The Martian

by Andy Weir

“It’s not about the bottom line,” Annie said, prepared for the question. “It’s about a human life in immediate danger. But if you want to look at it financially, consider the value of Mark Watney’s extended mission. His prolonged mission and fight for survival are giving us more knowledge about Mars than the rest of the Ares program combined.”

In his mind, he saw the numbers, the shift juggling, the outright lies and borderline crimes he’d committed to put this mission together. It would all be worthwhile, if it worked.

Nine televisions mounted to the wall were each tuned to a different network; each network showed the launch pad. A glance at her computer showed foreign networks doing the same. The world was holding its breath.

Bruce Ng sat in the JPL cafeteria along with hundreds of engineers who had given everything they had to Iris. They watched the live feed on a projection screen. Some fidgeted, unable to find comfortable positions. Others held hands. It was 6:13 a.m. in Pasadena, yet every single employee was present. “AFLC.” “Go.” “Guidance.” “Go.”

WHEN DESIGNING Iris, JPL accounted for catastrophic landing failure. Rather than normal meal kits, most of the food was cubed protein bar material, which would still be edible even if Iris failed to deploy its tumble balloons and impacted at incredible speed. Because Iris was an unmanned mission, there was no cap on acceleration. The contents of the probe endured forces no human could survive.

The harmless shimmy, caused by a minor fuel mixture imbalance, rattled the payload. Iris, mounted firmly within the aeroshell atop the booster, held firm. The protein cubes inside Iris did not.

At the microscopic level, the protein cubes were solid food particles suspended in thick vegetable oil. The food particles compressed to less than half their original size, but the oil was barely affected at all. This changed the volume ratio of solid to liquid dramatically, which in turn made the aggregate act as a liquid. Known as “liquefaction,” this process transformed the protein cubes from a steady solid into a flowing sludge.

“OKAY, HERE we are again,” said Bruce to the assembled heads of JPL. “You’ve all heard about the Taiyang Shen, so you know our friends in China have given us one more chance. But this time, it’s going to be harder. “Taiyang Shen will be ready to launch in twenty-eight days. If it launches on time, our payload will get to Mars on Sol 624, six weeks after Watney’s expected to run out of food. NASA’s already working on ways to stretch his supply. “We made history when we finished Iris in sixty-three days. Now we have to do it in twenty-eight.”

There’s only one way to finish that fast: no landing system.” “Sorry, what?” Jack Trevor stammered.

“You heard me. No landing system. We’ll need guidance for in-flight course adjustments. But once it gets to Mars, it’s going to crash.” “That’s crazy!” Jack said. “It’ll be going an insane velocity when it hits!” “Yep,” Bruce said. “With ideal atmospheric drag, it’ll impact at three hundred meters per second.” “What good will a pulverized probe do Watney?” Jack asked. “As long as the food doesn’t burn up on the way in, Watney can eat it,” Bruce said.

“How to save Watney.” “That’s already in progress,” Venkat said. “It’s a last-ditch effort, but—” “The Taiyang Shen?” Rich snorted. “That won’t work. You can’t make a Mars probe in a month.” “We’re sure as hell going to try,” Venkat said, a note of annoyance in his voice. “Oh, sorry, am I being difficult?” Rich asked. “I’m not good with people. Sometimes I’m difficult. I wish people would just tell me. Anyway, the Taiyang Shen is critical. In fact, my idea won’t work without it. But a Mars probe? Pfft. C’mon.”

“We need to make this decision; it’s a matter of life and death.” “She’s the mission commander,” Mitch said. “Life-and-death decisions are her damn job.”

“You’re just convincing yourself the crash-lander will work so you don’t have to take a risk. You’re hanging him out to dry, you chickenshit son of a bitch!”

“According to the message,” Lewis explained, “NASA rejected the idea. They’d rather take a big risk on Watney than a small risk on all of us. Whoever snuck it into Vogel’s e-mail obviously disagreed.” “So,” Martinez said, “we’re talking about going directly against NASA’s decision?” “Yes,” Lewis confirmed, “that’s exactly what we’re talking about. If we go through with the maneuver, they’ll have to send the supply ship or we’ll die. We have the opportunity to force their hand.”

“I won’t lie,” she said. “I’d sure as hell like to. But this isn’t a normal decision. This is something NASA expressly rejected. We’re talking about mutiny. And that’s not a word I throw around lightly.”

