Die on Mars

"Run! Run! Maidong, run away—!"

The old cat roared at the top of his lungs.

The girl was stunned for a moment.

Three seconds later, there was a deafening bang, and violent vibrations spread along the bulkhead and the air. All the small fragments floating in the cabin seemed to solidify at this moment, and the air seemed to be compressed.

Time stopped for a moment.

Then they all flew out violently, and the panels and screens attached to the bulkheads cracked.

The structure of the space station emitted a sharp scream of metal twisting, and the depressurization alarm rang rapidly.

Maidong only felt that she was hit hard on the chest by a strong force. Her first feeling was that there was a car accident and the car she was riding in was rear-ended.

Her body flew out uncontrollably, tumbling in mid-air, and then was caught by the headphone cord. The headphone cord was wrapped around her arm. Maidong's body swung around like the pendulum of a clock. Hitting the control panel hard.

The space station completely lost its posture, everything in front of the girl's eyes was tumbling, she was dizzy, and the world was spinning.

There were piercing alarm sounds coming one after another, and the entire core cabin was dyed red by the alarm lights.

Maidong couldn't control her body at all, and she hit the porthole hard again.

Before falling into coma, Maidong could only see red light and thick smoke.

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A shocking alarm window was still flashing on the computer screen. Lao Mao held the earphones in his hands and stood in front of the workbench, feeling very cold in his heart.

Ruined.

It's really over now.

At the last moment, something went wrong with the Eagle spacecraft's broken computer.

According to normal docking procedures, the Eagle spacecraft will start to turn and slow down when it approaches the space station for ten kilometers. When it is five kilometers away, the relative speed will decrease to less than one hundred meters per second. When it finally enters the approach period within one hundred meters, the relative speed will decrease. The speed should be reduced to about three meters per second.

But due to the impact of propellants and storms, normal docking procedures no longer apply.

Therefore, Laomao adopts a one-time jump into orbit strategy - rapid acceleration and rapid deceleration, without decelerating and parking when passing the parking point, in order to save fuel.

But doing so would cause the lander to dock at a higher speed than normal.

According to Lao Mao’s plan, if nothing unexpected happens, when the Eagle spacecraft docks with the space station, the relative speed can be reduced to one to two meters per second, just like letting this large trailer weighing more than ten tons accelerate and drift around corners. After the passage, immediately enter the warehouse and decelerate to zero within this stage.

The previous steps had been very smooth. When the distance between the Eagle spacecraft and the space station was shortened to 300 meters, the relative speed had been reduced to ten meters per second.

If this trend continues, the lander will be able to dock with the space station perfectly.

Next, the sensors of the Eagle spacecraft were messed up.

In the approach stage, or even the closer translational approach stage, because the target aircraft and the tracking aircraft are too close and there is a delay in ground remote control, the docking control at this stage is completed independently by the spacecraft.

There are no crew members on board the Eagle spacecraft, so control falls into the hands of the computer.

It once again had a BUG - Lao Mao didn't know where the source of the fault was. It might be a program problem, or it might be the impact of a sandstorm. The computer misjudged its own speed and shut down the reverse thrust engine in advance.

The Eagle spacecraft suddenly lost its reverse thrust and deceleration. It followed its own inertia and directly hit the space station at a speed of six meters per second.

At this time, the distance between the two was less than 40 meters. It took less than six seconds for the lander to cross this distance, and no one had time to react.

Kunlun Station noticed that the Eagle spacecraft was convulsing and called the police immediately.

But it's still too late.

The docking mechanism between the lander and the space station can withstand a maximum impact of five meters per second. Five meters is the limit. Any higher will cause damage to the mechanism and destroy the air tightness... To be honest, the engineers who originally designed the docking interface did not Have you ever thought about someone who could bump into you at a speed of five meters per second? Normally, the docking speed is a few tenths of a meter per second, which is slower than a person walking.

They feel that five meters per second is too much redundancy.

