Carla worryingly looks at the stocks of food. It will run out soon.
She thinks of how back on Earth, the ground used to provide life for her animals and people. Maybe the ground of 217-β could do the same. Carla analyzes Vishnu's meteorite samples from yesterday.
Jason notices Carla looking worriedly at the remaining food supplies and nearly slaps himself. "Oh, that's what we forgot to do." He immediately gets to work on constructing additional hydro-pods.
Using the spectrometer and a microscope (and plenty of reference to digital encyclopedias), you analyze the fragments as best you can. The samples from the large meteorite seem to be almost pure iron, with five-percent nickel alloyed. A very durable natural alloy.
You realize a severe complication: your current life-support efficiently recycles the chemicals you have, converting waste back to food, clean water, and breathable air, but to expand the system, you're going to need more volatiles.
New Fabrications:Fluid Tank: Additional compressed storage space for liquids or gasses. 2 capacity for every 1 aluminum, 1 iron needed for every 50 capacity.
Upgrade Crucible: (100 Aluminum, 200 Iron, 1 E-Crucible) With some adjustments, the crucible will be able to separate more materials, from both the asteroid rock and form already smelted slag.
Hydroponic Unit: (200 Aluminum, 100 Water, 100 Ammonia each) Grows food from recycled waste. Unfortunately, you can't match the output of the one you brought with you with your available manufacturing techniques, so each unit would only produce 200 food by the end of the week. Needs to be able to circulate with the Recyclor to work properly.
Fee goes wandering again. This time grabbing easily carried smaller meteorites.
You commence your gathering. Perhaps this will help get more material, and at the very least some knew data if your friends can analyze these. As you remember from yesterday, small fragments litter the dust in their small craters every so often. Hmm, you might need something to carry these in if you're going to gather very many, though.