Die on Mars

"Compressed... biscuits?"

Tang Yue nodded, took out all the remaining compressed biscuits from the cabinet, and piled them on the table, which was taller than Tang Yue himself. These are Tang Yue's next main rations. Basically all the soft bags and cans stored in Kunlun Station have been consumed. Among them, fruits and vegetables with short shelf life are consumed first, followed by meat, pasta and other rehydrated foods—— When Lao Mao and Tang Yue were delivering supplies to the space station, they tended to give better-tasting cans to Ophiopogon japonicus, carrying forward the fine tradition of the Chinese nation of sacrificing oneself for others.

Nowadays, Kunlun Station only has these hard and heavy compressed biscuits, with various flavors, such as braised beef, Laotan pickled cabbage, shrimp and fish plate, and chicken stewed with mushrooms - in fact, they all taste the same. It looks like a brick and can kill someone when swung. After eating one piece, you won't be hungry for a whole day. This is the main culprit of Tang Yue's constipation.

The food in the initial mission of the Mars plan followed the style of individual combat rations in the military, requiring high energy, small size, long shelf life, and easy to carry, including lunch meat, chocolate, energy bars and compressed biscuits, as well as chewing gum to aid consumption. The observers remained calm, but the astronauts unanimously boycotted it because of its bad taste. Some people jokingly called it "diet food", so this type of food was eliminated in subsequent missions and became no longer mainstream.

The many compressed biscuits in Kunlun Station are left over from history. No one wants to eat them, but it is too troublesome to take them back with them, so they are simply left in the station as emergency food. Anyone who wants to eat them can eat them. Anyway, there are dozens of these things. Not a bad year.

"Does compressed biscuits contain vitamin C?" Ophiopogon japonicus asked.

"Theoretically, there is no such thing." Tang Yue weighed the weight of the compressed biscuits in his hands, "Ophiopogon japonicus, what is vitamin C?"

The girl subconsciously replied: "Ascorbic acid?"

"L-ascorbic acid." Tang Yue nodded, "Vitamin C itself is not stable. It only exists stably in an acidic environment, but is easily oxidized in the air. The raw materials of compressed biscuits contain sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate. , the production process is basically in an alkaline environment, and also undergoes high temperature and high pressure sterilization and baking, so normal compressed biscuits do not contain vitamin C."

"Normal...compressed biscuits?" Maidong realized that this adjective was very abrupt.

There are normal compressed biscuits, but are there also abnormal compressed biscuits?

"Yes, normal compressed biscuits do not contain vitamin C, but those idiots at the nutrition center had their brains cramped and came up with abnormal compressed biscuits." Tang Yue picked through the mountains of biscuits on the table, "Ophiopogon japonicus, you Do you know Lao Yang? Yang Huanzi? "

Yang garbled code?

Maidong frowned and thought to himself, what the hell is this name? Are your parents programmers who suffered a nervous breakdown due to software bugs?

"Yang Huanjia is the person who clamored all day long to make canned Swedish herring and soak it in Laoshan White Flower Snake Grass Water."

Maidong suddenly realized. Tang Yue reminded her and she understood. Although she had never heard of this brother's name, his heroic deeds had already become a household name for thousands of miles. The entire nutrition center was rumored to have a peerless man who made a wall-to-wall online shopping in Sweden. Canned herrings, and Laoshan White Snake Grass water on the other wall. He immersed himself in the laboratory every day, wearing a gas mask and using an electronic scale to weigh the fish. From then on, the whole building smelled bad. Everyone speculated that this brother might want to create biochemical products. arms.

"Lao Yang told me that his mentor was once in charge of a project, and the topic was the nutritional retention effect of the composite cold-processing method of compressed biscuits. A group of people in the nutrition center used new methods and techniques to make biscuits, with the aim of keeping them as safe as possible. Retain the nutrients in the biscuits." Tang Yue tried hard to recall, "I remember Lao Yang's original words...'The old man developed a process to make compressed biscuits in an acidic environment without baking under high temperature and high pressure... In the future, vitamin tablets It can all be saved'."

"Can vitamins be preserved in cookies?"

