Reborn in 2011, I am the chief designer of aerospace.

In the "Sky Lab," the massive Earth occupies every conscious moment. Humans instinctively use that huge "carpet of light" as a reference to establish their sense of direction as they slowly pass over the continents and oceans.

But this place was completely different; there was no such thing as "up" or "down," only isolated rocky islands floating in the void. He pondered to himself that if humanity wanted to conquer interstellar travel, it must create a completely new way of perception, and an absolute three-dimensional spatial consciousness at that.

As his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, a multitude of stars appeared in his field of vision—millions of brilliant luminaries, far more densely packed than could be seen through Earth's atmosphere. He gazed at the dazzling band of light in the Milky Way, recognizing the disk-shaped edge pointing towards the center of the Sagittarius galaxy, its jagged outline a chasm obscured by clouds of interstellar dust, with nearby stars twinkling brightly within these deep trenches. He also glimpsed Jupiter's four Galilean moons, arranged like jewels along the planet's bright spot.

Mira floated over from the brightly lit living quarters and brought him a warm rehydrated stew. Sheng Tianhong used a pen-shaped flashlight in his mouth to provide light, poured water into the package, and mashed the food until it was fully rehydrated.

[Hour:Minute:Second]19:37:20

After remaining conscious for thirteen hours, the crew completed their shift for the day. Song Xingye felt nauseous again, swallowed a few scopolamine tablets, and crawled into his sleeping bag. Sheng Tianhong, on the other hand, wanted some peace and quiet; perhaps she could write a few letters.

But Mira remained excited and kept asking to play darts.

Darts throwing is the most popular entertainment activity in the mission cabin. They use specially made Velcro darts, which have Velcro at the end and can fly straight and horizontally after being thrown.

This is quite different from the parabolic trajectory under gravity. To ensure accuracy, the best approach is to launch it smoothly forward and apply a slight rotation to maintain stability. However, if it flies too slowly, the airflow inside the cabin will blow the dart off course.

Mira set up a dartboard on the science lab bench, and she and Sheng Tianhong took turns throwing, watching the darts glide lightly across the entire work area and land steadily on the target.

[Hour:Minute:Second]21:01:32

Mira woke him up from his sleep pod and led him to the "Space Ark" experimental area.

The cage of the experimental spider "Arabella" was not closed properly, and the little guy took the opportunity to slip out. Mira excitedly pointed to a huge spider web that spanned half of the open space, connecting one end of the mission cabin to the other.

Sheng Tianhong only hoped that enough flying insects had managed to escape the pre-launch sterilization process so that Arabella wouldn't starve to death inside the cabin. Mira even enthusiastically offered to help the spider search for fruit fly pupae.

As Sheng Tianhong sat aboard a spaceship covered in spiderwebs heading towards Mars, the scene felt strangely poetic.

[Hour:Minute:Second]23:32:37

After falling asleep, Sheng Tianhong once again had that familiar dream about space.

Strangely, even in his sleep, he vaguely knew the cause of the dream: the breeze from the bulkhead fan brushing his cheek, the ever-present feeling of falling in weightlessness, and perhaps even a subconscious awareness of the spaceship's extreme speed.

All of this intertwines to create a dreamlike vision of flight.

He dreamt that he flew low, close to the ground, among lush forests, winding rivers, and a clear blue sky, like a bird of prey soaring through the air.

……

Task time [days/hours:minutes:seconds] 121/12:23:34

Mira gracefully passed through the docking adapter and floated into the forward passage of the command module. She poked her head down out of the hatch and appeared right at the top of the conical command module. Then, she deftly performed a front flip in mid-air, smoothly shifting her position from "above" the mission module to "below" the command module.

For Mila, this upside-down spatial arrangement was one of the most mind-boggling details of the journey.

She casually pulled the hatch shut, and with a soft "click," the lock snapped shut.

She floated to Sheng Tianhong's seat on the left side of the cabin and sat down, attaching the checklist to the Velcro in front of the control panel. Then, she took a vial of orange juice wrapped in aluminum foil from the pocket of her Beta fireproof work suit, took a sip through the straw, adjusted her headphones, and first confirmed that communication with the other end of the "Search God" combination was working. Song Xingye and Sheng Tianhong had responded via the mission cabin's intercom, and then she called Yang Gang, the flight supervisor on the ground. However, she didn't just sit and wait for the radio waves to echo across the vast solar system; instead, she immediately threw herself into her work.

She began powering up the various systems in the Apollo command module.

During the long journey to and from Mars, apart from the essential systems for basic survival, most of the command module's equipment remains dormant. An umbilical cable running through the docking system connects the command module to the spacecraft's main solar array, allowing it to operate without consuming its own stored power. Every fifty days or so, Mira comes here to routinely check the system's status; she must ensure that everything is functioning perfectly when the crew finally needs to re-enter Earth's atmosphere aboard the command module.

She began powering up the various systems in the Apollo command module.

During the long journey to and from Mars, apart from the essential systems for basic survival, most of the command module's equipment remains dormant. An umbilical cable running through the docking system connects the command module to the spacecraft's main solar array, allowing it to operate without consuming its own stored power. Every fifty days or so, Mira comes here to routinely check the system's status; she must ensure that everything is functioning perfectly when the crew finally needs to re-enter Earth's atmosphere aboard the command module.

This task was easy for her and probably only required about 40 percent of her attention.

So she took a cassette tape from her pocket and gently pushed it into the player in front of Sheng Tianhong's control panel. The melody of a violin flowed out, its light and delicate phrases echoing in the slightly thin air of the cabin. Mira closed her eyes, letting the notes envelop her. It was Mozart's Symphony No. 40, exquisitely beautiful. She felt an unprecedented sense of relaxation; even the previously cramped cabin seemed to have become spacious and bright.

