AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 141
ARES III SOL 141
Starlight Glimmer regarded the crystals partly wrapped in metal cubes with no love at all. What was she missing?
She’d checked the terminals. She’d checked the contacts. She’d tested the gauges. She’d found microfissures in the casings salvaged from Amicitas’s engine deck and fixed them. She’d even cast a mana-wasting spell just to make sure that the huge amethyst crystals she’d chosen for her first experiment were flawless down to the molecular level.
But the new batteries refused to charge. She’d even tried charging them directly, and so far as the battery gauges or the thaumometer could tell, she’d thrown magic into the void.
That left her where she was- draining one of the working mana batteries in order to conduct a detailed scan of the enchantment, looking for errors.
“Starlight! Cherry wants you on the comms!”
She sighed and dropped the spell. Trying to look for errors, she meant. She levitated her space helmet from the suit storage area, jammed it on her head, and activated the comm system. “Amicitas, Glimmer,” she reported.
“There you are!” Cherry said in her headphones. “We need you to tell us what these checklist items are! We keep bucking up the activation order! I’m sick and tired of this sim giving me a mission abort for a stupid main bus overvolt!”
Starlight sighed. “You could try just turning things on in the order on the checklist, Cherry.”
“We’re trying! Spitfire and I have taken turns doing this, but we keep getting switches mixed up! We need to know what we’re doing out here!”
Starlight sighed. “Cherry, I’m busy with the new batteries right now. We’re going to need them if we have another emergency like the Hab blowout or the perchlorate fire. Can you please just keep trying?”
“Starlight,” Cherry sighed with exasperation, “the worst thing about failing a sim due to electrical system crash is that you get more than halfway though the sim, no matter what you do, and it looks just fine until the moment it crashes!”
“Keep trying anyway,” Starlight sighed. “I’ll try to get Mark to help you. Glimmer out.” She turned off the suit comms, removed her helmet, and reactivated the scan spell. The problem had to be in the enchantment. Once a crystal was enchanted it was virtually impossible to remove the enchantment, but sometimes you could correct-
“Starlight, gimme a hand, willya?”
Starlight growled, turning the mana battery off again. ”What is it, Fireball?”
“This essay you told me to write,” Fireball grumbled. “How do you spell ‘dementors’ again?”
Starlight rubbed the side of her head with one hoof. “The book is on that same computer,” she said. “You can look it up there.”
“Oh.”
“And remember to use your verb tenses,” Starlight added. “I want to see some –eds and –ings.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the dragon grumbled.
Shaking her head, Starlight switched on the battery again, recast the scanning spell, and tried to remember where she had left off. If she was lucky there would be only one little flaw in the enchantment, possibly the same one in both-
“Hey, Starlight? Do you have a minute?” It was Mark. “Since we have enough salt for a while now, I was thinking that we’re running really low on soap, and maybe you could conjure up some potash- that’s potassium hydroxide- and-“
“ENOUGH!” Starlight switched off the battery again and hopped off the workstool. “Dragonfly, would you like to walk with me to the farm? I need to work on this somewhere that I won’t be interrupted!”
Mark looked at Dragonfly, who had trotted up at the sound of her own name. “I caught most of that,” he said, “but what’s incinerate mean?”
“AAAARGH!” Starlight shouted.
“You meant interrupted,” Dragonfly replied quietly. “I’ll show you. Just say a long sentence.”
Mark shrugged. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade,” he quoted. “We choose to go to the-“
Dragonfly shouted, “INTERRUPTED!”
Mark blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You could have just told me.”
“This was funny,” Dragonfly said, unashamed. “And the most important part of com-“
“Timing,” Mark said, grinning. He added, “We have that joke, too.”
This might have continued if Starlight hadn’t thrown Dragonfly’s suit helmet at her.
Mark ended up driving them to the cave. Starlight’s leg was still weak, her EVA suit was still patched with a wad of changeling gunk, and there were four batteries to carry the ten-kilometer distance.
Once inside, while Mark and Dragonfly wasted time on checking the water heating system for leaks, Starlight set up the two old batteries and the two new, nonfunctional batteries as close to the middle of the field as she could manage. The trickle of magic produced by the plants in the room didn’t register on the battery gauges, but it would slow the discharge a bit while she worked.
Finally, settled down with no interruptions, she tuned out the occasional chatter from the two engineers and focused on her scanning spell. Where was the enchantment… where… ah, there it was… and, as she’d expected, it was perfectly intact and correct.
