NASA Ground Command Center.
The president's roar echoed through the conference room next door.
"Fuck! What a bunch of useless idiots!"
"If there was going to be a dust storm there, why did you choose such a terrible time to send our colonists?!"
Seeing that the president was in a rage, everyone in the conference room fell silent, barely daring to breathe for fear of being caught in the crossfire.
Director Carson, in particular, wore an extremely awkward expression.
This situation was completely beyond his expectations.
After all, he wasn't God. How could he have known when a dust storm would strike Mars...
"Mr. President... We don't have weather stations on Mars. While I understand how you feel, there was no way for us to know in advance about climate changes on Mars. Besides..."
After a pause, Director Carson spoke with difficulty.
"Generally speaking, dust storms occur most frequently in summer. In particular, global dust storms rarely appear outside the summer season... What happened this time was entirely beyond our control. We did consider countermeasures..."
The president stared at him and pressed aggressively.
"What countermeasures?"
"But there was a small accident," Director Carson said awkwardly. "According to our original plan, after establishing methane and underground water collection sites, we would use Martian resources to deal with this problem. You know, as long as there were enough external supplies, getting through this period of reduced sunlight wouldn't have been a problem, but..."
"But?"
Swallowing hard, Director Carson continued quickly. "But our colonists had only just landed on Mars. They weren't prepared at all to collect methane and water resources from the planet. And the methane reserves brought from Earth... won't last very long."
Put simply, they had never considered that they would encounter such severe weather during the second week after