Also, while traveling, I’ll keep the tent folded up in the rover. In an emergency, I can get to it fast.

The pop-tent is the basis of my “bedroom,” but not the whole thing. The tent’s not very big; not much more space than the rover. But it has the airlock attachment so it’s a great place to start. My plan is to double the floor area and double the height. That’ll give me a nice big space to relax in.

For the floor, I’ll use the original flooring material from the two pop-tents. If I didn’t, my bedroom would become a big hamster ball because Hab canvas is flexible. When you fill it with pressure, it wants to become a sphere. That’s not a useful shape.

To combat this, the Hab and pop-tents have special flooring material. It unfolds as a bunch of little segments that won’t open beyond 180 degrees, so it remains flat.

The pop-tent base is a hexagon. I have another base left over from what is now the trailer balloon. When I’m done, the bedroom will be two adjacent hexes with walls around them and a crude ceiling.

It’s gonna take a lot of glue to make this happen.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 387

The pop-tent is 1.2 meters tall. It’s not made for comfort. It’s made for astronauts to cower in while their crewmates rescue them. I want two meters. I want to be able to stand! I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

On paper, it’s not hard to do. I just need to cut canvas pieces to the right shapes, seal them together, then seal them to the existing canvas and flooring.

But that’s a lot of canvas. I started this mission with six square meters and I’ve used up most of that. Mostly on sealing the breach from when the Hab blew up.

God damn Airlock 1.

Anyway, my bedroom will take 30 square meters of the stuff. Way the hell more than I have left. Fortunately, I have an alternate supply of Hab canvas: the Hab.

Problem is (follow me closely here, the science is pretty complicated), if I cut a hole in the Hab, the air won’t stay inside anymore.

I’ll have to depressurize the Hab, cut chunks out, and put it back together (smaller). I spent today figuring out the exact sizes and shapes of canvas I’ll need. I need to not fuck this up, so I triple-checked everything. I even made a model out of paper.

The Hab is a dome. If I take canvas from near the floor, I can pull the remaining canvas down and reseal it. The Hab will become a lopsided dome, but that shouldn’t matter. As long as it holds pressure. I only need it to last another sixty-two sols.

I drew the shapes on the wall with a Sharpie. Then I spent a long time re-measuring them and making sure, over and over, that they were right.

That was all I did today. Might not seem like much, but the math and design work took all day. Now it’s time for dinner.