Stuck on Mars: Part 1
Alex is an astronaut in NASA. He loves going to space, and he’s always wanted to go to Mars. Alex got a mission to go to Mars, but since Alex was so excited to go to Mars, he didn’t check the fuel or the engine, and he didn’t pack any tools.
Nothing went wrong for the 6 months, but when Alex was really close to Mars, everything started to go wrong. Alarms were going off, the engine broke, the ship was out of fuel. Since Alex packed no tools, he couldn’t fix the engine, and Alex packed no extra fuel tanks either.
Since the engine was broken and they only had a little bit of fuel, they had a crash landing on Mars. Alex got some scratches and bruises, but the injuries were not big. However, the rocket was torn into pieces. Alex had water and food, but not many packets because Alex was only planning on staying for two or three days. Alex had to eat only tiny bits of food a day, or else there was no way of getting out of Mars.
It’s been two months, and Alex is still stranded on Mars. Alex tried an emergency message, but it didn’t go through because the rocket was torn apart. Just when Alex was losing hope, he saw something in the distance: it was another astronaut.
Escaping Mars: Part 2
Alan is an astronaut in NASA. Alan had a mission to go to Mars. Before he went to Mars, he read a newspaper story saying there was a missing astronaut. It took Alan seven months to
get to Mars. Alan was trying to find out if people can live on Mars, if there were any living creatures there, and if there was food and water.
When Alan was close to Mars, he saw that the rocket was running out of fuel, but he thought it would be fine. So when he got to Mars, he looked around, but he found no food and water, and no living creatures. At that point, he went back to the rocket. When he got to his seat, he saw that the rocket ran out of fuel, so he had to go back outside and see if there was a fuel source somewhere on Mars.
Alan went to the back of the rocket ship where the storage was kept. He found a shovel so he took it with him. Alan knew he had lots of food and water, he was just hoping it would last long enough till he found a fuel source. Alan went outside and started digging. It took him a month. Alan was so tired, but then he found a little bit more of the fuel source, so he knew he had to keep digging. He also knew he was running out of food and water so he had to dig much faster.
It’d been a week, and Alan had found a little fuel, but he only had a few packs of food and water left. So from three meals a day, it became two and then one meal a day. Back at NASA, they knew it would take at least a year, but it’d been almost two years, so they sent Alan a message that they were sending fuel. When Alan got the message, he was relieved that they were sending some fuel. After a week, he got the fuel, but when he put the fuel in the rocket it still wasn’t enough, so he had to keep digging.
After a few days, he only had one more pack of food left, so he sent a message to NASA and asked them for more food packs. NASA replied that they were out of food packs, so Alan could only have bit by bit of food every day. Finally the day had come when he had found enough fuel in the ground to fill up the rocket ship. When Alan finished filling up the rocket ship, he checked the food packs and knew that if he had a little bit of food everyday, he might make it seven months.
After seven months, he made it back to earth, but he was starving. He had a big feast with burgers and french fries.
“I couldn’t find any water or food and I couldn’t find living creatures,” NASA told Alan after the feast. “But I did find some fuel source in the ground, so if we can go to Mars one more time, I think we can find something there.”
“We will make another rocket for you but this time you have to find something,” NASA said.
“Ok,” Alan replied.
Alan got ready for his second mission, but this time he knew he couldn’t fail.
While Alan was packing up for his next trip to Mars, he got a call saying that something went wrong with the rocket and the engine had blown up, but they had fix it before Alan went to space. They had no time to postpone the launch, so they quickly fixed it up and hoped that the rocket would still work. Alan sat down on his seat and looked at how much fuel he had. It said it was full fuel, but what Alan didn’t know was that something was going wrong with the engine. The blast off was successful, but Alan felt something would go wrong.
It’d been six months, nothing was wrong with the engine, and they were almost to Mars. Since nothing went wrong for six months, Alan was just relaxing. But as soon as Alan was
going to sit down and relax, an alarm went off. Red lights were everywhere. Alan ran back to
where the engine was. He got some tools, but nothing could fix it, so he used tape to tape
the wires together. The alarm went off and everything was fine again. But Alan knew that tape
wouldn’t hold for long, so he had to be faster.
One month later, Alan was so close to Mars. All he needed to do was to land, but the alarm went off and he couldn’t fix it, so Alan had a rough landing. Alan got some injuries and the rocket needed fixing, so Alan wrapped up his injuries and started to fix the rocket. But Alan didn’t have all the supplies to fix the engine, so he had to send an emergency message through the satellites to NASA. They got the message and sent some tools in another rocket ship. Alan fixed up the rocket, but something went wrong again: the fuel tank was empty. Alan thought that the fuel must have dripped out of the rocket ship, because when he saw the fuel for the first time, it said it was full.
Alan knew he couldn’t send another emergency message because he was limited to one, but he had an idea: he took the shovel and went outside. He started digging. He kept digging and digging, but this time he couldn’t find a fuel source, so he walked farther and farther. Finally when he found a fuel source, he got up and looked around, but he couldn’t see the rocket ship. Alan had an idea: to follow his footprints. But they weren’t there – the wind must have made the sand cover all the footprints. Alan had another plan. The plan was to go backwards. Alan kept going backwards for hours and hours, but he could see nothing.
A few hours later, he saw something far away. It was his rocket ship! Alan was so relieved that he started running to the rocket ship, but since he could only find one place with a fuel source, he had to drag the big rocket ship with him all the way to the fuel source. It took him
three days without stopping to get to the fuel source with the big rocket. When he reached the fuel source, it was night, and Alan was really tired, so he went to sleep.
The next day, Alan started digging, but Alan’s left hand was injured so he could
only dig with his right which made him slower. After four weeks he found some more fuel, but Alan knew he needed to find more fuel. In the morning the day he saw something in the distance he found another astronaut. Alan ran to the other astronaut. Alan thought that that astronaut must have also lost fuel and was stuck on Mars. Alan went to the other man and asked him what his name was.
“My name is Alex,” said Alex.
“How much fuel do you have?” Alan asked.
“I have half fuel,” Alex said.
Alan also had half fuel. “So if we put our fuel together we’ll have full fuel,” Alan thought.
“Let’s put our fuel together in one rocket ship then we can both get out of Mars,” Alan said.
“Ok,” said Alex.
So Alex and Alan put their fuel together and they had enough fuel to go back to Earth. They both went in Alan’s rocket ship, but when they tried to blast off, the rocket said too much weight, so one person had to come off.
“I’ll come off,” Alan said.
“When I get to Earth, I’ll bring a rocket ship to you with full fuel,” Alex said.
“Ok,” Alan said.
After a few weeks, Alan saw a rocket ship. It landed where he was. Alan was so happy to see the rocket because had no food the whole time and he was starving. Alan went in the rocket ship and started eating. After he was full, Alan started to blast off.
Seven months later, Alan got back to Earth. He couldn’t get any information on the Martian fuel source, but that was ok because he found the astronaut that went missing in space.