My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 369

ARES 3 solar day 363

[08:13] Watney: Good morning. I have a question that I want those of you at JSC to go behind the scenes and deal with.

Two days ago, Starlight Glimmer added the launch boost enchantment to those giant batteries. If all goes well, the Big Batteries will throw three specially enchanted crystals and anything connected to them off the planet. Coupled with your lightweight transformation of the MAV and the existing engine, we should have enough thrust to rendezvous with Hermes, and also leave a large amount of fuel reserve for the second upgrade.

There's just one problem. The genius scientists over at Pony who had conceived this whole system (after Starlight gave them the idea) were going to put it to the test. And since NASA’s nature is hard to change, you must have the idea of ​​​​testing it. After all, even if you just want to use this launch system that has never been tested before to send a person to the sky, NASA engineers will have their sphincter tightened when they heard it, let alone There are six people.

We spent all day yesterday discussing possible experimental approaches. Enchantments are specific and cannot be retargeted. If we had used the enchantment made by Starlight the day before yesterday, those target crystals would have been lost. And we're not entirely sure how quickly those larger batteries will charge, but it sounds like they're slower than regular batteries, so we have no plans to use them until launch day.

So we decided to let Starlight enchant a new batch of crystals and three new targets after a few days. We would plug the new crystals into the original batteries we had on hand and have them fire something as a test. We considered setting up some additional devices that would allow us to recover the target for future testing, but the risk of the entire test vehicle crashing on top of our heads midway was too high, so we had to give up. We definitely hope to achieve escape velocity in testing. Ideally, our launch timing is when the probability of the expected launch trajectory being vertically upward is greatest, leaving the gravitational range of Mars, and then falling directly into the sun.

Our final choice was to launch the engines of one of the pony ships. Originally, the three engines were useless, and we have also measured their masses, which are accurate to within ten kilograms, so the data obtained from the test launch should be relatively accurate. As for future archaeologists who revisit the site, they will have to make do with the two remaining engines.

Having said all that, the main problem actually lies in on-orbit tracking. We can definitely pick a launch time when many Mars rovers are in nearby orbits, so that they can watch our performance within the field of view, but image tracking is not always as reliable as radio tracking. The only device we have here that can broadcast signals out of the atmosphere is the Pathfinder, and we have no plans to launch that thing. And no matter what, Pathfinder's old onboard system will definitely not be able to withstand the strong vibrations during launch.

However, we still have two remote weather monitoring stations that are functioning well and one that is partially malfunctioning. They are equipped with short-range radio transmitters. I could hack one of them so it would keep firing, and hook it up to a larger battery to provide extra current. Can we run the transmitter at overpower for a while, say five minutes, so that the orbiter can track and test the entire launch process of the aircraft based on the signal? We don't care if the transmitter burns out after that, but for the first five minutes of launch we really want to be as accurate as possible.

We have plenty of time now. The rover modification has been basically completed, and there is still almost more than a month before we really need to start formal testing and make final preparations for driving to Schiaparelli. Let us know when you have a definite answer.

[08:39] HERMES: Gee, Mark, you intergalactic slob! You've been littering everywhere on Mars, and now you're going to do it again. When you get home, Greenpeace will probably hold a banner outside your apartment to protest.

[08:46] JPL: Mark, these are great ideas. We'll split the task with some system engineers and ask them to test how much voltage the weather station radio transmitter can withstand, and also think about whether there is any way to increase the signal gain using only the tools at hand. As for the issue of tracking your test launches, I will leave it to our top star control technicians here.

After hearing the sweet voice of her boss who was five and a half levels above her from behind, Mindy Parker noticed that another guest had arrived today: "Good morning, Mindy. May I ask about my favorite satellite manager?" How is work going today?"

Mindy in front of her workstation sighed, sat up straight and turned around in her chair to face Dr. Kapol behind her. "I'm going to be crazy busy soon," she complained. "You guessed it right?"