The chemistry is on my side. The question now is how do I actually make this reaction happen slowly, and how do I collect the hydrogen? The answer is: I don’t know.

I suppose I’ll think of something. Or die.

Anyway, much more important: I simply can’t abide the replacement of Chrissy with Cindy. Three’s Company may never be the same after this fiasco. Time will tell.

CHAPTER 4

LOG ENTRY: SOL 32

So I ran into a bunch of problems with my water plan.

My idea is to make 600 liters of water (limited by the hydrogen I can get from the hydrazine). That means I’ll need 300 liters of liquid O₂.

I can create the O₂ easily enough. It takes twenty hours for the MAV fuel plant to fill its 10-liter tank with CO₂. The oxygenator can turn it into O₂, then the atmospheric regulator will see the O₂ content in the Hab is high, and pull it out of the air, storing it in the main O₂ tanks. They’ll fill up, so I’ll have to transfer O₂ over to the rovers’ tanks and even the space suit tanks as necessary.

But I can’t create it very quickly. At half a liter of CO₂ per hour, it will take twenty-five days to make the oxygen I need. That’s longer than I’d like.

Also, there’s the problem of storing the hydrogen. The air tanks of the Hab, the rovers, and all the space suits add up to exactly 374 liters of storage. To hold all the materials for water, I would need a whopping 900 liters of storage.

I considered using one of the rovers as a “tank.” It would certainly be big enough, but it just isn’t designed to hold in that much pressure. It’s made to hold (you guessed it) one atmosphere. I need vessels that can hold fifty times that much. I’m sure a rover would burst.

The best way to store the ingredients of water is to make them be water. So what’s what I’ll have to do.

The concept is simple, but the execution will be incredibly dangerous.

Every twenty hours, I’ll have 10 liters of CO₂ thanks to the MAV fuel plant. I’ll vent it into the Hab via the highly scientific method of detaching the tank from the MAV landing struts, bringing it into the Hab, then opening the valve until it’s empty.

The oxygenator will turn it into oxygen in its own time.

Then, I’ll release hydrazine, very slowly, over the iridium catalyst, to turn it into N₂ and H₂. I’ll direct the hydrogen to a small area and burn it.

As you can see, this plan provides many opportunities for me to die in a fiery explosion.

Firstly, hydrazine is some serious death. If I make any mistakes, there’ll be nothing left but the “Mark Watney Memorial Crater” where the Hab once stood.

Presuming I don’t fuck up with the hydrazine, there’s still the matter of burning hydrogen. I’m going to be setting a fire. In the Hab. On purpose.