So… nothing wrong with the enchantment, right? And nothing wrong with any other component. So the thing ought to work… but it didn’t.
Why not? What was the difference between the batteries she’d made here on Mars and the batteries she herself had made back in Equestria?
Her attention wavered, and the scanning spell drifted from the new batteries to one of the old.
The next thing she knew, Mark and Dragonfly were standing over her. “Are you all right?” Dragonfly asked.
Starlight tried to sit up. She lay flat on her back in one of the field rows, alfalfa rising on either side of her. Her head hurt from the feedback loop she’d mistakenly locked herself into. She could only hope the battery hadn’t taken any damage.
But it had been worth it. Because, for just an instant, she’d seen.
With help from the other two, Starlight got to her hooves and walked back over to the batteries. The old batteries hadn’t been damaged by the feedback, although the one she’d been locked with had been drained down to a meager 2% charge from its prior 10%. In a proper magical environment, she suspected, the thing would have exploded rather than just knocking her back several ponylengths. The new batteries, naturally, hadn’t been touched.
With Mark’s help she rearranged the batteries, setting the nearly-drained battery next to one of the new ones, leaving the other good battery directly behind her. Tapping this battery, she cast the scanning spell again, switching back and forth between the good-but-drained old battery and the dead new battery.
The difference was as clear as a slap in the face- or a feedback loop spell failure to the face. She had to concentrate to perceive the enchantment on the new battery. The same enchantment on the old battery, by comparison, stood out so boldly that it might as well have been physically etched into the crystal.
So, that was it. The new batteries weren’t charging because the enchantment was too weak. The greater mass of the crystal wasn’t properly attuned to its purpose. The heavy mass of rock might as well be a gemstone in a horn-ring.
But Starlight had cast the new enchantment precisely the same way she’d cast the old. The difference wasn’t her fault. The only differences were Martian crystal and Mars’s no-magic environment… and to be blunt, amethyst is amethyst no matter where it’s mined, right?
Well, if the crystal was different, there was nothing Starlight could do about it. But she could do something about the magical field, at least temporarily. But, unfortunately, not here and now. The rig she’d cobbled together to make the battery project a magic field was back in the Hab.
But… but… but…
… all she really needed was two lengths of metal, right?
“Mark?” she asked quietly. “May I borrow a wrench?”
Half an hour of explanation and cobbling later, it was done.
Mark’s tools had been designed by NASA, who had a profound interest in not having their astronauts electrocute themselves every time they tried to fix something in space, where static electrical buildup was a serious hazard. The handles of every tool he possessed were plastic or rubber.
But Mark suggested a replacement. The cave still had the scraps of hull plate metal the crew had used to clean up the mountain of perchlorate from Starlight’s little misjudgment. They’d been tossed over by the cave wall after their last use (turning soil to mix in compost) and left until wanted again. A quick trim of the edges of the improvised shovels produced makeshift aerials of equal length, which Mark fastened to the terminals of one of the mana batteries.
Starlight carefully balanced the remaining stored mana between the two batteries. One battery would hold the magic required for the spell itself, as far as Starlight could estimate. The rest of the magic would be used by the other battery, poured out to make- for a few seconds- a magic field comparable to Equestria’s.
The experiment would drain the batteries completely. They’d require over two weeks to fully recharge. But one way or another, this experiment would be worth it. Either they’d have one new battery… or they’d know for certain that the batteries they had were all there would ever be.
With this thought in mind. Starlight placed her hooves on the terminals of the battery with the magic for the spell, fixed the matrix for the enchantment in her mind, and nodded to Mark and Dragonfly. The two switched on the good batteries and scrambled back as arcs of magic energy rose from the improvised Jacolt’s ladder, arcing and sparking. The entire cave sparkled and glittered with light reflected and refracted off the crystal-studded walls. Sympathetic sparks danced around Starlight’s hooves as the other working battery tried to tap into the field.
Starlight ignored the light show, ignored the itching of raw magic power striking her hooves. She focused her mind on the target, one of the failed batteries, focusing on the weak enchantment at its core. She gathered magic from the battery under her hooves, wrapped it around her horn, and hammered the crystal with it, giving the enchantment spell everything she had to give.
There. Done.
And, since I just flopped over like a beached fish, it better be done. Hello, empty reserves. I hadn’t missed you. I got used to having spare mana in the batteries.
