The Martian

I can make this happen by tying off the cable to the rear of the trailer and towing with the rover. But if I tried that without digging a hole first, the trailer would just slide along the ground. I needed it to tip up. I needed a hole for the nose to fall in to.

So I dug a hole. A hole one by three meters, and one meter deep. It took me four miserable hours of hard labor, but I got it done.

I hopped in the rover and drove it downhill, dragging the trailer with me. As I’d hoped, the trailer nosed in to the hole and tipped up. From there, it fell on to its wheels with a huge plume of dust.

Then I sat for a moment, dumbstruck that my plan actually worked.

And now I’m out of daylight again. I can’t wait to get out of this fucking shadow. All I need is one day of driving toward the MAV and I’ll be away from the wall. But for now, it’s another early night.

I’ll spend tonight without the trailer to manage my life support. It may be righted, but I have no idea if the shit inside still works. The rover still has ample supplies for me.

I’ll spend the rest of the evening enjoying a potato. And by “enjoying” I mean “hating so much I want to kill people.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 501

I started the day with some Nothin’ Tea. Nothin’ Tea is easy to make. First, get some hot water, then add nothin’. I experimented with Potato Skin Tea a few weeks ago. The less said about that the better.

I ventured in to the trailer today. Not an easy task. It’s pretty cramped in there; I had to leave my EVA suit in the airlock.

The first thing I noticed was that it was really hot in there. It took me a few minutes to work out why.

The Atmospheric Regulator was still in perfect working order, but it had nothing to do. Without being connected to the rover, it no longer had my CO₂ production to deal with. The atmosphere in the trailer was perfect, why change anything?

With no regulation necessary, the air was not being pumped out to the AREC for freeze-separation. And thus it wasn’t coming back in as a liquid in need of heating.

But remember, the RTG gives off heat all the time. You can’t stop it. So the heat just built up. Eventually, things reached a balance point where the heat bled through the hull as fast as the RTG could add it. If you’re curious, that balance point was a sweltering 41°C.

I did a full diagnostic on the Regulator and Oxygenator and I’m happy to report both are working perfectly.

The RTG’s water tank was empty, which is no surprise. It was an open top, not intended to be turned upside down. The floor of the trailer has a lot of puddled water that took me quite a while to sop up with my jumpsuit. I topped the tank off with some more water from a sealed container that I’d stored in the trailer earlier. Remember, I need that water to have something for the returning air to bubble through. That’s my heating system.

But all things considered, it was good news. The critical components are working fine, and both vehicles are back on their tires.

The hoses that connected the rover and trailer were designed well, and released without breaking. I simply snapped them back in to place and the vehicles were sharing life support again.

The one remaining thing to fix was the tow hook. It was absolutely ruined. It took the full force of the crash. As I suspected, the trailer’s tow hook was unscathed. So I transferred it to the rover and reconnected the two vehicles for travel.

All told, that little fender-bender cost me 4 sols. But now I’m back in action!

Sort of.

What if I run in to another powder pit? I got lucky this time. Next time I might not get off so easy. I think this was sort of a freak accident. The problem was that one wheel was on solid ground while the other was on soft powder.

I need a way to know if the ground in front of me is safe. At least for the duration of my time on The Ramp. Once I’m in the Schiaparelli Basin proper, I can count on the normal sandy terrain I’m used to.

If I could have anything, it would be a radio to ask NASA the safe path down the Ramp. Well, if I could have anything, it would be for the green-skinned yet beautiful Queen of Mars to rescue me so she can learn more about this Earth thing called “lovemaking”.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a woman. Just sayin’.

Anyway, to ensure I don’t crash again, I’ll— Seriously… no women in like, years. I don’t ask for much. And believe me, a Botanist / Mechanical Engineer doesn’t exactly have ladies lined up at the door. But still, c’mon.

Anyway. I’ll drive slower. Like… a crawl. That should give me enough time to react if one wheel starts to sink. Also, the lower speed will give me more torque, making it less likely I lose traction.

Up till now I’ve been driving 25kph, so I’m going to cut that to 5kph. I’m still toward the top of the Ramp, but the whole thing is only 40km. I can take my time and get safely to the bottom. It should take about 8 hours.