The Martian: Chapters 20–26

by Andy Weir
Botanist and mechanical engineer Mark Watney was chosen for NASA's Ares Program to explore Mars, but when a sandstorm prevents him from reaching the departing spaceship, his new solo mission is figuring out how to use the limited resources to survive on a lifeless planet.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–3, Chapters 4–7, Chapters 8–13, Chapters 14–19, Chapters 20–26
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. contraption
    a small mechanical device or tool
    Then I hooked up the regulator's return air line to my contraption and watched the results.
  2. maritime
    relating to ships or navigation
    There's an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that's not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you're not in any country's territory, maritime law applies.
    So Mars is "international waters."
  3. commandeer
    take arbitrarily or by force
    Here's the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander.
  4. explicitly
    in a clearly expressed manner
    Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can't until I'm aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system.
  5. abject
    most unfortunate or miserable
    Seriously though, it sucked. It was twenty-two sols of abject misery.
  6. crude
    not carefully or expertly made
    When I'm done, the bedroom will be two adjacent hexes with walls around them and a crude ceiling.
  7. inventory
    a detailed list of all the items in stock
    My first order of business was a careful inventory of the Hab. I needed to root out anything that would have a problem with losing atmospheric pressure.
  8. intrepid
    invulnerable to fear or intimidation
    There wasn't much left for our intrepid hero.
  9. devoid
    completely wanting or lacking
    The sudden pressure popped the bedroom like a balloon. It quickly deflated, leaving both itself and the rover devoid of air.
  10. arbitrarily
    in a random or indiscriminate manner
    I arbitrarily picked eight hours for the test duration, so I was trapped in the rover until then.
  11. hinder
    be an obstacle to
    "Over the past few weeks, a dust storm has been developing in Arabia Terra. Not a big deal in terms of magnitude. It won't hinder his driving at all."
  12. concession
    the act of yielding
    I made one concession to common sense: I left most of my water supply in the Hab. I loaded twenty liters; enough for the test but no more.
  13. ballast
    any heavy material used to stabilize a ship or airship
    Back on Earth, universities and governments are willing to pay millions to get their hands on Mars rocks. I'm using them as ballast.
  14. tarnish
    make or become dirty or dull, as by exposure to air
    I think they picked up dust or small air leaks from Hermes itself. One way or another, they're definitely tarnishing. The tarnish is clogging the micro-lattice, and that reduces the surface area.
  15. dissipation
    breaking up and scattering by dispersion
    Less surface area means less heat dissipation.
  16. indistinguishable
    exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different
    Once the bedroom is set up again, I can take off my EVA suit and relax. I mostly watch crappy seventies TV. I'm indistinguishable from an unemployed guy for most of the day.
  17. homage
    respectful deference
    I guess I did the shutdown as an homage to the mission Ares 3 could have been.
  18. unfurl
    unroll, unfold, or spread out
    On a normal day, I get up, fold up the bedroom, stack the solar cells, drive four hours, set up the solar cells, unfurl the bedroom, check all my equipment (especially the rover chassis and wheels), then make a Morse code status report for NASA, if I can find enough nearby rocks.
  19. sextant
    an instrument for measuring angular distance
    So I go out every night with a homemade sextant and sight Deneb. It's kind of silly if you think about it. I'm in my space suit on Mars and I'm navigating with sixteenth-century tools.
  20. correlate
    bring into a mutual, complementary, or reciprocal relation
    But this time, I know NASA's watching me. So I'm labeling each sample by the current sol. They'll know my location a hell of a lot more accurately than I do. They can correlate the samples with their locations later.
  21. bleak
    offering little or no hope
    "He was dead before," Martinez said. "It was rough on morale, but we soldiered on. Besides, he won't die."
    "It's pretty bleak, Rick," Lewis said.
  22. impunity
    exemption from punishment or loss
    Then I can beeline toward Schiaparelli with impunity. There'll still be plenty of craters in the way, but they're comparatively small, and going around them won't cost much time.
  23. dub
    give a nickname to
    The little crater doesn't have a name. At least, not on the maps I have. So I dub it "Entrance Crater."
  24. ambient
    completely enveloping
    I can't tell if I'm driving deeper into the storm or out of it. It's hard to tell if the ambient light is less or more than it was yesterday.
  25. earmark
    give or assign a resource to a particular person or cause
    Who knows how long it'll take me to go around this storm? And if I end up stuck in the storm and doomed to die, I'm totally eating the other earmarked meals.
  26. defile
    spot, stain, or pollute
    Besides, I've defiled enough future historical sites for now.
  27. precarious
    not secure; beset with difficulties
    The rover's left front wheel sank. The sudden tilt brought the right rear wheel completely off the ground. This in turn put more weight on the left rear wheel, which slipped from its precarious purchase into the powder as well.
  28. torsion
    a twisting force
    The trailer, attached to the rover with a tow clamp, was dragged along. The torsion on the clamp snapped the strong composite like a brittle twig.
  29. headlong
    with the upper or anterior part of the body foremost
    The trailer plunged headlong into the soft soil and flipped over on to its balloon-roof, shuddering to an abrupt halt.
  30. paparazzo
    a freelance photographer who pursues celebrities
    "I remember when you were shy."
    "I'm space paparazzi now. The attitude comes with the job."
  31. sweltering
    excessively hot and humid; marked by sweating and faintness
    Eventually, things reached a balance point where the heat bled through the hull as fast as the RTG could add it. If you're curious, that balance point was a sweltering 41°C.
  32. unscathed
    not injured
    It was absolutely ruined. It took the full force of the crash. But as I suspected, the trailer's tow hook was unscathed.
  33. akimbo
    with hands on hips and elbows extending outward
    Now fatigued, the astronaut stood with arms akimbo, looking up at the sleek lines of the engineering marvel before him.
  34. auxiliary
    functioning in a supporting capacity
    "The power needs will be dramatically reduced now that life support is gone, so we'll dump three of the five batteries and the auxiliary power system. The orbital maneuvering system has three redundant thrusters. We'll get rid of those. Also, the secondary and tertiary comm systems can go."
  35. pristine
    immaculately clean and unused
    Everything's sleek and pristine and perfectly functional. I'd almost forgotten what new hardware even looks like.
  36. diminish
    decrease in size, extent, or range
    As she climbed "up" the ladder to the center of the ship, the centripetal force on her diminished to zero.
  37. leeway
    a permissible difference
    "Pretty narrow margin of error."
    "We've got a lot of leeway," Lewis said.
  38. coruscate
    be lively or brilliant or exhibit virtuosity
    A mild cheer coruscated through the crowds worldwide.
  39. compromise
    expose or make liable to danger, suspicion, or disrepute
    "He'll get to orbit," Johanssen said, "but the intercept course may be compromised."
  40. conflagration
    a very intense and uncontrolled fire
    What would have been a minor fizzle in Earth's atmosphere became an uncontrolled conflagration in the container's pure oxygen environment.
Created on Mon Feb 22 20:55:13 EST 2016 (updated Sun Jul 23 10:12:34 EDT 2023)

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