20 July 2000: Marc Boucher’s Personal Journal: Base Camp, Devon Island
Note: Information on the current field season, as well as past seasons can be found here.
Getting The Habitat Up
Today was the day. The first set of habitat panels went up. You could see how excited people were. This was the moment
all of us here and all of the Mars Society members and supporters have worked for. I’ve been up here for three
weeks now and this is the first time I let myself get really excited and had the adrenaline pumping. It was a moment
I won’t soon forget. I know what this means to me and to so many other people. We all want humans to go to Mars and
if this effort can help make that happen then all of us will have accomplished something big. I’ve read Usenet
postings that were flaming this project and heard people snicker about the Mars Society and its goals. People
have not been taking us seriously. We’ll to all of the members out there reading this, stand tall and proud. What
we are doing is important.
After the first set
of panels went up a lot of time was spent securing them in place. Getting the first set
of panels up was not as difficult as we thought it would be. It must be noted that a lot of prep work and safety
planning with all workers was conducted in the morning.
A second set of panels was partially raised but a minor problem with the way the guy wires were set meant that the panel
had to come down. When the panel came down it suffered minor damage. However the damage was quickly repaired. By dinner
time only one set of panels was up. We had hoped to have three sets up by the end of the day.
We are very fortunate right
now as the weather forecast is for good weather through Saturday. This means that if all goes well all of the side
panels will be in place by Friday. Then we will build the floors from wood and then raise the roof. Considering
the setbacks we have had we are doing very well. Should the habitat be completely finished within a week we will
do a short crew simulation with some of the science we had planned.
Mars Meets The Internet
We may have performed a first today. For a couple of hours after several hours of prep work we were able to broadcast
images onto the web from the construction site. We had an All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) near the hab with a web cam
provided by SpaceRef.com using wireless technology from
Simon Fraser University’s(SFU)/NASA PlanetNet research
program. This test was conducted by myself and Stephen Braham of SFU. The image was captured by the web cam which
has its own web server within the unit. The image was then broadcast through the wireless network to a repeater then
up to the satellite dish. From there it was sent to the Anik 1 satellite and routed through an Internet service
provider in Ottawa. The image was refreshed every 30 seconds. Tomorrow we hope to broadcast more images this way. However
no time has been set. Just visit this web site for updates as the day progresses.
Sometime in the morning I’ll also post a video of today’s panels going up.
Tomorrow should be another great day!
For daily updates on the NASA Haughton-Mars Project click here.
Video File
