Log Entry: SOL 14
Remember when you had those math classes where the tests had you like figuring out rates. Wait let me reword this in a form of a class you people probably actually paid attention in. Physics. I'm hoping you all stayed awake in that class. So in Physics you get questions like, Light from the Sun reaches Earth in about 8.3 min. The speed of light is 3.00 x 10^8 m/s. What is the distance from the Sun to the Earth? Yeah I know most of you are having mental breakdowns right now just remembering this but things like this could actually save your life one day.
Physics and math are going to be a crucial part in the whole "Stanford Pines gets home to kick some ass" project. I need to calculate the calories I need to survive until I find a way to build something to escape. I'm not relying on Stanley to know how to fix the machine back home. He isn't exactly the brightest light bulb if you know what I mean. To be safe I'm going to set my survival days at 1387 sols. Oh if you didn't know sols is the word for Martian days, a day on Mars is exactly 39 minutes longer than one day on Earth. Which means I'm going to try to survive for 1425 Earth days.
That should give me enough time to make something or find another way out.
Now this is where all the major math comes into play. I need to create enough calories to survive 1387 sols and the average person needs 1500 calories a day. With the packets I have already that gives me about 400 days of food. Don't worry I won't make you guys calculate anything. I'll need 1100 per day with my crappy farming. Though since I haven't actually planted anything yet I'll need more.
Shit, this isn't good.
I don't have enough room to plant that much. The tent itself is 92 square meters and I'm currently using 62 square meters which will only give me 288 calories. Though the tent also has extra rooms to it so lets say I rip apart those rooms to create more farm land I'll then have 106 square meters. I also have the pop up extensions to put together. I was really hoping to leave those alone since we know how well tents and I get along. Though if I set those up I'll get a gran total of 126 square meters.
I can work with that.
Now I only have one problem. Water. But lets just take this one step at a time.
I have a variety of plants but the one that will give me the calories I'll need is the potatoes. Now potatoes are hard to yield and those farmers aren't in a race for survival. Will I actually be able to yield more than the average farmer? There are some good points to this since I'll have time to individually care for each spud. Once those begin to flower I can replant them deeper and plant another potato above it. I can totally do this. If everything works out I'll have 850 calories per day.
My brain hurts, I'm going to bed.
Log Entry: SOL 16
Everything hurts.
I'm not the brawn, that's Stanley, I'm the brain which is why it took me more than a whole day to shovel the dirt from outside into the newly designated farmland areas. I only got a cubic meter of soil in before I collapsed in exhaustion. Good timing too considering there's a major dust storm happening outside. After an hour break I decided to look at my potatoes. Let me tell you, I am one lucky bitch. These are whole potatoes which means they're not freeze-dried or flakes.
Now why do I have whole potatoes?
So we all know Fiddleford is pretty sentimental and since it was supposed to be over Thanksgiving we went exploring he thought it would be great to make our own mashed potatoes and have a meal. I had to talk him out of bringing the whole nine courses but now I'm wishing I hadn't because that whole turkey would've given me about a weeks worth of food.
So I cut each potato into four parts making sure each had two eyes where they would sprout. Now potatoes usually take 90 days to sprout, I don't have 90 days so I'll speed up the growth rate by changing the temperature to 25.5°C. I wait for the pieces to dry out before planting them, good luck little potatoes I'm counting on you. I'll brainstorm ideas for water tomorrow.