incredible triumph and first contact and...
So yeah. I'm picturing the future here.
A mountain named friendship on a planet named for the Roman god of war. Maybe Mars will be cool with that and only try to maim them on their journey instead of trying to kill them outright.
Wait a moment - NASA included Game of Thrones into their English lessons?!
Goodbye, humanity's already less than stellar reputation... =D
Why Venus rather than Picus, god of agriculture?
Mount Friendship as named by ponies from the starship Friendship sponsored by the Princess of Friendship.
9121324
To be fair camaraderie is an odd type of friendship all on it's own, and something the old war planet might begrudgingly accept.
9121152
First, English please. Seriously.
Second, maybe. Maybe not.
В-третьих, пиши грамотно либо не пиши вовсе!
So, Mark isnt going to get the Big Book of I Dont Know, No Idea, What, and Thats Your Finger You Bloo Idiot list of place names?
Oh look, its Hillhillhill Hill.
Place names named after named places.
Watch them name something embarrassingly large after Mark at the behest of the Hermes crew in retaliation.
"Amicitas calling Baltimare"
"The ship or the mountain?"
"Damnit Watney! "
There is already a Mt. Friendship on Earth. I kinda personally familiar with it. Both my grandma and me were there
9121152
I think that it would be quite a different story.
cave, friendship is defiantly worth fighting for.
Hooray for Amicitas and bridging the language barrier! If we know exactly which mountain that is, and its coordinates, maybe we really can petition the IAU to name it that.
9121349 Because Acidalia (as in Acidalia Planitia, where they are) does NOT mean "named for Picus.:"
And now I'm imagining Tyrion Lannister in Snow White. I can't imagine things would go well for the queen...
Also, hooray for Amicitas Mons.
Hooray for Mons Amicitas and Amicitas Whinnybago.
9121111 That's a fridge-logic explanation not present in the movie. This is also known as an 'excuse'.
9121566
I find it amusing that no one knows that Amicitas is the name of the ship. Or rather, neither the humans nor the ponies know that human Latin Amicitas is the proper translation of the ship's pony Latin name.
9121566
Now I'm picturing plan C. Turning the mountain into an escape ship and using it to get back to Earth.
9121136
I hate to break to you the bad news, but I had a look at the Wikipedia article, and the names you mentioned are still informal and not approved by the IAU. The official ones have an extra column entry of the date the name was approved.
9122031
Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves. Rule of Cool, man!
9122163
No, that science is bad and they should feel bad. Its not like they ran out of CGI budget. And it's not their first film in space.
Sound in space falls under rule of cool. This doesn't come close.
9122206
The whole concept of a space bomber as seen in Star Wars: The Last Jedi doesn’t make sense. If you’re going to have an artificially intelligent slave class, a much better bet would be kamikaze stealth hyperspace missiles with droid brains for guidance and targeting. The Trade Federation came close, but didn’t carry their Vulture-class droids through to the logical conclusion.
I had the same complaint about the Battlestar Galactica reboot, though in that case the Cylons would have the benefit of resurrecting the missile “pilots” with the experience they gained from their previous missile run. But smart missiles aren’t nearly as dramatic as human(oid) crews sacrificing all to save their fellows and take out an enemy capital ship.
Like I said, Rule of Cool, man.
9122247
Well, it seemed like an atmospheric bomber to me. And yes, David vs Goliath can get a rule of cool pass.
But, they could have used the unguided bombs correctly at the very least.
It would have been just as "cool" if they had instead been heading toward the dreadnought, and have the tension be around changing course, while allowing the bombs to continue on the original course.
9122260
That I could agree with. Star Wars has a long tradition of drawing upon WWII air battles, however, and the bomber run scene has all the hallmarks of an Allied bomber deep penetration raid over occupied Europe during WWII.
9122270
Dive bombing would be fine. Any form of propulsion on those bombs would be fine. This was just lazy writing.
Assuming that they're going to continue to assign names to key locations throughout their journey to the Crater, I propose that they name the ramp into the Crater after Annie. After all, if the same thing happens here as it did in the book, the Montrose Embankment will be a site of much profanity, especially considering that they'll be so bucking close to their goal
9122316
From “Rian Johnson On The Last Jedi’s Progress, Influences, And Surprises” by Ian Freer, Empire Magazine, February 2017 (issue 332), ten months before the release of the movie:
Twelve O’Clock High is about a WWII Allied bomber squadron. Coincidence? No. Lazy writing? Not if the director wanted it that way, science be damned.
9122486
Will have to watch that movie before I have an opinion on it. However, there is nothing wrong with judging a work on its own. In space, things don't drop down. A dreadnought is not a death star. It does not have the mass to attract bombs (before fighters shoot those bombs).
Alternatively, they could have used this scene on a planet. (Could very well have worked for the distrution of the siege engine for example.)
9122031
Geez. Do you also complain when media depictions of predators roar (or shriek or w/e) at their supposed prey, giving them an unnecessary heads-up? Or when characters have clear conversations during or immediately after a gunfight, when they should be temporarily deafened? Hell, some detective shows, half the clues are lucky to exist!
9122031
Oh yeah, it's not like the artificial gravity was explicitly shown to be in effect within the bomb-bay through something like having a character fall down the ladder or anything.
9122574
In space:
The list goes on and on. If you go in expecting a Star Wars film to have "realistic" space battles grounded in hard science, you will inevitably be disappointed. They're categorized as space operas for a reason.
9123297
Personally I can give the lasers/particle-beams/plasma-bolts being visible a pass, because they are clearly a made up weapon, so they can behave however the writers wish.
And you are right about no sound in space. Excepts for explosions. The shockwave will still propagate outwards in a similar manner to a sound wave. (But not limited to the speed of sound ofc) and the impact will still be heard on the hull of your ship.
It'll be the same atoms from the explosion though, not just the energy being transferred via a pressure wave like sound in an atmosphere.
9123387
Does that imply the blast effects from an explosion in a vacuum would fall off faster than they would in an atmosphere since the shockwave isn’t limited by the speed of sound, i.e., the gas density inside the wave front drops faster?
9123442
That's an interesting question.
The total energy per unit area will still follow inverse square, it's just a geometric relationship.
But the energy profile in respect to time...
...yeah that would probably be different.
But I don't know enough about gas kinematics to speculate further.
9123297
Most of these are part of the setting now. Rule of cool is a lot more powerful when building the world rather the doing new things in an existing world. Like the cave in this very story.
Removing too much stuff from this list would make the movie not a star wars movie. That doesn't mean they get to add to it though.
9122574
To be fair, that battle was held above a planet, right? The mass of the planet would certainly be enough to attract those bombs; maybe not as quickly as it happened in the movie, but they would certainly travel down
9124806
Doubly so since they weren't in orbit (sitting still above the surface - and weren't anywhwere NEAR high enough for geostationary for any terrestrial planet). So where they were the force of gravity would probably be somewhere between 80-90% the surface gravity.
TYRION GULLEY? seriously? the ponies read lord of the rings so why didnt you name it GIMLI GULLEY!?
Because fuck you that’s why. *joke*
Hopefully they'll make one mountain the Throat of the World.