“We’ll only do it if we all agree. And before you answer, consider the consequences. If we mess up the supply rendezvous, we die. If we mess up the Earth gravity assist, we die. “If we do everything perfectly, we add five hundred and thirty-three days to our mission. Five hundred and thirty-three days of unplanned space travel where anything could go wrong. Maintenance will be a hassle. Something might break that we can’t fix. If it’s life-critical, we die.”

“Sign me up!” Martinez smiled. “Easy, cowboy,” Lewis said. “You and I are military. There’s a good chance we’d be court-martialed when we got home. As for the rest of you...

their commander had said. “If we do this,” Vogel said, “it would be over one thousand days of space. This is enough space for a life. I do not need to return.”

“Flight, CAPCOM,” a voice said through his headset. “Go, CAPCOM,” Brendan responded. Though they were in the same room, radio protocol was observed at all times. “Unscheduled status update from Hermes.”

“Roger,” Brendan said. “Read it out.” “I … I don’t get it, Flight,” came the confused reply. “No real status, just a single sentence.” “What’s it say?” “Message reads: ‘Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man.’” “What?” Brendan asked. “Who the hell is Rich Purnell?”

“Flight, Telemetry,” another voice said. “Go, Telemetry,” Brendan said. “Hermes is off course.” “CAPCOM, advise Hermes they’re drifting. Telemetry, get a correction vector ready—” “Negative, Flight,” Telemetry interrupted. “It’s not drift. They adjusted course. Instrumentation uplink shows a deliberate 27.812-degree rotation.” “What the hell?” Brendan stammered. “CAPCOM, ask them what the hell.” “Roger, Flight

“Telemetry, any chance this is instrumentation failure?” “Negative, Flight. We’re tracking them with SatCon. Observed position is consistent with the course change.” “CAPCOM, read your logs and see what the previous shift did. See if a massive cours...

“Work out how long they can stay on this course before it’s irreversible. At what point will they no longer be able to intercept Earth?” “Working on that now, Flight.” “And somebody find out who the hell Rich Purnell is!”

“Whoever gave them the maneuver,” Mitch said, “only passed along information. Lewis made the decision to act on it. If she let emotion cloud her judgment, she’d be a shitty commander. And she’s not a shitty commander.”

If I’ve learned one thing from my stay at Club Mars, it’s that everything can be useful.

Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A space pirate!

I saved five meal packs for special occasions. I wrote their names on each one. I get to eat “Departure” the day I leave for Schiaparelli. I’ll eat “Halfway” when I reach the 1600-kilometer mark, and “Arrival” when I get there. The fourth one is “Survived Something That Should Have Killed Me” because some fucking thing will happen, I just know it. I don’t know what it’ll be, but it’ll happen. The rover will break down, or I’ll come down with fatal hemorrhoids, or I’ll run into hostile Martians, or some shit. When I do (if I live), I get to eat that meal pack. The fifth one is reserved for the day I launch. It’s labeled “Last Meal.” Maybe that’s not such a good name.

Since Sol 6 all I’ve wanted to do was get the hell out of here. Now the prospect of leaving the Hab behind scares the shit out of me.

I knew logically that nothing bad would happen in just one night, but it was a little unnerving to know I had no life support other than heaters. My life depended on some math I’d done earlier. If I dropped a sign or added two numbers wrong, I might never wake up. But I did wake up, and the main computer showed the slight rise in CO2 I had predicted. Looks like I’ll live another sol. Live Another Sol would be an awesome name for a James Bond movie.

The Hab is a shell of its former self. I’ve robbed it of all critical components and a big chunk of its canvas. I’ve looted that poor Hab for everything it could give me, and in return it’s kept me alive for a year and a half. It’s like the Giving Tree. I performed the final shutdown today. The heaters, lighting, main computer, etc. All the components I didn’t steal for the trip to Schiaparelli.

the original procedure for Sol 31 (which was supposed to be the last day of the surface mission) was to completely shut down the Hab and deflate it, because NASA didn’t want a big tent full of combustible oxygen next to the MAV when it launched. I guess I did the shutdown as an homage to the mission Ares 3 could have been. A small piece of the Sol 31 I never got to have.

Once I’d shut everything down, the interior of the Hab was eerily silent. I’d spent 449 sols listening to its heaters, vents, and fans. But now it was dead quiet. It was a creepy kind of quiet that’s hard to describe. I’ve been away from the noises of the Hab before, but always in a rover or an EVA suit, both of which have noisy machinery of their own. But now there was nothing. I never realized how utterly silent...

