LOG ENTRY: SOL 207 (Jun. 5, 2036)
I spent the last week recovering from back problems. The pain wasn’t bad, but there aren’t any chiropractors on Mars, so I wasn’t taking chances.
I took hot baths twice a day, laid in my bunk a lot, and watched shitty ’70’s TV. I’ve already seen Lewis’s entire collection, but I didn’t have much else to do. I was reduced to watching reruns.
I got a lot of thinking done.
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.
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