Sol 37

19032 Ti

So, the good news: I'm not dead. I've gotten everything moved around. A new set of solar panels kept the terraforming equipment running, but I couldn't get any new equipment running so I'm just letting it ride. The vegetubes were moved out, and set back up in the new compartment. After that I just opened up the airlock, and let all the air out before closing up and letting it repressurize, which took about two minutes. I've been keeping a very close eye on the CO2 for the past few hours, and it hasn't gone any higher than 900 ppm. But still, I'll have to keep checking to make sure everything is going right.

While I was waiting for Beta Base to repressurize, I was looking over the data panels and trying to see if there was a way I could jury-rig the systems to read for total CO2 amounts rather than the ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen. So far I haven't found anything, but there's gotta be something that I can do.

I wish that there was more to report, but I'm too exhausted with having taken care of all of this, and the stress of trying to work out the logistics in my head. So I'm just going to go to bed and try to be ready for more work tomorrow. No rationing tonight, a full serving of food. I deserve it after what I've been through.

Oh right, I forgot to say what the bad news was. It's that I'm still on this planet. So not much to report there either.

Sol 38

21189 Ti

Spent some more time scouting around today. This time I went north, and took a peek at those giant monolithic-looking things north of that smaller wreck north of Beta Base. It turns out that they're an unusual arrangement of slot canyons carved through a mesa. I got close and was able to scan out some more aluminum on the ground, but I don't think I have the time right now to get lost wandering around that labyrinth.

While I was out there I realized that I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be prepping for some new outposts. Right now, my main focus will be on setting up a base in the aluminum field to the east. After that, the iridium cave, and after that who knows? Maybe I'll go out further in whichever direction. I'm only just now remembering that the proximity radar had said that there was some big pinnacle-ish area west of the basin I had landed in. Man I wish I still had that working, but it crapped out after a week. What else is new.

Sol 39

22749 Ti

Gamma Base is officially up and running. It's a primitive affair compared to Beta Base, but it's got a storage chest and a crafting station. Right now the only thing I can do to acquire aluminum is just scan it off the rocks, which won't last forever until I can devise a longer-term means of procuring it, which will have to involve some form of mining rig.

The irritating thing is that I do have drills, but they're calibrated improperly. They don't get any useful form of minerals out of the rock, all they do is vaporize the silicate materials to produce atmospheric pressure, and any rocks in the way end up the same way. If I could figure out how to more properly calibrate a rig to start collecting the vaporized materials, that would be a lot more useful.

I think that right now, what I can do is head further eastwards and to the south, around one of those giant mesas that dominate this part of the planet. The more that I do to familiarize myself with Steve, the more I can do to approach this job in a way that will yield the best results. Every planet is different, after all, and the two main case studies for this as they have always been are Venus and Mars. Let's stick with Mars right now, because it's the most appropriate for the environment I'm dealing with.

Mars used to be a blue planet, billions of years ago, but when the magnetosphere died and the core solidified the solar wind blew off its atmosphere. Whatever water there was either froze in the poles or underground, and whatever was left sublimated into space. The end result was that by the time humans set foot on the planet in the early years of the 21st Century, it was a cold, frozen desert covered in radioactive dust and choked with perchlorate salts.

So the process of terraforming had to focus on three things: regenerating the atmosphere, heating the planet, and chewing up the perchlorate salts. At the time a lot of the tech was extremely primitive compared to today, and it took almost 100 years to actually get it done. Nowadays a concerted effort by a dedicated team can make a planet Earth-like in less than a year. The miracles of modern science.

I've ended up ignoring most of the sections in the manuals they sent me about Venus because Venus was a whole other beast. In that one it had to be cooled down and the atmosphere had to be made less dense. But it does help to show that terraforming generally doesn't mandate a one-size-fits-all approach, so the more that I can get a handle on this planet and its unique problems, the more that I'll be able to speed the process up with regard to this planet.

The only other thing worth talking about from today's efforts is that the light in this place is kinda weird. I don't know if it's something to do with the way light reflects off the rocks or if it's some aspect of the dust here compared to somewhere else, but it's not much of a problem when compared to everything that I have to deal with here. Just one more weird quirk on a planet full of weird quirks.