Technically, I entered Mawrth Vallis yesterday. But I only knew that by looking at a map. The entrance to the valley is wide enough that I couldn’t see the canyon walls in either direction. But now I’m definitely in a canyon. And the bottom is nice and flat. Exactly what I was hoping for. It’s amazing; this valley wasn’t made by a river slowly carving it away. It was made by a mega-flood in a single day. It would have been a hell of a thing to see.

Weird thought: I’m not in Acidalia Planitia anymore. I spent 457 sols there, almost a year and a half, and I’ll never go back. I wonder if I’ll be nostalgic about that later in life. If there is a “later in life,” I’ll be happy to endure a little nostalgia. But for now, I just want to go home.

So I go out every night with a homemade sextant and sight Deneb. It’s kind of silly if you think about it. I’m in my space suit on Mars and I’m navigating with sixteenth-century tools.

After Marth, I’ll be out of the Watney Triangle (yeah, I’m liking that name more and more). Then I can beeline toward Schiaparelli with impunity. There’ll still be plenty of craters in the way, but they’re comparatively small, and going around them won’t cost much time.

Progress has been great. Arabia Terra is certainly rockier than Acidalia Planitia, but nowhere near as bad as I’d feared. I’ve been able to drive over most of the rocks, and around the ones that are too big. I have 1435 kilometers left to go.

I can’t wait till I have grandchildren. “When I was younger, I had to walk to the rim of a crater. Uphill! In an EVA suit! On Mars, ya little shit! Ya hear me? Mars!”

I got up to the rim, and damn, it’s a beautiful sight. From my high vantage point, I got a stunning panorama.

I have an interesting opportunity here. And by “opportunity” I mean Opportunity. I got pushed so far off course, I’m actually not far from the Mars exploration rover Opportunity. It’s about 300 kilometers away.

Running to the spacecraft, he hugged Landing Strut B. After a few moments, he broke off the embrace to perform another round of leaping celebrations.

“Have a good flight?” Venkat asked. “I only have a passing memory of what sleep is,” Bruce said.

“The problem is the intercept velocity. The MAV is designed to get to low Mars orbit, which only requires 4.1 kps. But the Hermes flyby will be at 5.8 kps.”

“Care to summarize?” “First, we’re going to add fuel. The MAV makes its own fuel from the Martian atmosphere, but it’s limited by how much hydrogen it has. It brought enough to make 19,397 kilograms of fuel, as it was designed to do. If we can give it more hydrogen, it can make more.” “How much more?” “For every kilogram of hydrogen, it can make thirteen kilograms of fuel. Watney has five hundred and fifty liters of water. We’ll have him electrolyze it to get sixty kilograms of hydrogen.”

“The fuel plant can make seven hundred and eighty kilograms of fuel from that.” “If he electrolyzes his water, what’ll he drink?” “He only needs fifty liters for the time he has left. And a human body only borrows water. We’ll have him electrolyze ...

And what does seven hundred and eighty kilograms of fuel buy us?” Venkat asked. “It buys us 300 kilograms of payload. It’s all about fuel versus payload. The MAV’s launch weight is over 12,600 kilograms. Even with the bonus fuel, we’ll need to get that down to 7,300 kilograms. So the...

“There were some gimmes right off the bat. The design presumes five hundred kilograms of Martian soil and rock samples. Obviously we won’t do that. Also, there’s just one passenger instead of six. That saves five hundred kilograms when you consider their weight plus their suits and gear. And we can lose the other five acceleration chairs. And of course, we’ll remove all nonessential gear—the med kit, tool kit, internal harnessing, straps, and anything else that isn’t nailed down. And some stuff that is.

“We’re ditching all life support. The tanks, pumps, heaters, air lines, CO2 absorption system, even the insulation on the inner side of the hull. We don’t need it. We’ll have Watney wear his EVA suit for the whole trip.” “Won’t that make it awkward for him to use the controls?” Venkat asked. “He won’t be using them,” Bruce said. “Major Martinez will pilot the MAV remotely from Hermes. It’s already designed for remote piloting. It was remotely landed, after all.”

“Since Watney won’t be flying the ship,” Bruce continued, “he won’t need the controls. We’ll ditch the control panels and all the power and data lines that lead to them.”

“The power needs will be dramatically reduced now that life support is gone, so we’ll dump three of the five batteries and the auxiliary power system. The orbital maneuvering system has three redundant thrusters. We’ll get rid of those. Also, the secondary and tertiary comm systems can go.” “Wait, what?” Venkat said, shocked. “You’re going to have a remote-controlled ascent with no backup comm systems?” “No point,” Bruce said. “If the comm system goes out during ascent, the time it takes to reacquire will be too long to do any good. The backups don’t help us.”