My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 388

Well, this might be the longest, loudest, and most violent argument we've had since we were stranded on Mars.

All that needs to be harvested has been harvested, and we reluctantly worked together to load the hay into the trailer this afternoon. Considering that the Cave Farm has experienced so many strong winds and waves, this time it was an astonishingly large harvest - a total of 551 kilograms. In other words, the amount of food harvested today alone is enough for the ponies to eat all the way to Sri Lanka. Chiapareli, there will be a little left by solar day . However, we will end up taking more on the road, because we may need to rely on dragonflies to get some slime to help us get out of trouble.

What we are arguing about has nothing to do with this. What we are arguing about is how to maintain the atmosphere inside the cave farm.

At first, I was chatting with Starlight Glimmer about my ideas, and as we were talking, I mentioned the magic idea I had in mind. As a result, I just said that casually, and she went crazy. I guess it's because she's been a little overwhelmed recently and needs to release some of the pressure. It was obvious that she had been worrying about whether her batteries and transmitting systems were working properly recently, and she was the only one who worked a full eight hours a day, running back and forth between the cave and the living area. Anyway, no matter what the reason was, her emotions exploded in an instant, and she was so angry that she spoke in pony language almost the whole time. I could just barely make out the words "hard work," "too much," and "why me," or a bunch of similar words. The rest sounds pretty much like cherry berry on fire.

Speaking of Berry, the noise at this end quickly attracted our fearless pink commander to check out the situation. But just in the middle of explaining it to her, it was her turn to get angry again, because she cherished these cherry trees twice as much as I cherished my own lifeblood. It didn't take long for the peaceful dialogue to devolve into hysterical yowling from both sides. In the end, it was Spitfire and Dragonfly who were able to separate the two confrontations. Dragonfly was responsible for persuading Starlight, while Spitfire warned Berry that as a leader, she should pay attention to her words and deeds in front of her team members.

After that, Starlight and Berry went to opposite ends of the cave and ignored each other. Starlight was cutting hay on one side, while Berry was taking care of the cherry trees on the other side, helping them to shed their leaves. She told me that this was her attempt to give the trees some brief dormancy before we left, but she wasn't sure she could do it. But the cherry tree is a deciduous tree that grows in a cool climate, not an evergreen tree. She also said that the leaves on the tree are very tired and full of toxins, and must fall off and then grow again.

(To make a digression: We cannot use fallen leaves to make tea. Fallen cherry leaves are very toxic, because the toxins that are usually boiled out of the tea leaves during the tea making process are present in the aging, fallen and decaying leaves. Extremely high concentration. Berry’s hope is to pick some freshly grown leaves before we leave, enough for us to soak it several more times, but the premise is that the cherry tree itself cannot be harmed.)

Finally, Dragonfly got a chance to ask me for an explanation, and we chatted about it while hauling boxes of hay to the airlock for transfer to the rover. Finally, I learned that Tingting actually had a solution - install a pressure relief valve.

There are no automatic air pressure release valves installed in the habitation module or the rover. If an extremely rare situation such as overpressure of the internal environment occurs, the life support system will directly pump out part of the air and store it in the storage tank - the living cabin relies on an air conditioner and a water recovery machine, and on the rover it relies on a Small gas tank. If even this system doesn't work, there should be someone on site to manually operate the valve according to the design. Therefore, according to NASA's mission planning, there is no reason to install an automatic pressure relief valve. Moreover, there is actually a good reason against installing a pressure relief valve - it will add another hole in the surface of the pressure chamber, increasing the possibility of failure and leakage.

So obviously I wasn't going to have any spare parts here, nor the carefully calibrated sensing springs needed to build a sufficiently accurate valve from scratch. But later I learned that there was a valve of this type on the Ponyship, and that the Dragonfly had not just one, but two spare parts. Tingting doesn’t know the reason behind the double spare parts; the guess is that this may be a redundant design for safety, or it may just be that off-the-shelf parts are recycled and installed on the spacecraft. She also said that both approaches played an important role in the design of the Pony Rockets.

This automatic pressure relief valve is part of a manual system on their ship that allows the crew to conduct an EVA if the airlock is not functioning properly. If no pony is leaning against the valve, it will automatically close - unless the internal air pressure exceeds 1.2 standard atmospheres. Ding Ting flipped through the crumpled and damaged technical manual of their spaceship and found the technical parameters of this valve. The rated pressure was this high. This kind of valve is the perfect solution to my overpressure problem; I have to admit, in fact, this problem may not exist at all, but I just want to make sure there are no accidents.

However, this incident got me thinking... The backup pressure valve provided by Dragonfly solved the main problem caused by using the MAV fuel generator to transport the Martian atmosphere into the cave. Of course, don’t forget that leaving the fuel generator with the air pump running all the time will waste a lot of energy, not to mention the risk of suffocating the plants due to excess carbon dioxide. Plants also need oxygen at night when they are unable to photosynthesize.

But...yeah, I think I might have come up with a solution that does the job without any magic. All it takes is my tools, a bunch of bits and pieces of NASA equipment that don't work with anything else, and some software patches written by some smart people on Earth, and the problem can be solved.

Yes, I feel like this approach really works.

So now the question becomes, how can I explain my new idea to Starlight this time without making her angry?