Alone in the cabin, she silently checked the list. According to regulations, the isolation hatch must be kept closed at all times, and anyone who wanted to enter had to report to Commander Sheng Tianhong first. But the command cabin was one of the few places in the entire spaceship that could provide a true sense of privacy. Sheng Tianhong knew perfectly well that in space, people always need a private corner where they can breathe and have some time to themselves.

Ironically, in the vast universe spanning tens of millions of kilometers, there were only three of them, yet they were to be confined in this cramped "tin can" for months on end. In the spacious mission cabin, the only solid partition was used to conceal a urinal.

In fact, the relationship between the three of them was not exactly harmonious. Song Xingye was a quiet person who rarely spoke, Sheng Tianhong had the rigid and stubborn style of an air force commander and often kept his distance from personal relationships, and as for Mira herself, she knew that she could never control her incessant chatter.

But Mira didn't care at all. She even suspected that her two teammates were thinking the same thing. In Mira's eyes, the so-called "team building" by the psychologists on the ground was pure nonsense. They hadn't come all this way to make friends; they were here to conquer Mars. To achieve this great goal, enduring a little friction in interpersonal relationships was simply insignificant.

As long as you can have a few moments of peace and quiet each day, it's not a big problem at all.

She refocused her attention on the gauges, dials, and computer screen in front of her, methodically checking the readings against the checklist output by the teletypewriter. Her communication headset was set to voice wake-up mode, and she had deliberately adjusted the sensitivity so that Mozart's symphony would automatically pause every time she spoke to report data.

Mira has always been passionate about hardware research and development.

Although the spacecraft's basic design was derived from an older model, engineers undertook countless radical modifications, transforming this basic configuration into a flexible and robust interplanetary transport ship. Visually, the spacecraft still bears the typical hallmarks of the 1960s and 70s, with a cylindrical service module trailing a large propulsion engine nozzle at the rear and a low, conical command module at the front, its overall shape strikingly similar to early manned spacecraft.

Early manned deep-space missions lasted at most two weeks, but the "Searching for Gods" mission was to operate in the harsh environment of deep space for up to eighteen months. The extreme temperature variations it faced while traversing the solar system were far greater than any previous mission. As a result, most of the spacecraft's systems were scrapped and redesigned, undergoing a complete overhaul.

The current service module carries more attitude control propellant, correspondingly reducing the fuel required for the main engines. Previous models would directly release water, a byproduct of fuel cells, into space, while the "Searching for God" collects this water in specialized tanks to prevent condensation into ice crystals around the spacecraft. Furthermore, engineers significantly increased the number of fuel cells, expanded storage space and lockers in the command module, and installed atmospheric exchange ducts within the docking assembly at the top to recirculate air from the mission module to the command module. Numerous such detailed improvements have resulted in this highly optimized spacecraft.

In long-duration space missions, reliability is paramount. For example, many systems in the Apollo program were equipped with redundancy, meaning an identical set of components was prepared for replacement in case of failure. However, scientists soon discovered that the triple redundancy design concept used in the lunar missions was no longer applicable to long-term missions. If one were to simply pile on redundant equipment to keep the risks within acceptable limits over such a long mission period, the weight and complexity of the spacecraft would balloon to an incalculable level.

Even during the long journey to Mars, the mission has multiple abort plans. Upon returning to Earth, the spacecraft, along with the mission module, will be placed into a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth, with a perigee of 200 kilometers and an apogee of 100,000 kilometers. The farthest point of this curved orbit reaches the radius of the Moon's orbit, and the "Searching for Gods" spacecraft can enter this orbit with relatively little fuel. Subsequently, the command module will depart from this orbit to safely return the crew to the Earth's surface. Compared to a direct return from the Moon, this method of reentry heating is much gentler. In the event of a malfunction during this phase, the crew can also sustain themselves in this high orbit using life support systems until rescue personnel arrive in another five-person spacecraft.

If they are unable to enter Earth orbit at all, for example, due to a malfunction of a single engine in the MS-IVB final stage booster, they can still attempt direct reentry into Earth's atmosphere during the interplanetary glide phase. The heat-resistant base of the command module has undergone special thickening and reinforcement, which at least provides a glimmer of hope for direct reentry in such extreme circumstances. After all, their current flight speed is only about 15% faster than when returning from the moon.

In the event that the mission module's life support system fails during a long flight, the entire crew can evacuate to the command module, using it as a final refuge, or rather, a lifeboat. Right now, the command module feels quite spacious with only Mira inside, but the situation would be drastically different if three crew members were squeezed in. Enduring weeks or even months in this confined space would be an absolute nightmare.

But this is better than losing your life.

Every aspect of the task was discussed repeatedly, and all possible failures were included in the list. The designers did their best to ensure that there were alternative solutions for every critical node, leaving no "dead zones" that could prevent the task from being stopped. It can be said that they achieved near perfection.

While busy with her work, Mira hummed Mozart's music softly.

The fifty-day period in orbit was frustrating enough, but for Mila, the entire flight was a hellish ordeal, a feeling she experienced every time she went on a long spaceflight.

Her moment of glory truly arrived when Mira piloted the Mars lander (MEM) and slowly descended through the Martian atmosphere.

However, how much of this year-and-a-half-long journey would she actually be at peak efficiency? Forty minutes, or fifty minutes? As an astronaut, that "percentage of effective work" was pitifully low, Mira thought. But it didn't matter; it was something she was willing to do, because she was on a journey to Mars.

She first encountered the name "Searching for Gods" in a book she found in a secondhand bookstore. It was a collection of science fiction stories by Stanley Weinbaum, the opening story of which, "The Martian Odyssey," tells the story of a spaceship called "Searching for Gods" that carries four astronauts to land on the surface of Mars.