But, as she struggled to lift her head, she could see little sparks around the terminals of the target battery, just like the ones on the battery she’d drained.
TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS
AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit DF for responses, over.
ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.
AMICITAS: SG- Breakthrough in mana battery work. Recasting enchantment in artificially boosted magic environment produced enchantment strong enough for battery to function in low-magic environment. Over.
ESA: Good news. You’re breaking new experimental ground with enchantments. We’ve never had access to a pure null-magic environment before. Over.
AMICITAS: You can have your null-magic environment. Also my headache from draining reserves down to nil. Again. Over.
ESA: Good job, anyway. Status? Over.
AMICITAS: Emergency mana battery A and B at less than 1% charge. New battery at 2%. Too soon for precise measurements, but EMB C appears to have 40% capacity of A or B due to insufficient environmental magic during casting and interference from existing failed enchantment. Over.
ESA: Understood. Do you have a procedure planned? Over.
AMICITAS: In sixteen days the batteries should all be at or near 90%. Avoid use until then. Then, harvest several battery crystals from cave, mount them in engine battery casings, use EMB A and B for double-strength magic field, use C to cast enchantments until power exhausted. Over.
ESA: Sounds good. Don’t overwork yourself. Out.
AMICITAS: You have no idea. Out.
Noice. New batteries will make it much easier to use spells. Not to mentions Starlight can now go on a loop of waiting for the batteries to charge and then making a new batery to consistently produce new ones.
And Mark's idea regarding soap sounds cool. The soap would have no smell obviously but it would make the Ha much better.
Huh, here's hoping Starlight's magical access will be growing exponentially in the coming weeks. And also that she doesn't accidentally blow up the farm...
Hmm. Starlight the teacher. In light of the season premiere....
ah so this is like crafting new batteries in subnautica but they recharge automatically if not used she just needs to craft 15 of them and she's good as she will have A LOT of stored magic
8818923 He hasn't got any fats to mix with the potash, even if he gets some. Trying to wash with raw potash works about as well as with pure lye; say goodbye to your epidermis.
Sounds like the enchantment is more like quantum nudging, focing the materials atoms to shift slightly to create the misaligned crystal patterns required to channel the energies of magic.
Who wanted Dilithium crystals again?
Who has a sparee $10 Billion and 6 months to form a boule to the correct form?
Also, draining emergancy backups to near zero in a death enviroment aint good. Next time she has three working batteries, repeat the current performance so that she has a second low quality battery, but retains a full high quality battery. After that, then you can start making new batteries with increasing capabilities?
The question that's jumping into my mind will be whether or not, upon making additional new batteries, they'll have greater capacity than EMB C, since they would in theory be made without the presence of a failed enchantment causing interference. I guess we'll find out.
8818937
She's actually doing very well in the role.
And they keep feeding into my favorite ship, Twilight and Starlight.
You show her some tough love, Starlight.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2018/3/24/1689238__safe_screencap_starlight+glimmer_twilight+sparkle_school+daze_spoiler-colon-s08e02_alicorn_animated_hug_pony_twilight+sparkle+%28alicorn%29_un.gif
8818999
Loved the appearance of the Brain's voice actor.
The guys practically a legend.
8819010
They should have had that moment between Pinkie and Twilight while the EEC guy was present.
And it's a lost opportunity not having the guy voice a character who is trying to take over the world.
Why do I feel so comfortable seeing those finally synchronise?
Oh boy oh boy oh boy, the higher the ambient mana field gets artificially boosted, the more awake Mars will become locally!
8818975
Maybe dissolve the potash really well and only wash once a week? Could he use vegetable shortening as the fat? Can he even make vegetable shortening from potatoes and alfava?
IM GOING TO SAY THIS ONCE NO FUCKING SEASON 8 SPOILERS! you have no idea how many times i have wanted to crawl through the screen and strangle people who spoil things about episodes of my favorite shows i haven't seen yet I STILL HAVE ANOTHER 3 DAYS BEFORE SEASON 8 AIRS WHERE I AM SO KEEP IT SPOILER FREE OKAY?!! because people spoiling things give me the most intense murderous vibes
8819294
There is still no goddamn excuse for spoiling an entire season before it is aired CANT YOU SEE HOW IT SUCKS THE FUN OUT OF THE WEEKLY ANTICIPATION? JUST WAIT THE EXTRA 3 GODDAMN DAYS!!
