LOG ENTRY: SOL 389 (Dec. 9, 2036)
What the fuck is in those sleeping pills!? It’s the middle of the day.
After two cups of Martian Coffee, I woke up a little. I won’t be taking another one of those pills. It’s not like I have to go to work in the morning.
Anyway, as you can tell from how not dead I am, the Hab stayed sealed overnight. The seal is solid. Ugly as hell, but solid.
Today’s task was the bedroom.
Assembling the bedroom was way easier than re-sealing the Hab. Because this time, I didn’t have to wear an EVA suit. I made the whole thing inside the Hab. Why not? It’s just canvas. I can roll it up and take it out an airlock when I’m done.
First, I did some surgery on the remaining pop tent. I needed to keep the rover-airlock connector and surrounding canvas. The rest of the canvas had to go. Why hack off most of the canvas only to replace it with more canvas? Seams.
NASA is good at making things. I am not. The dangerous part of this structure won’t be the canvas. It’ll be the seams. And I get less total seam length by not trying to use the existing pop-tent canvas.
After hacking away most of the remaining tent, I seal-stripped the two pop-tent floors together. Then I sealed the new canvas pieces in to place.
It was so much easier without the EVA suit on. So much easier!
Then I had to test it. Again, I did it in the Hab. I brought an EVA suit in to the tent with me and closed the mini-airlock door. Then I fired up the EVA suit, leaving the helmet off. I told it to bump the pressure up to 1.2 atm.
It took a little while to bring it up to par, and I had to disable some alarms on the suit. (“Hey, I’m pretty sure the helmet’s not on!”). It depleted most of the N2 tank, but was finally able to bring the pressure up.
Then I sat around and waited. I breathed, the suit regulated the air. All was well. I watched the suit readouts carefully to see if it had to replace any “lost” air. After an hour with no noticeable change, I declared the first test a success.
I rolled up the whole thing (wadded up, really) and took it out to the rover.
You know, I suit up a lot these days. I bet that’s another record I hold. A typical Martian astronaut does, what, 40 EVAs? I’ve done several hundred.
Once I brought the bedroom to the rover, I attached it to the airlock from the inside. Then I pulled the release to let it loose. I was still wearing my EVA suit, cause I’m not an idiot.
It fired out and filled in three seconds. The open airlock hatchway led directly to the bedroom, and it appeared to be holding pressure.
Just like before, I let it sit for an hour. And just like before, it worked great. Unlike the Hab canvas resealing, I got this one right on the first try. Mostly because I didn’t have to do it with a damn EVA suit on.
Originally I planned to let it sit overnight and check in the morning. But I ran in to a problem: I can’t get out if I do that. The rover only has one airlock, and the bedroom was attached to it. There was no way for me to get out without detaching the bedroom, and no way to attach and pressurize the bedroom without being inside the rover.
It’s a little scary. The first time I test the thing overnight will be with me in it. But that’ll be later. I’ve done enough today.
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