Dead on Mars

Chapter 15 - Sol Two, The Eagle That Lets Its Hair Down
Tang Yue sat down panting. He leaned against the airlock door and looked at the Eagle lander a hundred meters away. Above the white fairing was a painted Eagle that looked domineering.

The Eagle lander was actually a huge object, more than four stories tall. It was supported by four thick hydraulic legs, and the descent rocket had four embedded convergent-divergent nozzles. During landing, these four nozzles would spew out high-temperature compressed gases at thousands of meters a second, providing a lift of 120 tonnes. Apart from the four main nozzles, there were four smaller stabilizers to maintain the lander’s attitude.

The process of making the Eagle land safely was a tough problem. In the past, humanity had never planned for such a huge gizmo to re-enter the atmosphere—apart from the space shuttles. However, space shuttles didn’t need to land vertically. Typically, a shuttle’s re-entry module was two to three meters tall. It could hold a few people with very little weight capacity. Its structure was strong and would have its speed reduced with parachutes.

However, the Eagle couldn’t do so. It was because its weight and size were just excessive. Furthermore, Mars’s atmosphere was overly thin. At ten kilometers altitude, Mars’s atmospheric density was 0.0065 kilograms/m³. On Earth, the density at that height was 0.413 kilograms/m³, a difference of nearly 63 times.

Under such circumstances, there was no way for a parachute to provide an effective deceleration. It was completely incapable of applying drag on such a massive object. When the Eagle entered the atmosphere, its speed would be more than ten times the speed of sound. It would shriek across the sky and crash into smithereens on Mars.

This conundrum had stumped humanity for quite a while, with many suggested plans rejected.

Finally, the legendary Caltech’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) stepped forward and took the honors of solving this problem!

A bunch of JPL eggheads—the best on Earth—secluded themselves in their rooms, eating ramen for half a year while spotting disheveled hair and slippers, expending half a kilogram of waste paper before finally producing a solution. They decided to combine a parachute and a retro-rocket propulsion system to decelerate, and created all sorts of redundancies for the lander.

This group of people designed the lander with a lifting body. It was completely different from the traditional conical spaceships. It didn’t use a ballistic for entry into the atmosphere but instead engaged in gliding through the atmosphere. It glided a long distance to gradually reduce its speed.

The lander would enter the Martian atmosphere at an altitude of about 120 kilometers. At that point, its speed would reach 21,000 km/h. 90 seconds later, it would activate the Inflatable Decelerator in its belly to reduce its speed. This Inflatable Decelerator was a massive air cushion. The Eagle would sit on this huge cushion as it descended. One could imagine an Arabian flying carpet.

The Inflatable Decelerator did the first stage of the deceleration. It could reduce the speed to about 2,000 km/h. At this point, the second stage would begin by first jettisoning the Inflatable Decelerator, and at the same time, opening up a massive canopy, with a thirty-meter diameter, that acted as a parachute.

The parachute would reduce the Eagle’s speed to 300 km/h. At this point, its altitude would be several hundred meters high. The retro-rocket engines would activate and the lander would slowly land in a vertical state.

Finally, the legs would be hydraulically controlled.

Once it had safely landed on its feet, the mission would be a success!

The Eagle before Tang Yue was the final design. It looked like a spacecraft that stood erect on the ground, but it didn’t have the huge wings of a spacecraft. It looked more like a round, sleek mantou.

The white part of the Eagle, that Tang Yue was looking at, was the back. The other side—the belly—was, in fact, black. It was covered with heat protection tiles. When entering the atmosphere, the Eagle had its belly facing down as it flew, as though it was letting its hair down.

Tang Yue looked at the indicator screen on his wrist. “The temperature is –29°C. Why is it so hot?”

“Why don’t you say that again without the Radiant Armor?” Tomcat’s voice sounded in his earpiece.

“If I were Martian, I’d definitely find this temperature scorching hot.” Tang Yue even used his hand to fan himself, even though he couldn’t feel a thing with his helmet on. “I wish I could have some ice-cream on such a hot summer afternoon… Ice-cream frozen by Mars’s sandstone and perchlorate salts, infused with carbon dioxide. Ah~ Taking a bite just reminds me of my childhood.”

“What nonsense are you spouting?”

“I’m reminiscing about my childhood on Mars,” Tang Yue said as he began to hum a tune. It was the tune to Lo Ta-yu’s Childhood. “On the rocks above the meteorite crater, the cockroaches chirp for the summer. By the side of the desert is a valley, a spacecraft parked on it…”

“Why would there be cockroaches on Mars?” Tomcat was stunned.

“Mutated cockroaches,” Tang Yue replied. “Haven’t you watched Terra Formars? They are mutated cockroaches.”

“… Have you set up all the solar panels?”

“Yes.”

Tang Yue spent two hours moving the solar panels out, one by one. Finally, he unfolded them in front of the Kunlun Station. He needed to do this chore twice a day.

With great difficulty, Tang Yue got to his feet and pushed his cart, like a Martian farmhand.

Tomcat was inside the Hab arranging the materials, as it slowly circled around the Hab’s hall. Categorizing things was quite a troublesome task. Since Tang Yue had expressed his wish to split things equally, Tomcat couldn’t be biased. An adult needed 80 grams of protein, 3,500 milligrams of sodium, 3,000 milligrams of potassium, 1,000 milligrams of calcium, as well as other vitamins. To ensure a nutritional balance, Tomcat had no choice but to do detailed research.

Even though Tang Yue had requested it to be split evenly, Tomcat couldn’t take the brute force approach of splitting them equally based on mass. Mai Dong and Tang Yue’s physique and sex, as well as the work they did, was different. Therefore, it split the food based on energy expenditure.

Tang Yue pushed his cart and slowly stopped beneath the Eagle.

The lander’s landing legs were thicker than Tang Yue’s arms. Each leg had a footpad with a diameter of half a meter attached to it that was used to reduce the pressure. A weight of more than a hundred tonnes pressed down on these four legs as it stood erect and very stable.

Tang Yue used a long-handled rake to scrape the rocks around the lander. The Eagle had landed on solid ground, and beneath it was hard rock. Despite a thin layer of soil on its surface, it remained very level. It was like a natural landing and launching spot.

Tang Yue circled around the Eagle slowly and was looking up at the lander when a strange thought came to him.

“Tomcat, do you think we can sit on this thing to go up?”

It wasn’t that Tang Yue had never thought of following the lander up, but this plan had been rejected by him and Tomcat from the beginning.

“You will only die faster that way,” Tomcat said indifferently. “The space station’s holding capacity is barely enough for Miss Mai Dong alone. If you were added to the mix, the space station would crash in two years.”

“Isn’t Orion II still there?”

“Orion II is there,” Tomcat asked, “but so what?”

“Can’t we board Orion II and return?” Tang Yue asked. “I wish to see with my own eyes if Earth has really vanished or not.”

“No problem. You can definitely return.” Tomcat was very frank. “But there will be no return. No one will guide you or correct your trajectory. You might not even reach Earth’s original trajectory. And even if you do, without Earth’s gravity to capture you, you would only become large-sized garbage in empty space… Do you still wish to return?”

“Forget what I just said.”