AND SOME MORE FROM THE PAGES OF 'REACH FOR MARS' :

Back on Mars… with me,

After I signed off, I shut down every system on the ship except the two-way R/T, and then I shut off all the lights as I left the Albatross and jumped into a buggy to go in search of Melissa and Richard. I drove over to the control center, as it occurred to me that I would most likely find Richard where all the computers were. I found as I walked into level four that I had guessed right when I saw him sitting in his chair surrounded by flashing computer screens. I walked up and stood beside his chair.

“Greetings, Richard, what are you up to?”

“I’m recalculating the flight plan for the rescue mission so that I can load it onto the starship’s navigation computer,” he answered.

“Shouldn’t you be doing that on board the actual starship?”

“These computers are far faster and more powerful than the shipboard computers; they also know the performance specifications of the starships, so they will formulate that into their calculations. They should be able to give me the top speed of the craft, the time to Earth’s orbit, and the time for return. Once the computer has calculated the updated flight plan, I will tell it to download the plan onto the starship’s computer.”

“How do you know this computer will download it onto the right starship’s computer?”

“I’m going to tell the computer to download the flight plan onto all of them,” he answered.

“OK, fair enough. Could you also set the starship’s radio on our frequency so I can communicate with the ISS and the city during the rescue flight?”

“Yes, I will do that as soon as I’m finished with this.”

“Great, thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hey, Drew, when are we going to launch?”

“Ask the computer. Till tomorrow then.”