Blue Star.
I will not sleep tonight.
Tonight, regardless of age or gender, all of humanity is concerned about the same person.
Their Mars boy is in trouble, that much is obvious. A man has been abandoned in the Martian desert, far from any village or town. He can't go forward to "Peace Station," and he can't go back to "Bird's Nest."
And so it got stuck in the middle.
What could he do?
This is a question many people are pondering. After the one-hour live stream ended, humans were unable to obtain any information about Zhang Fan, and it remains to be seen how the Mars boy will spend his night.
People spontaneously started coming up with ideas, even if these ideas couldn't be sent to Mars, they hoped to find a possibility, just a possibility.
Qiongzhou Island, Wenchang Temporary Center.
A group of researchers and technicians were gathered there.
"Is it possible to climb down into the rift valley? Maybe the rover wasn't damaged that badly," someone suggested.
"Are you trying to kill him already? Let's not even talk about whether the rover is still around. Based on our analysis of the images we've obtained, the rover crashed at a depth of over 300 meters. How did it get down there? And how did it get back up? The geological structure of the rift valley formed by the earthquake is extremely unstable. Going in there would mean being buried alive in no time."
The first hypothesis was quickly rejected.
"Is it okay to travel at night without turning on the heating? Maybe it won't be so cold if we keep moving around..."
"Then you can try wearing a spacesuit to my hometown in Northeast China. It only gets -30°C at night in winter there. I guarantee you won't feel cold for long either—dead people don't feel cold."
"Well……"
The second option was also rejected.
"Could we build a shelter? We don't have high requirements, just something that keeps us warm."
"How are we supposed to build it? Call Bear Grylls or Ed Stafford? Do you think this is Earth? Are we doing wilderness survival or starting a fire on Mars?"
"Uh, I mean, as long as there's a way to keep the spacesuits from having their heating on, the electricity can last until the next morning."
"And then what? The next day you'll still need to find a place to charge your spacesuit. Do you think you're on Earth? Scanning a QR code to borrow a portable power bank?"
The person who proposed the hypothesis has been rendered speechless by the criticism, and the third option has also been rejected.
After much discussion, everyone discovered a common dilemma: regardless of the solution, the prerequisite of charging the spacesuit remained the same.
But where are you going to find a place to charge your phone in the Martian wilderness? This is an intractable problem.
It was already late at night, and the research and technical personnel at the temporary center still couldn't come up with a theoretically feasible solution.
The atmosphere inside grew increasingly silent, and they increasingly felt that Zhang Fan might have already turned into an ice sculpture in the Martian wilderness...
Mars.
About 80 kilometers south of Mount Olympus, a small, silvery-white dot is getting closer.
Zhang Fan glanced at the arm monitor. It was 6 p.m., and the spacesuit's power supply could last for another 14 hours without the heating system. If the heating system was turned on, the power would run out within 6 hours.
They won't make it to sunrise tomorrow.
Zhang Fan deviated from the original route and headed along "Sailor Valley".
The Mars rover is gone, so there's no need to continue along the original route. Some places that the Mars rover couldn't pass through can be traversed on foot, which will shorten the distance to "Mercy Station" by a tiny bit, really just a tiny bit.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, a chill began to creep in. Zhang Fan quickened his pace, knowing that only by moving around could he warm up. He dared not turn on the heating yet.
Zhang Fan turned on the spotlight on his spacesuit helmet, stood still, turned around, and looked around.
"It should be nearby, why can't I see it?"
Zhang Fan muttered to himself, opened the map on the arm monitor and looked at it again, confirming that the coordinates were correct and that it was the place he was standing now.
Wilderness survival essentials: shelter, fire, and water.
Zhang Fan needed to find shelter for the night and make a fire to keep warm so he could survive the cold Martian night. Water could wait; he wouldn't die of thirst even if he didn't drink for a day.
There's no way to build a shelter on Mars. A shelter made of rocks would be no different from an icebox. Mars has no oxygen, so it's impossible to start a fire inside.
Zhang Fan read in his Chinese textbook when he was a child that nature is a treasure trove, it just depends on whether you have the eyes to discover it.
This applies even on Mars.
The spotlight on the spacesuit helmet illuminated a cave to the left front.
Found it.
Zhang Fan immediately walked towards the cave. Near the entrance were charred, exposed rocks, traces of volcanic lava erosion.
Zhang Fan strode deeper into the cave, where he would spend the night.
Humanity's ancestors on Earth started as cave dwellers, so it's only natural that their descendants on Mars also started as cave dwellers.
Humans are too fragile to settle directly on the Martian surface, and building a dome like the "Bird's Nest" base requires advanced technology and resources to create a comfortable and habitable environment.
Building a dome on Mars is not as simple as building a vegetable greenhouse on Earth. Besides coping with the harsh weather conditions, long-term exposure to various invisible cosmic radiations would be enough to kill humans.
The glass in the "Bird's Nest" dome is not ordinary glass; the cost of one square meter of this special glass is almost the same as the price of one square meter of a house in the city center of the capital.
In scientists' envisioned plans for human interstellar migration, the earliest settlers to Mars would ideally become "cave dwellers" underground, just like their ancestors.
The advantages of living in a cave are obvious: underground, you won't be bothered by small meteorites, various forms of radiation can't penetrate the ground, and Martian dust storms can only roar outside the cave.
Another advantage of living in caves on Mars is that the underground environment is better at retaining heat. The highest temperature on the Martian surface is only around 27°C, and it drops below 0°C at night.
Building a dome-shaped base on the Martian surface would require constructing a solar photovoltaic power plant of almost the same size as the base itself, just to maintain a habitable temperature inside the dome and meet daily needs.
Therefore, building an underground dome consumes less energy and requires fewer materials, all of which can be converted into money. However, traveling all the way to Mars to dig a hole is impractical; a more economical approach is to utilize existing caves.
Near volcanoes, large ridge-shaped lava pipe systems are often found. These lava pipes are natural channels formed by the flow of lava. Because the surface of the lava cools quickly and forms a solid shell, the interior of the lava remains hot and flowing due to the insulation effect of the surface shell, thus forming a pipe.
Lava tubes are like subways on Mars, and lava is like the trains running through them. If there were no trains running in the subway, it would become a very safe shelter.
Some lava tubes have either collapsed, filled with cooled lava, or left behind deep, cave-like passages.
Zhang Fan is currently in the latter location, having already traveled several hundred meters along the cave. This lava tube is in excellent condition, making it ideal as a settlement site on Mars.
If the entrance is sealed off and the interior is renovated and divided into different functional areas, then human immigrants arriving on Mars can practically move in with just their bags.
As you go deeper, the temperature inside the cave gradually increases. There should be other lava pipes deep inside the cave that are still flowing with magma, constantly radiating heat into the cave.
This solved the problem of keeping warm, which was a great help.
Zhang Fan stopped and leaned against a relatively flat rock to rest. The spacesuit's heating system was kept off, and the arm monitor showed that the ambient temperature was 22°C.
Very good.
Without the power consumption of the heating system, the spacesuit has enough power left to last until sunrise tomorrow.
Zhang Fan set the alarm on the monitor on his arm and then leaned against the rock to sleep.
The spacesuit comes with an environmental awareness and anomaly alarm device, so Zhang Fan doesn't have to worry about accidentally turning into a roast suckling pig while he's sleeping.
The problems of shelter and heating have been solved.
So what we need to do tomorrow is find a "portable power bank" on Mars...
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