Chapter 19.
In this chapter, Robert and Commander Lewis talk to each other about how they are going to dock with the Taiyang Shen, the Chinese Space Administration craft.
Venkat and Teddy fly to China to meet with the Chinese Space Administration. Guo Ming, their guide, welcomes Venkat and Teddy to China. He will be with them during their entire stay in China. The Chinese give the Americans a conference room to work in. It’s cramped, but it works.
Martinez gets to talk to his wife, and she isn’t happy that he won’t be home for another five hundred and thirty-three days since he and the crew are going back to Mars to rescue Mark Watney.
On CNN’s Mark Watney Report, Venkat Kapoor, director of the Mars Operations, talks to CNN via satellite all the way from China. They talk about why they went to China to launch the probe off, and what it’s going to do what it launches. They talk about what they will do if the probe cannot attach to Hermes, and what they can do to get the supplies into Hermes. Johanssen and her father talk to each other via video calling, and Johanssen tells her father that if the supplies don’t reach them, the rest of the crew will commit suicide, but she won’t. She was chosen by Commander Lewis to be the survivor, but even with the supplies they currently have onboard, she will only have enough food for six months; if she stretches it she can survive for nine, but it will be seventeen months before they get back to Planet Earth. She will not survive if the supply probe does not reach them. Thankfully, the Chinese and Americans successfully launch the supply probe into space. The probe successfully reaches the Hermes crew, and they successfully dock it. The supplies have arrived.
Chapter 20.
In this chapter, Mark Watney has finished the modifications on the Rovers! He finished cutting the holes in the bottom of the rover, and chiseled out 759 little chunks between the holes, and he cut one big hole in the trailer. He chiseled down the edges of that hole to make sure it wasn’t too sharp either. He uses a pop tent, which he cuts the bottom off of, which he attached to the inside of the trailer with seal-strips. He pressurizes and seals up leaks he finds and ends up with a big balloon bulging out of the trailer. This pressurized area can fit the oxygenator and atmospheric regulator inside it; but there’s a hitch: He has the put the AREC (Atmospheric regulator external component) outside. The AREC is how the regulator freeze-separates air. Watney feeds the tube through the canvas and patches the hole with spare valve patches. He makes a shelf for the AERC under the solar panel shelves. Watney finishes the work on the heat reservoir. He came up with a plan: Use the RTG to get heat, but put the RTG in a bag and put it in water. He tests it, and it works amazingly! The RTG gains a degree of heat every minute, and what’s more, it agitates the water, thus distributing the heat evenly. This will serve to keep the rover warm later during the trip to Schiaparelli. Watney plans his trip to Schiaparelli. Pathfinder was easy, but Schiaparelli will be hard. Watney has a rough satellite map of the whole planet to use for navigation. It doesn’t have everything, but he’s glad to have it anyway. Between Acidalia (where Watney is right now) and Mawrth Vallis he’ll get 1350 kilometers of relatively easy terrain. The other 1850 kilometers will be harder. More elevation gain. Watney makes a “bedroom” out of two pop tents so he can have someplace to stand up while the rover batteries are charging. He makes a lopsided dome out of the two pop-tents to use as a tent he can relax in while the rover batteries are charging. Watney has finished the prepping the rover. He is ready to go. He is leaving on Sol 449. That will give him fifty-nine Sols to make sure everything is working, decide what is going and what isn’t, and plot a route to Schiaparelli using the grainy satellite map, and think of anything important he forgot.
Chapter 21.
In this chapter, Mark Watney tries to figure out how to pack. He has two pressure vessels: The rover, and the trailer. They are connected by hoses, which can break easily. If the rover breeches, he will die. If the trailer breaches, he’ll be okay. He uses the saddlebags to store potatoes in the rover or trailer. He has to store them in either the rover or trailer, since they would rot in the warm, pressurized environment. Venkat and Mindy talk about what Mark Watney has been doing, and what patterns he is following. Also, Venkat makes Mindy’s sole job to watching everything Mark Watney does, all the time. Mark Watney also decides it’s time to test out what would happen when he takes the vital life support systems out of the HAB. He takes out the life support systems and puts them in to their places on the trailer, then he goes in and sleeps in the HAB. The next day he wakes up totally fine. The computer registers a slight spike in CO2 as expected. It looks like he gets to live another Sol. He checks the rover, and everything is A-Okay. He tries to set up the bedroom pop-tent thing, but it bursts. So Watney double patches the seams on the spare canvases and tests it again. This time it holds up just fine.
Meanwhile, Venkat, Mindy Parks, Teddy, Mitch, and Annie, as well as a man Mitch had never seen before have a sudden meeting where they talk about the developments of Mark Watney and what he’s been doing so far. The man who Mitch doesn’t know turns out to be Randall Carter, one of the Martian Meteorologists. He shows a series of storms that have been developing that will hit Watney during his trip to Schiaparelli. NASA won’t be able to track Watney’s progress until he comes out of the other side of the storms, hopefully alive.
Watney decides to test his whole rover contraption with all the life support, trailer bubble, and the bedroom all together. He packs the Rover and trailer for the test.
The crew of Hermes talks about the status of their ship, and some systems are working better than others. They think that everything is still working well enough to finish the mission.
Watney’s test have gone well. He spent 5 Sols driving in circles with the rover and the trailer, and he goes about 93 kilometers. He finds a low tech way to cook potatoes while on the road, figures out how to expand and deflate the bedroom, and tests out the oxygenator to make sure it will backlog the CO2 the regulator stored up, and it passes with flying colors.
Watney decides it’s time to leave for Schiaparelli. He cooks, freezes, and packs the potatoes so they aren’t raw during the trip, makes sure he’s got everything, and sets off.