8818975
Sodium and Potassium hydroxide absorbs CO2 from the air and it turns into carbonate. The carbonate is much less prone to burn your skin, but it is still a very good cleaning agent. You can wash your hands with concentrated potassium carbonate without suffering chemical burns, but it can still blind you if it goes into your eyes, so diluting it is a good idea.
8819341
Its still more enjoyable to go into a season blind where you know next to nothing about the arc of the season or who it will focus on it makes the surprise of each episode more enjoyable instead of "i knew about this episode 3 months ago" over tje last week anything involving mlp has become a minefield of spoilers mostly because of the goddamn info pirates(can hasbro just upgrade their security please?)
8819022
No, I believe Surströmming would be way better.
these guys think it's delicious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmu7bHj81WI
If I remember correctly, all waste stays in the Hab, so Starlight can summon the soap back from waste container (although I'm not sure if it would work with organics). "Potash" is usually K2CO3 (or other potassium salts sometimes), closest name for KOH is "caustic potash".
8819444
What will it take to get you to shut up!! You have spoiled enough already KRIS!! BURN THIS USER FROM THE COMMENTS HE HAS DEFILED THE POLICY OF SEASONS ARE BEST ENJOYED BLIND
8819444
You are wrecking season 8 for everyone now i am asking kindly this time... Please stop... Leave us alone we dont want spoilers we WANT to experience season 8 blind
8819447
Your course of action makes it clear that you have zero regard for anyone but yourself I at least have the decency to not spew spoilers everywhere(fucking pirates wrecking shit for everyone)
8819451
8819301
8819257
8819446
Chill a bit please, it is out in the usa and on the interwebs so some discussion is bound to happen
8819456
The the first two episodes are already out. So it's not really spoilers. Not are fault he has seen the OFFICIALLY released episodes yet.
8819464
the first two are out already? i thought it wasnt until the 28th for some reason... please provide a link to the first episode in its entirety no accounts needed and no mirroring and no reaction videos
8819468
Do you use Dailymotion?
i cant believe im saying this but i need someone to pirate me those two episodes as all the ones i found are those "watch the video in the description" clickbaits or just reactions where you cant hear shit where the ponies are really really quiet and the reactors are really really loud where you risk waking up the whole neighborhood just to hear the ponies
8819519
actually nevermind i already found a reactor who is quiet enough to let me hear the episode
Don't bogart that wart my friend, share it (with me). Heh heh...
Okay, did all da maths. on LN2 use for cooling:
50 000W of cooling capacity. Conservatively. Using hot water crystal at typical hot water flow rates, not at "Overengineered by twilight sparkle" rates
Counterintuitively (Depending on your intuition), applying it directly to the regolith, from above, would cool at between 99.92% - 99.97 efficiency (did the math). This due to the comparative lack of atmosphere.
15 000W of heating is caused by condensation at the top of the cave.
This is based on my best guesses at how much water is evaporates, by comparing the description of the cave farm to earth analogs. And what evaporates then will condensate again.
More if there is a lot of warm marshy ground beyond the farm.
Martian summer is also heating the regolith at this point. Did not do maths on that. Ask a geologist.
(Factors other than condensation and summer are probably too small to be significant, but if you think i am wrong tell me why.)
Id say the math looks good on this one, confirming my intuition.
However, i did run into 1 problem: as stated by mishun, this is below the triple point of nitrogen. This will result in near instant freezing of 87%, and evaporation of the rest of the nitrogen. This will not affect the math of cooling capacity, but will make application much harder. Possible solutions?
Use liquid oxygen/helium instead. (Significantly more dangerous and more expensive, but not impossibly so. But if possible we would have seen this in CSP (We still could))
Find a good way apply the solid nitrogen. (Creating solid nitrogen bricks, Magic, ...)
Apply from inside the cave. (Not nearly as darwin award indusing as kris seems to think. Take a look at the videos on youtube of people throwing this into their own faces/eyes, without safety glasses)
This is all assuming the crystals can transfer it, of course.
not going to lie that would be a pain in the ass to make new battery like that, but now with more battery it will only get easy from there.
8818923
8818975
theres an other way to make soap....... it what the romans do......... and there not going to like it one bit
Why are they making more batteries again?
8819658
for there rocket and for many other things they may need. if they have the right power they can turn rock into meds if needed to
8818975
Would probably work for Fireball, and maybe Dragonfly, though.
