Month: March 2024

In March, I started Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer; I am on page 150. Jon Krakauer tells of his adventure as a client and journalist on the Adventure Consultants Guided Expedition in the spring of 1996. Krakauer goes into great detail, chronicling not only his expedition but provides mini anecdotes on the other simultaneous Everest expeditions and past Everest expeditions (for example, Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s 1953 summit of Everest; the first of its kind.) My favorite character was Jon himself because he is kind. There’s a quote on page 148 to support this idea on page 148, “…snapped a few photos of Doug posing with a flag the Kent schoolkids had asked him to carry up the peak…” In this line, Jon does what one would call “an act of kindness”, which is why he is kind. My favorite line can be found on page 25, “None of the climbs I’d done in the past, moreover, had taken me to even moderately high altitude. Truth be told, I’d never been higher than 17,200 feet—not even as high as Everest Base Camp.” I liked this line because Krakauer acknowledges how big of a challenge climbing Everest will be compared to some of the other climbs he’s done. This acknowledgment also tells me he’s also in the process of mentally and physically preparing himself for this endeavor.

I think an interior designer would be the perfect job for me. I want to be an interior designer because you can be creative. What I mean by this is that as an interior designer, you can make your own decisions about what furniture and/or accessories go in your client’s living space, whatever it may be: a house, a mansion, an apartment, a condo, etc., and no one else can influence them. As an interior designer, I want to own my own business and hire my employees; me and my employer may have different ideas as to what makes a “good” employee. I also feel that work-wise, being an interior designer is less stressful, especially when you own your own business, because you can decide how much work want to do, and hand what you don’t want to do to your employees and have them do the work.

In February, I read The Martian by Andy Weir. This sci-fi novel tells of astronaut and botanist Mark Watney and his attempts to survive on Mars in the wake of the Ares III crew’s departure following a catastrophic dust storm. I chose to read this book because I had watched the movie that’s based off this novel several times, and my mom was also encouraging me to read it. And I have to tell you, it’s an amazing novel; it’s a perfect visual representation of this work of sci-fi. Mark’s my favorite character because I enjoyed his excellent sense of humor and his descriptiveness. On page 2, he describes how the pre-mission process works, and describes a little bit about how Hermes operates, “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. It’s really big and costs a lot so NASA built only one.

Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought 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 fuel ion engines. They throw argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesn’t take much reactant mass, so a little argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You’d 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 won’t. I don’t feel like relieving 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.” I think a reason for Mark’s descriptiveness is because he is writing in a log, and also because some regular person may read them, and he doesn’t want them to be confused. My favorite line can be found on the last page, page 369, “This is the happiest day of my life.” I liked this sentence because it represents Mark’s joyous mood because he is finally going home after a year and a half of hanging around the red planet.