Weir Andy - How to Write a New York Times Bestseller in Ten Easy Steps

Im pretty much fucked.

Thats my considered opinion.

Fucked.

Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and its turned into a nightmare.

I dont even know wholl read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now.

For the recordI didnt die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I cant blame them. Maybe therell be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say, Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.

And itll be right, probably. Cause Ill surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did.

Lets seewhere do I begin?

The Ares Program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back heroes. They got the parades and fame and love of the world.

Ares 2 did the same thing, in a different location on Mars. They got a firm handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home.

Ares 3. Well, that was my mission. Okay, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be in command of the mission if I were the only remaining person.

What do you know? Im in command.

I wonder if this log will be recovered before the rest of the crew die of old age. I presume they got back to Earth all right. Guys, if youre reading this: It wasnt your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have done the same thing. I dont blame you, and Im glad you survived.

I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for any layman who may be reading this. We got to Earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes. All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. Its really big and cost a lot so NASA built only one.

Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought us fuel and supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection orbits.

Hermes is powered by ion engines. They throw argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesnt take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. Youd be amazed at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time.

I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I wont. I dont feel like reliving it right now. Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other.

From there, we took the MDV (Mars descent vehicle) to the surface. The MDV is basically a big can with some light thrusters and parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing any of them.

And now we come to the real trick of Mars exploration: having all of our shit there in advance.

A total of fourteen unmanned missions deposited everything we would need for surface operations. They tried their best to land all the supply vessels in the same general area, and did a reasonably good job. Supplies arent nearly so fragile as humans and can hit the ground really hard. But they tend to bounce around a lot.

Naturally, they didnt send us to Mars until theyd confirmed that all the supplies had made it to the surface and their containers werent breached. Start to finish, including supply missions, a Mars mission takes about three years. In fact, there were Ares 3 supplies en route to Mars while the Ares 2 crew were on their way home.

The most important piece of the advance supplies, of course, was the MAV. The Mars ascent vehicle. That was how we would get back to Hermes after surface operations were complete. The MAV was soft-landed (as opposed to the balloon bounce-fest the other supplies had). Of course, it was in constant communication with Houston, and if there had been any problems with it, we would have passed by Mars and gone home without ever landing.

The MAV is pretty cool. Turns out, through a neat set of chemical reactions with the Martian atmosphere, for every kilogram of hydrogen you bring to Mars, you can make thirteen kilograms of fuel. Its a slow process, though. It takes twenty-four months to fill the tank. Thats why they sent it long before we got here.

You can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered the MAV was gone.

It was a ridiculous sequence of events that led to me almost dying, and an even more ridiculous sequence that led to me surviving.

The mission is designed to handle sandstorm gusts up to 150 kph. So Houston got understandably nervous when we got whacked with 175 kph winds. We all got in our flight space suits and huddled in the middle of the Hab, just in case it lost pressure. But the Hab wasnt the problem.

The MAV is a spaceship. It has a lot of delicate parts. It can put up with storms to a certain extent, but it cant just get sandblasted forever. After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort. Nobody wanted to stop a monthlong mission after only six days, but if the MAV took any more punishment, wed all have gotten stranded down there.