I have an interesting opportunity here. And by “opportunity” I mean Opportunity.
I got pushed so far off course, I’m actually not far from the Mars exploration rover Opportunity. It’s about 300 kilometers away. I could get there in about four sols.
Damn it’s tempting. If I could get Opportunity’s radio working, I’d be in touch with humanity again. NASA would continually tell me my exact position and best course, warn me if another storm was on its way, and generally be there watching over me.
But if I’m being honest, that’s not the real reason I’m interested. I’m sick of being on my own, damn it! Once I got Pathfinder working, I got used to talking to Earth. All that went away because I leaned a drill against the wrong table, and now I’m alone again. I could end that in just four sols.
But it’s an irrational, stupid thought. I’m only eleven sols away from the MAV. Why go out of my way to dig up another broken-ass rover to use as a makeshift radio when I’ll have a brand-new, fully functional communications system within a couple of weeks?
So, while it’s really tempting that I’m within striking range of another rover (man, we really littered this planet with them, didn’t we?), it’s not the smart move.
Besides, I’ve defiled enough future historical sites for now.
I need to put some thought into the bedroom.
Right now, I can only have it set up when I’m inside the rover. It attaches to the airlock, so I can’t get out if it’s there. During my road trip that doesn’t matter, because I have to furl it every day anyway. But once I get to the MAV, I won’t have to drive around anymore. Each decompress/recompress of the bedroom stresses the seams (I learned that lesson the hard way when the Hab blew up), so it’s best if I can find a way to leave it out.
Holy shit. I just realized I actually believe I’ll get to the MAV. See what I did there? I casually talked about what I’ll do after I get to the MAV. Like it was nothing. No big deal. I’m just going to pop over to Schiaparelli and hang with the MAV there.
Nice.
Anyway, I don’t have another airlock. I’ve got one on the rover and one on the trailer and that’s it. They’re firmly fixed in place, so it’s not like I can detach one and attach it to the bedroom.
But I can seal the bedroom entirely. I don’t even have to do any hatchet jobs on it. The airlock attachment point has a flap I can unroll and seal the opening with. Remember, I stole the airlock attachment from a pop-tent, which is an emergency feature for pressure loss while in the rover. It’d be pretty useless if it couldn’t seal itself off.
Unfortunately, as an emergency device, it was never intended to be reusable. The idea was that people seal themselves in the pop-tent, then the rest of the crew drives to wherever they are in the other rover and rescues them. The crew of the good rover detaches the pop-tent from the breached rover and reattaches it to theirs. Then they cut through the seal from their side to recover their crewmates.
To make sure this would always be an option, mission rules dictated no more than three people could be in a rover at once, and both rovers had to be fully functional or we couldn’t use either.
So here’s my brilliant plan: I won’t use the bedroom as a bedroom anymore once I get to the MAV. I’ll use it to house the oxygenator and atmospheric regulator. Then I’ll use the trailer as my bedroom. Neat, eh?
The trailer has tons of space. I put a shitload of work into making that happen. The balloon gives plenty of headroom. Not a lot of floor space, but still lots of vertical area.
Also, the bedroom has several valve apertures in its canvas. I have the Hab’s design to thank for that. The canvas I stole from it has valve apertures (triple-redundant ones, actually). NASA wanted to make sure the Hab could be refilled from the outside if necessary.
In the end, I’ll have the bedroom sealed with the oxygenator and atmospheric regulator inside. It’ll be attached to the trailer via hoses to share the same atmosphere, and I’ll run a power line through one of the hoses. The rover will serve as storage (because I won’t need to get to the driving controls anymore), and the trailer will be completely empty. Then I’ll have a permanent bedroom. I’ll even be able to use it as a workshop for whatever MAV modifications I need to do on parts that can fit through the trailer’s airlock.
Of course, if the atmospheric regulator or oxygenator have problems, I’ll need to cut into the bedroom to get to them. But I’ve been here 492 sols and they’ve worked fine the whole time, so I’ll take that risk.
I’ll be at the entrance to Schiaparelli tomorrow!
Presuming nothing goes wrong, that is. But hey, everything else has gone smoothly this mission, right? (That was sarcasm.)
Today’s an Air Day, and for once, I don’t want it. I’m so close to Schiaparelli, I can taste it. I guess it would taste like sand, mostly, but that’s not the point.
Of course, that won’t be the end of the trip. It’ll take another three sols to get from the entrance to the MAV, but hot damn! I’m almost there!
I think I can even see the rim of Schiaparelli. It’s way the hell off in the distance and it might just be my imagination. It’s 62 kilometers away, so if I’m seeing it, I’m only just barely seeing it.
Tomorrow, once I get to Entrance Crater, I’ll turn south and enter the Schiaparelli Basin via the “Entrance Ramp.” I did some back-of-the-napkin math, and the slope should be pretty safe. The elevation change from the rim to the basin is 1.5 kilometers, and the ramp is at least 45 kilometers long. That makes for a two-degree grade. No problem.
Tomorrow night, I’ll sink to an all-new low!
Lemme rephrase that….
Tomorrow night, I’ll be at rock bottom!
No, that doesn’t sound good either….
Tomorrow night, I’ll be in Giovanni Schiaparelli’s favorite hole!
Okay, I admit I’m just playing around now.
FOR MILLIONS of years, the rim of the crater had been under constant attack from wind. It eroded the rocky crest the way a river cuts through a mountain range. After eons, it finally breached the edge.
The high-pressure zone created by the wind now had an avenue to drain. The breach widened more and more with each passing millennium. As it widened, dust and sand particles carried along with the attack settled in the basin below.
Eventually, a balance point was reached. The sand had piled up high enough to be flush with the land outside the crater. It no longer built upward but outward. The slope lengthened until a new balance point was reached, one defined by the complex interactions of countless tiny particles and their ability to maintain an angled shape. Entrance Ramp had been born.
The weather brought dunes and desert terrain. Nearby crater impacts brought rocks and boulders. The shape became uneven.
Gravity did its work. The ramp compressed over time. But it did not compress evenly. Differing densities shrunk at different rates. Some areas became hard as rock while others remained as soft as talc.
While providing a small average slope into the crater, the ramp itself was rugged and bitterly uneven.
On reaching Entrance Crater, the lone inhabitant of Mars turned his vehicle toward the Schiaparelli Basin. The difficult terrain of the ramp was unexpected, but it looked no worse than other terrain he routinely navigated.
He went around the smaller dunes and carefully crested the larger ones. He took care with every turn, every rise or fall in elevation, and every boulder in his path. He thought through every course and considered all alternatives.