8819544
There would almost certainly be diminishing returns, but key placement of them, especially having them split between the farm and the hab should maximise yield in a way that wouldn't be possible from just two batteries.
I'm the only one that's gonna say it? Okay. Fireball writing an essay about why dementors are a terrible idea is HILARIOUS! Did they pick their own essay topics, or did Starlight tell everybody to write the same one?
8819630
Being facetious and saying the "warts and all" are better literature than a lot of other stories out there while making use of some old bastardized song lyrics.
8818932
It probably won't though. Depending on how magical physics works, it's possible it might not increase it at all. The batteries are charging from the magical field produced by the living creatures in the hab. Adding batteries increases the number of collection points, but it doesn't increase the amount of field to gather. For example, imagine an empty swimming pool with drain grates at the bottom. Imagine slowly refilling the pool with a garden hose. If the drain rate at the bottom matches the refill rate at the top, adding more grates doesn't make the pool drain any faster. If what they've been calling a magic field is non-directional / non-radiative and they're simply adding to a pool of magic around the hab, then adding more batteries might be very much like this. It just wouldn't make any difference once the drain rate of the existing batteries matches the production rate of the very few living creatures in the hab.
On the other hand, if it is directionally radiative rather than being a regenerating field, that would mean that they're constantly and wastefully beaming magic into space, and that the way to capture more would be to simply cover more surface area with batteries. In that case, yes, adding more batteries and therefore more surface area of collection is helpful, but they might be better off simply sleeping on the batteries, or constantly carrying them around.
8819844
It does occur to me that Mark and Co should probably plant as many crops as they are feasibly capable of supporting at one time, even if they don't actually need to. Not just for the extra food in case shit goes south, but because every plant they can cram onto Mars bumps the local magic regen up a tiny bit higher.
Though, I did just think of a question: How far away from life is magic usable in our universe? Evidently, all of the life on Earth isn't doing our heroes any good, which implies that there's some sort of radius beyond which magic stops being very useful. A sort of magical inverse-square law. Which, incidentally, means life-based magic behaves very similar to radiation, at least in this regard.
So the distance between Earth and Mars is too much. Alright. Does Luna still get a little bit of magic? Does France get magic from Hawaii? Does San Francisco get some reserves from Los Angeles? Would there be a very noticeable difference between, say, the Amazon Rainforest and the Australian Outback?
I guess one possible alternative is that gravity generally bounds magic to whatever planet it's currently contained on. Which would mean that, unless magic can decay in some fashion, Earth should be DROWNING in magic.
Or maybe magic is still magic, and it does it's own thing. I don't know.
8819595
Here is my concern with cooling the outside (which I originally thought was a great idea).
We are below the triple point of Water, so the permafrost sublimes into steam when it gets to hot, and heat is escaping the cave farm into the surrounding regolith. This means that when the ice Sublimes, it will expand (unlike normally when melting it would make it smaller).
If the heat comes from the inside of the cave and its cooled from the outside, you are going to get a heat gradient established through the wall. And anywhere that rock reaches 0C or above, you are going to have pressure build up in the rock. Given the porous nature of the rock, this will lead to one of two things.
Steam pushing open gaps in the rock, leading the a breach.
Or
The steam rising to the cooled part of the rock and then undergoing Deposition back into ice. This will shift the weight around in the roof and lead to rockfalls. It SHOULDN'T lead to a breach, (Unless the pressure behind the steam is significant enough to force enough steam into the gaps into the rock to cause the rock to expand when the ice forms again, but that seems unlikely) but it is likely to damage the crops.
Your bricks on the inside of the walls is far safer. While their is a danger period as the rocks that have already hit 0C cool down and the steam turning back into ice, once that is past, the ice should remain stable. Of course keeping the bricks cold after putting all that effort into heating up the cave is going to be difficult, BUT rock is a better heat conductor then air so it should work.
Although to be honest, I am also concerned about if the steam leaks back into the cave. The cave's air pressure is above the triple point, so it can thus form into water. This water will then leak back down through the roof. While not a MAJOR danger in and of itself, it could pick up the perchlorates in the cave roof, and move them back into the soil. And I am not sure what the LD50 of those compounds are.
"been locked with has been drained"
"been locked with had been drained"?
"he possessed was plastic or rubber"
"he possessed were plastic or rubber"?
8819658
They need mana batteries to cast spells, which can be used to make the HAB and cave farm safer and more productive.
More mana batteries means they can cast spells more often and on a larger scale.