Энди Вейр - The Martian

“Message reads: 'Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man.'”

“What?” Brendan asked. “Who the hell is Rich Purnell?”

“Flight, Telemetry,” came another voice.

“Go Telemetry,” Brendan said.

“Hermes is off-course.”

“CAPCOM, advise Hermes they’re drifting. Telemetry, get a correction vector ready-”

“Negative, Flight,” Telemetry interrupted. “It’s not drift. They adjusted course. Instrumentation uplink shows a deliberate 27.812 degree rotation.”

“What the hell?” Brendan stammered. “CAPCOM, ask them what the hell.”

“Roger Flight… message sent. Minimum reply time 3 minutes, 4 seconds.”

“Telemetry, any chance this is instrumentation failure?”

“Negative, Flight. We’re tracking them with SatCon. Observed position is consistent with the course change.”

“CAPCOM, Read your logs and see what the previous shift did. See if a massive course change was ordered and somehow nobody told us.”

“Roger, Flight.”

“Guidance, Flight.” Brendan said.

“Go Flight,” came the reply from the Guidance Controller.

“Work out how long they can stay on this course before it’s irreversible. At what point will they no longer be able to intercept Earth?”

“Working on that now, Flight.”

“And somebody find out who the hell Rich Purnell is!”

Mitch sat comfortably in Teddy’s office.

“Why’d you do it, Mitch?” Teddy demanded.

“Do what?” Mitch asked.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, you mean the Hermes mutiny?” Mitch said innocently. “You know, that’d make a good movie title. The Hermes Mutiny. Got a nice ring to it.”

“We know you did it,” Teddy said sternly. “We don’t know how, but we know you sent them the maneuver.”

“I suppose you have proof, then?”

Teddy glared. “No. Not yet, but we’re working on it.”

“Really?” Mitch said. “Is that really the best use of our time? I mean, we have a near-Earth resupply to plan, not to mention figuring out how to get Watney to Schiaparelli. We’ve got a lot on our plates.”

“You’re damn right we have a lot on our plates!” Teddy fumed. “After your little stunt, we’re committed to this thing.”

“ Alleged stunt,” Mitch said. “I suppose Annie will tell the media we decided to try this risky maneuver? And she’ll leave out the mutiny part?”

“Of course,” Teddy said. “Otherwise we’d look like idiots.”

“Guess that’s me off the hook then!” Mitch smiled. “Can’t fire me for enacting NASA policy. Allegedly enacting it, that is. I guess Lewis is off the hook, too. And maybe Watney gets to live. Happy endings all around!”

“You may have killed the whole crew,” Teddy countered. “Ever think of that?”

“ Whomever gave them the maneuver,” Mitch said, “only passed along information. Lewis made the decision to act on it. If she let emotion cloud her judgment, she’d be a shitty commander. And she’s not a shitty commander.”

“If I can ever prove it was you, I’ll find a way to fire you for it.” Teddy warned.

“Sure,” Mitch shrugged. “But if I wasn’t willing to take risks to save lives, I’d…” He thought for a moment. “Well, I guess I’d be you.”

Holy shit!

They’re coming back for me!

I don’t even know how to react. I’m choked up!

And I’ve got a shitloadof work to do before I catch that bus home.

They can’t orbit. If I’m not in space when they pass by, all they can do is wave.

I have to get to Ares-4’s MAV. Even NASA accepts that. And when the nannies at NASA recommend a 3200km overland drive, you know you’re trouble.

Schiaparelli Crater here I come!

Well… not right away. I still have to do the aforementioned shitload of work.

My trip to Pathfinder was a quick jaunt compared to the epic journey that’s coming up. I got away with a lot of shortcuts because I only had to survive 18 sols. This time, things are different.

I averaged 80km/sol on my way to Pathfinder. If I do that well toward Schiaparelli it’ll take 40 sols. Call it 50 to be safe.

But there’s more to it than just travel. Once I get there, I’ll need to set up camp and do a bunch of MAV modifications. NASA estimates they’ll take 30 sols, 45 to be safe. Between the trip and the MAV mods, that’s 95 sols. Call it 100 because “95” cries out to be approximated.

So I’ll need to survive away from the Hab for 100 sols.

“What about the MAV?” I hear you ask (in my fevered imagination). “Won’t it have some supplies? Air and water at the very least?”

Nope. It’s got dick-all.

It does have air tanks, but they’re empty. An Ares mission needs lots of O2, N2 and water anyway. Why send more with the MAV? Easier to have the crew top off the MAV from the Hab. Fortunately for my crewmates, the mission plan had Martinez fill the MAV tanks on Sol 1.

The flyby is on Sol 549, so I’ll need to leave by 449. That gives me 257 sols to get my shit in gear.

Seems like a long time, doesn’t it?

In that time, I need to modify the rover to carry the Atmospheric Regulator, Oxygenator, and Water Reclaimer. I call them “The Big Three”. All three need to be in the pressurized area, but the rover isn’t big enough. All three need to be running at all times, but the rover’s batteries can’t handle that load for long.

The rover will also need to carry all my food, water, solar cells, extra battery, my tools, some spare parts, and Pathfinder. As my sole means of communication with NASA, Pathfinder gets to ride on the roof, Granny Clampett style.

I have a lot of problems to solve, but I have a lot of smart people to solve them. Pretty much the whole planet Earth.

NASA is still working on the details, but the idea is to use both rovers. One to drive around, the other to act as a trailer for all the shit I have to bring.

I’ll have to make structural changes to that trailer. And by “structural changes” I mean “cut a big hole in the hull.” Then I can move the Big Three in and use Hab canvas to loosely cover the hole. It’ll balloon out when I pressurize the rover, but it’ll hold.

How will I cut a big chunk out of a rover’s hull? I’ll let my lovely assistant Venkat Kapoor explain further:

[14:38]JPL: I’m sure you’re wondering how to cut a hole in the rover.

Our experiments show a rock sample drill can get through the hull. Wear and tear on the bit is minimal (rocks are harder than carbon composite). You can cut holes in a line, then chisel out the remaining chunks between them.

I hope you like drilling. The drill bit is 1cm wide, the holes will be 0.5cm apart, and the length of the total cut is 11.4m. That’s 760 holes. And each one takes 160 seconds to drill.

Problem: The drills weren’t designed for construction projects. They were intended for quick rock samples. The batteries only last 240 seconds. You do have two drills, but you’d still only get 3 holes done before needing to recharge. And recharging takes 41 minutes.

That’s 173 hours of work, limited to 8 EVA hours per day. That’s 21 days of drilling, and that’s just too long. All our other ideas hinge on this cut working. If it doesn’t, we need time to come up with new ones.

So we want you to wire a drill directly to Hab power.

The drill expects 28.8V and pulls 9 Amps. The only lines that can handle that are the rover recharge lines. They’re 36V, 10A max. Since you have two, we’re comfortable with you modifying one.

We’ll send you instructions on how to step down the voltage and put a new breaker in the line, but I’m sure you already know how.