The Martian

I can make everything better by having more solar panels. The 14 panels I took to Pathfinder provided the 18kwh that the batteries could store. When traveling, I stowed the panels on the roof. The trailer gives me room to store another 7 (half of its roof will be missing because of the hole I’m cutting in it).

This trip’s power needs will be driven by the Oxygenator. It all comes down to how much power I can give that greedy little fucker in a single sol. I want to minimize how often I have days with no travel. The more juice I can give the Oxygenator, the more oxygen it’ll liberate, and the longer I can go between those “air-sols.”

Let’s get greedy. Lets say I can find a home for 14 more panels instead of 7. Not sure how to do that, but let’s say I can. That would give me 38pn to work with, which would net me 5.1 sols of oxygen per air-sol. I’d only have to stop once per five sols. That’s much more reasonable.

Plus, if I can arrange battery storage for the extra power, I could drive 100km per sol! Easier said than done, though. That extra 18kwh of storage will be tough. I’ll have to take 2 of the Hab’s 9kwh fuel cells and load them on to the rover or trailer. They aren’t like the rover’s batteries; they’re not small or portable. They’re light enough, but they’re pretty big. I may have to attach them to the outside hull, and that would eat in to my solar cell storage.

100km per sol, stopping every fifth sol to reclaim oxygen. If I could pull that off, I’d get there 40 sols. That would be sweet!

In other news, It occurred to me that NASA is probably shitting bricks. They’re watching me with satellites, and haven’t seen me come out of the Hab for six days. With my back better, it was time to drop them a line.

I headed out for an EVA. This time, being very careful while lugging rocks around, I spelled out a Morse code message: “INJURED BACK. BETTER NOW. CONTINUING ROVER MODS.”

That was enough physical labor for today. I don’t want to overdo it.

Think I’ll have a bath.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 208

Today, it was time to experiment with the panels.

First, I put the Hab on low power mode: No internal lights, all nonessential systems offline, all internal heating suspended. I’d be outside most of the day anyway.

I detached 28 panels from the solar farm and dragged them to the rover. I spent four hours stacking them this way and that. The poor rover looked like the Beverly Hillbillies truck. Nothing I did worked.

The only way to get all 28 on the roof was to make stacks so high they’d fall off the first time I turned. If I lashed them together, they’d fall off as a unit. If I found a way to attach them perfectly to the rover, the rover would tip. I didn’t even bother to test. It was obvious by looking and I didn’t want to break shit.

I haven’t removed the chunk of hull from the trailer yet. Half the holes are drilled, but I’m not committed to anything. If I left it in place, I could have four stacks of seven cells. That would work fine; it’s just two rovers worth of what I did for the trip to Pathfinder.

Problem is, I need that opening. The regulator has to be in the pressurized area and it’s too big to fit in the rover. Plus which, the Oxygenator needs to be in a pressurized area while operating. I’ll only need it every 5 sols, but what would I do on that sol? No, the hole has to be there.

As it is, I’ll be able to stow 21 panels. I need homes for the other seven. There’s only one place they can go: The sides of the rover and trailer.

One of my earlier modifications was “saddlebags” draped over the rover. One side held the extra battery (stolen from what is now the trailer) while the other side was full of rocks as counterweight.

I won’t need them this time around. I can return the second battery to the trailer whence it came. In fact, it’ll save me the hassle of the mid-drive EVA I had to do every day to swap cables. When the rovers are linked up, they share resources including electricity.

I went ahead and reinstalled the trailer’s battery. It took me two hours but it’s out of the way now. I removed the saddlebags and set them aside. They may be handy down the line. If I’ve learned one thing from my stay at Club Mars, it’s that everything can be useful.

I had liberated the sides of the rover and trailer. After staring at them for a while, I had my solution.

I’ll make L-brackets that stick out from the undercarriages, with the hooks facing up. Two brackets per side to make a shelf. I could set panels on the shelves and lean them against the rover. Then I’d lash them to the hull with homemade rope.

There’ll be four “shelves” total; two on the rover and two on the trailer. If the brackets stick out far enough to accommodate two panels, I could store 8 additional panels that way. That would give me one more panel than I’d even planned for.

I’ll make those brackets and install them tomorrow. I would have done it today, but it got dark and I got lazy.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 209