The Martian.pdf

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Chapter 1
LOG ENTRY: SOL 6
I’m pretty much fucked.
That’s my considered opinion.
Fucked.
Six days in to what should be a greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned in
to a nightmare.
I don’t even know who’l read this. I guess someone wil find it eventualy. Maybe
a hundred years from now.
For the record… I didn’t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I
did, and I can’t blame them. Maybe there’l be a day of
national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page wil say “Mark Watney is the
only human being to have died on Mars.”
And it’l be right, probably. Cause I’l surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when
everyone thinks I did.
Let’s see… where do I begin?
The Ares program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another
planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of
humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back
heroes. They got the parades and fame and love of the world.
Ares 2 did the same thing, in a different location on Mars. They got a firm
handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home.
Ares 3. Wel. That was my mission. Wel, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was
in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actualy, I
was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be “in command”
of the mission if I were the only remaining person.
What do you know? I’m in command.
I wonder if this log wil be recovered before the rest of the crew die of old age? I
presume they got back to Earth al right. Wel, guys, if you’re reading this: It
wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have
done the same thing. I don’t blame you, and I’m glad you survived.
I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for any layman who may be
reading this. We got to earth orbit the normal way,
through an ordinary ship to Hermes. Al the Ares missions use Hermes to get to
and from Mars. It’s realy big and cost a lot so NASA only
built one.
Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought us fuel and
supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once
everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of
heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection
orbits.
Hermes is powered by ion engines. They throw Argon out the back of the ship
realy fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing
is, it doesn't take much reactant mass, so a little Argon (and a nuclear reactor to
power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You'd be amazed
at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time.
I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I won’t. We
did have fun, but I don’t feel like reliving it right now.
Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other.
From there, we took the MDV (Mars Descent Vehicle) to the surface. The MDV
is basicaly a big can with some light thrusters and
parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the
surface without kiling any of them.
And now we come to the real trick of Mars exploration: Having al our shit there
in advance.
A total of 14 unmanned missions deposited everything we would need for
surface operations. They tried their best to land al the supply
vessels in the same general area, and did a reasonably good job. Supplies aren’t
nearly so fragile as humans and can hit the ground realy hard. But they tended to
bounce around a lot.
Naturaly, they didn’t send us to Mars until they’d confirmed al the supplies had
made it to the surface and their containers weren’t
breached. Start to finish, including supply missions, a Mars mission takes about
3 years. In fact, there were Ares 3 supplies en route to Mars while the Ares 2
crew were on their way home.
The most important piece of the advance supplies, of course, was the MAV. The
“Mars Ascent Vehicle.” That was how we would get
back to Hermes after surface operations were complete. The MAV was soft-
landed (as opposed to the baloon bounce-fest the other
supplies had). Of course, it was in constant communication with Houston, and if
there were any problems with it, we would pass by Mars
and go back to Earth without ever landing.
The MAV is pretty cool. Turns out, through a neat set of chemical reactions with
the Martian atmosphere, for every kilogram of
hydrogen you bring to Mars, you can make 13 kilograms of fuel. It’s a slow
process, though. It takes 24 months to fil the tank. That’s why they sent it long
before we got here.
You can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered the MAV was gone.

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