For the five meters per second redundancy, they simply designed the docking mechanism to be as solid as a ship anchor, wasting a lot of weight.

The old cat sat down silently and saw the two cursors on the screen colliding hard.

Then dense pop-up windows popped up, each one an alarm, the numbers jumped rapidly, and the parameters of the Eagle spacecraft and space station changed from green to red, deviating from the normal range.

Imagine a large trailer weighing more than ten tons, slamming into it at a speed of six meters per second. Nothing can withstand such an impact, and the cement walls are like paper and vulnerable to a single blow.

The old cat stared at the screen blankly.

It couldn't imagine what was happening in the orbit 400 kilometers above its head. It didn't even know whether Ophiopogon japonicus was still alive... The Eagle spacecraft and the space station deviated from the orbit at the same time after the collision, and the docking mechanism could not lock at six times per second. meters of highway.

The metal guide plates and locks of the interface were all broken. The Eagle spacecraft completely destroyed the docking interface, then lost control and fell into a roll.

It turned somersaults in space, separated from the space station, and disappeared into the dark deep space.

The joint space station suffered a violent impact, and its attitude began to become uncontrollable. The space station slowly rotated around its central axis.

The rear-end collision of the Eagle spacecraft destroyed an interface and also crushed the Dawn experimental module.

Lao Mao received a depressurization alarm from the United Space Station, which indicated that the impact had caused damage to the outer shell of the space station, the air in the cabin was leaking, and the air pressure dropped rapidly.

The smoke alarm also went off. Sensors in the space station detected smoke. The presence of smoke indicates a fire hazard.

The space station is filled with pure oxygen, and a tiny spark would be a disaster.

"Miss Ophiopogon japonicus! Ophiopogon japonicus! Ophiopogon japonicus——! Please answer if you hear it! Can you hear me?" the old cat yelled. The signal was not interrupted, but there was no answer on the channel.

Obviously, something might have happened to Ophiopogon japonicus.

The old cat's head is about to explode.

After all, this launch was too hasty... There was no time to conduct a thorough inspection. It is not surprising that the system computer and sensors of the Eagle spacecraft had bugs. The working conditions are so extreme, and the spacecraft has a high failure rate. Whose is it? Isn’t there something wrong with the spaceship and space station?

But 99% of the problems in other people's homes are minor and innocuous problems, and repairing them won't affect its use.

Like the Eagle spacecraft, problems occurred twice, and each time they were fatal... This was the first time the old cat encountered it.

Old cats don't sweat. If they could sweat, they would be sweating profusely now.

It forces itself to calm down.

calm.

calm!

There can be no chaos... there must be no chaos! So many problems must be solved one by one! Start with the most urgent ones first!

The old cat on the Eagle spacecraft has no time to take care of it now. It can die wherever it wants. After poking such a big trap, it will die as far away as possible.

The old cat must first save the space station from the brink of destruction... Maidong's life or death is unknown, and he may have lost his ability to move.

The only one who has the ability to save her at this moment is the old cat.

The space station is losing pressure inside. The air pressure and temperature continue to decrease, and will soon drop below the safety line. If Old Cat does not take measures, Ophiopogon japonicus will die of suffocation... But Old Cat does not know which cabin is damaged. , it can only gain control of the space station, immediately close all cabin doors, and isolate the air circulation between cabins.

Everything that can be done has been done. Lao Mao only hopes that the core module is not damaged.

Next comes the smoke alarm.

There is also an attitude instability alarm.

The old cat's two paws bounced like flying, solving the alarms in his eyes one by one.

The United Space Station is like a leaky broken ship at the moment. The old cat is frantically plugging the leaks, pulling the ship back from the edge of sinking bit by bit. It wishes it could grow two more claws.

"Old Cat...how is the situation?" Tang Yue asked, "How far is it?"

"Tang Yue, now I can only ask you to hold on a little longer." The old cat gritted his teeth and said in a deep voice, "We have overturned."