The Martian

“The EagleEye 3 Saturn probe,” Bruce said. “It was scheduled to launch next month. NASA put it on hold so we can have the booster.”

“I bet the EagleEye team was pissed about that,” Norm said.

“I’m sure they were,” Bruce said. “But it’s the only booster we have that’s big enough. Which brings me to my next point: We only get one shot at this. If we fuck it up, Mark Watney dies.”

He looked around the room and let that sink in.

“We do have some things going for us,” he finally said. “We have some of the parts built for the Ares 4 presupply missions. We can steal from them, and that’ll save us some time. Also, we’re sending food, which is pretty robust. Even if there’s a reentry problem and the probe impacts at high velocity, food is still food.

“And we don’t need a precision landing. Watney can travel hundreds of kilometers if necessary. We just need to land close enough for him to reach it. This ends up being a standard tumble-land presupply. All we have to do is make it quickly. So let’s get to it.”

[08:02]JPL: We’ve spun up a project to get you food. It’s been in progress for a week or so. We can get it to you before you starve, but it’ll be tight. It’ll just be food and a radio. We can’t send an Oxygenator, Water Reclaimer, or any of that other stuff without powered descent.

[08:16]WATNEY: No complaints here! You get me the food, I’ll be a happy camper. I’ve got all Hab systems up and running again. The Water Reclaimer is working fine now that I replaced the burst hoses. As for water supply, I have 620L remaining. I started with 900L (300 to start with, 600 more from reducing hydrazine). So I lost almost 300L to sublimation. Still, with the Water Reclaimer operational again, it’s plenty.

[08:31]JPL: Good, keep us posted on any mechanical or electronic problems. By the way, the name of the probe we’re sending is “Iris”. Named after the Greek goddess who traveled the heavens with the speed of wind. She’s also the goddess of rainbows.

[08:47]WATNEY: Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.

Rich Purnell sipped coffee in the silent building. Only his cubicle illuminated the otherwise dark room. Continuing with his computations, he ran a final test on the software he’d written. It passed.

With a relieved sigh, he sank back in his chair. Checking the clock on his computer, he shook his head. 3:42am.

Being an astrodynamicist, Rich rarely had to work late. His job was to find the exact orbits and course corrections needed for any given mission. Usually, it was one of the first parts of a project; all the other steps being based on the orbit.

But this time, things were reversed. Iris needed an orbital path, and nobody knew when it would launch. A non-Hoffman Mars-transfer isn’t challenging, but it does require the exact locations of Earth and Mars.

Planets move as time goes by. A course calculated for a specific launch date will work only for that date. Even a single day’s difference would result in missing Mars entirely.

So Rich had to calculate many courses. He had a range of 25 days during which Iris might launch. He calculated one course for each.

He began an email to his boss.

Mike, he typed, Attached are the courses for Iris, in 1-day increments. We should start peer-review and vetting so they can be officially accepted. And you were right, I was here almost all night.

It wasn’t that bad. Nowhere near the pain of calculating orbits for Hermes. I know you get bored when I go in to the math, so I’ll summarize: The small, constant thrust of Hermes’s ion drives is much harder to deal with than the large point-thrusts of presupply probes.

All 25 of the courses take 414 days, and vary only slightly in thrust duration and angle.  The fuel requirement is nearly identical for the orbits and is well within the capacity of EagleEye’s booster.

It’s too bad. Earth and Mars are really badly positioned. Heck, it’s almost easier to-

He stopped typing.

Furrowing his brow, he stared in to the distance.

“Hmm.” he said.

Grabbing his coffee cup, he went to the break room for a refill.

“I know you’re all busy,” Teddy said, “so let’s make this fast. I need status on Project Iris from all departments. Venkat, let’s start with you.”

“The mission team’s ready,” Venkat said. “There was a minor turf war between the Ares-3 and Ares-4 presupply control teams. The Ares-3 guys said they should run it, cause while Watney’s on Mars, Ares-3 is still in progress. The Ares-4 team points out it’s their co-opted probe in the first place. I ended up going with Ares-3.”

“Did that upset Ares-4?” Teddy asked.

“Yeah, but they’ll get over it. They have 13 presupply missions coming up. They won’t have time to be pissy.”

“Mitch,” Teddy said to the flight controller, “What about the launch?”

“We’ve got a control room ready,” Mitch replied. “I’ll oversee the launch, then hand cruise and landing over to Venkat’s guys.”

“Media?” Teddy said, turning to Annie Montrose.