"They not only want to preserve vitamins in the biscuits, but also stuff them with trace elements necessary for the human body to make a nutritious biscuit that is easy to eat." Tang Yue nodded, "But it turns out that this is just a very taken-for-granted idea. The plan, the project ultimately failed.”

"Why?"

"Because it is so unpalatable. The cold-processed biscuits have not been puffed. Everyone said that the biscuits taste like bricks. Not only are they unpalatable, but they also rattle their teeth. They would rather take vitamin tablets than eat these so-called biscuits. Nutritious biscuits." Tang Yue explained, "In fact, there is no need to stuff all the vitamins into the biscuits. The development trend of aerospace food is diversification. This plan is destined to fail. It is just that the plan was led by CNSA at the time. Considering the issue of face, I still bite the bullet."

Maidong nodded, this is understandable.

The world is huge and the face is the greatest.

"After the successful trial production of cold-processed biscuits, they entered the diet of the astronauts in the Mars project and were sent to the Orion spacecraft as a supplementary source of trace elements and vitamins for the crew. The superiors even proposed to cancel the multivitamin tablets in the supplies. But they met with fierce opposition from below. Some people said that if they were allowed to eat this kind of food again, they would refuse to perform the task." Tang Yue continued, "The cold-made biscuits were quickly abandoned amidst shouting and beating, and were later compressed. The status of biscuits is getting lower and lower, and they are gradually withdrawn from the crew's diet, and no one cares about these biscuits anymore..."

"How could such a disgusting thing be successful in bidding?" Maidong found it a bit incredible. She was a newcomer and had never eaten such a shocking cookie.

"Because the manufacturer is a related party and has a very deep interest entanglement with the logistics department, the cold-processed biscuits were still a national key project at that time, and the people below made more than 10 million yuan in the funding of this project." Tang Yue explained, " After this incident was exposed, the top and second-ranking officials of the group were charged with accepting bribes and having huge amounts of property from unknown sources, said to be in excess of 200 million."

Maidong marveled that as a small expedition team member, hearing about these moths on the earth hundreds of millions of kilometers away in the orbit of Mars, it really felt like being a bystander.

She has also heard about these messy interests in the Mars landing plan, but she does not care. For Maidong, the Mars plan is a bright pearl in the history of human civilization and a great milestone, but for people on earth For some people, the Mars project is a huge gold mine, an opportunity to get rich overnight, and they can make a lot of money if they get even one ten thousandth of the benefit.

No matter how magnificent a miracle is, there are twisted maggots and shadows.

Not everyone is looking up at the stars.

Maidong patted his cheek and got back to business.

"You mean this part of the biscuit contains vitamin C? The cold process biscuits?"

"right!"

"Where are these biscuits?" Maidong asked.

Tang Yue pointed to the compressed biscuits on the table, "It's in Kunlun Station, right here, in front of me!"

Tang Yue walked quickly around the table, pressing his temples tightly with his index fingers as he tried hard to think about memories.

"Let me think about it, let me think about it! The cold-processed compressed biscuits have not been used for a long time. When was it put into use? When was it put into use... When I left the earth, it was in early 2052. At that time, the old Yang told me it was six years ago! Six years ago, cold-processed compressed biscuits officially entered the Mars program, that is, 2046!"

"The cold-processing method plan was discontinued after two years and has been abandoned since then. The compressed biscuit production method has all returned to normal. In other words, all biscuits produced in China from 2046 to 2048 will be cold-processed!" Tang Yuechang He breathed a sigh of relief, "From 2046 to 2048, which Mars missions are there?"

"The eleventh landing mission in March 2047, the fourth flight of the Orion spacecraft, was the last scientific research station construction mission."

"Then the compressed biscuits brought during the eleventh landing mission are what I want!"

To be honest, finding vitamins in compressed biscuits was also Tang Yue's temporary idea. He accidentally remembered what Lao Yang from the nutrition center said when he was chatting with him. At that time, the two of them were sitting together eating, and Tang Yue just listened unintentionally. , never thought that it would be possible to save Tang Yue's life.

It was really unintentional.