Tuesday, October 13th, 2026
Sol 283, Year 126, Delta Phase
HOVER LOG, Day 1,829. Outside Waco, forty-eight hours before a Roadster has to leave the ground in front of cameras. Sixth date this year, first one with no weather left to blame.
Full disclosure, to this diary only: Zorgon lost its atmosphere to a failed anti-gravity experiment. One vehicle, four wheels off the pad, then no sky. So when I told the team this "could go wrong," they heard a CEO managing expectations, and I was reading from the minutes.
Postponed two weeks for wind, and humans asked why a company that catches rockets with chopsticks cannot hover a convertible in a breeze. Catching is easy. The Roadster has to lift a little and then STOP lifting, and stopping is the part of the old experiment that went quiet.
The thruster package is code-named A71, which engineers think is a part number and I know is the year I landed.
Spectators parked several hundred yards back because the cold gas is loud enough to damage eardrums, and terrestrial test subjects only ship with two. Nobody inside the car. Remote operated from a trailer, auxiliary lobe on throttle math, human face rehearsing for either outcome.
If it hovers, the Mars timeline advances 0.3 years; if it stays down, Texas keeps its atmosphere, which is more than Olympus Prime can say.