Dispatch from Mars Society Arctic Expedition Robert Zubrin July 16, 2001

We took some time off last night to watch another movie. This time the selection was the goofy alien
invasion spoof “Mars Attacks.” The crew got a real kick out of it. In fact, they got so high on the
film that this morning, when the EVA team did their radio voice checks, everyone substituted Martian
talk “Ack, Ack Ack, Ack Ack Ack,” for the usual integer count to ten.

It was good that we got our fun in during the checkout, because what followed was less than fun. The mission was to transport Vladimir’s geophone flute into Haughton Crater, to the site we call two-streams, and set it up twice to get a complete three-dimensional seismic sounding. The EVA team was Charles, Vladimir, Bill, and I, with Katy running the capcom station communication link supporting us from the hab. The two-stream site is only a couple of kilometers from the station, but to get there we had to descend from rocky Haynes Ridge into the crater, whose surface is covered with a combination of condensed rock vapor power that rained down after the impact, and eroded silt transported into the crater bowl by water action since. This fine material had been turned into a kind of thick viscous mud by the recent snow melt and rain, but during our sortie to Trinity Lake two days ago we had been able to cross it by ATV without too much difficulty.

However on this deployment we were dragging the geophone; 300 pounds of equipment hauled by ATV trailer. That changed things. Two-thirds of the way to the deployment site, the trailer and Vladimir’s ATV hauling it got hopelessly stuck in the mud.

There was a bar of firmer ground about 20 meters beyond the mud-trap that caught the trailer, and we parked the other ATVs there. We got a rope and tied it to the trailer hitch on one of the free ATVs then walked back to attach it to Vladimir’s to give him a tow. As we approached the trapped vehicle, the quality of the ground turned to mush and we began to sink a foot or more into the mud with each step. The stuff would have been a deadly kind of quick-mud, except that about 18 inches down there was a floor of permafrost which limited the depth to which we could sink. But each step became a labor. Sometimes you had to dig the mud away from around your boot just to be able to lift it for another step. Our spacesuit boots are actually rubberized US Army cold-weather boots, and they lace on pretty tight. Nevertheless, the mud gripped them so hard that several times I had to stop lifting and put my foot back down and dig the mud away around them in order to stop the mud from pulling a boot right off my foot. When you pushed your foot down all the way, you could feel the cold permafrost, and I had eerie thoughts about what might happen if the warmth of my boot let it melt its way into the permafrost a bit, only to be frozen in afterwards. So I did my best to keep moving.

We reached Vladimir’s vehicle with the rope, but it was apparent that it would be hopeless to try to pull his ATV and the trailer out at the same time. So we tied the rope to his front axle and detached the trailer from the hitch. Then Charles went back drive to the tow ATV, and with Vladimir, Bill, and I pushing, and running the stuck ATV to get it to help out, we pulled the trapped vehicle out of the muck.

Now the task was to get the trailer out. This proved harder, as with only two wheels to support it, the trailer had sunk pretty deep. We tied the tow rope to it and tried to pull it out with an ATV, but it wouldn’t budge. The question now was what to do. Charles, Bill, and I wanted to unload the trailer, drag it out, and then try to slide the three heavy-duty plastic crates containing the geophone out over the mud with an ATV pull. Vladimir, who was responsible for the gear, wouldn’t hear of it. So Charles decided to appeal for advice to John Schutt, the camp manager and experienced Arctic scout who was riding shotgun for our EVA. This was a violation of simulation, but the situation was serious enough to merit such a move.

Schutt reccomended we rig up a pair of ropes and try to pull the loaded trailer out with two ATVs. This we did, and with Vladimir, Bill, and I pushing from behind, and John and Charles gunning the two vehicles, we managed to haul the trailer free. The job had taken an hour and a half of very hard work, with all of us except Schutt doing it in complete EVA gear.

By this time we all agreed that the mission into the crater had to be aborted, so we started to head back. but we had not gotten two hundred yards when the trailer and its tow ATV got stuck again. My heart sank. We now had to do the whole procedure all over. Fortunately, this time the ground was a bit better and we all knew what to do, so it only took about 40 minutes to get them free. We then continued back, and caked with mud, we made it to the Flashline Station without further incident.

There is no mud on Mars, but there could be vehicle sand traps. So something like what we faced today on Devon could happen there. If it had, and the Mars expedition performed no better and no worse than we did today, they would not have lost crew (since we were able to get the ATVs out of the muck ourselves), but might have had to abandon equipment (since we had to break simulation to recover the trailer).

Vladimir was very disappointed with the day, since no geophone data was acquired, but I am not. We are here to learn lessons, and we got plenty of those. The two most important center on the basic issues; How did we get into trouble and how did we get out of it?

We got into trouble because our preliminary reconnaissance of the questionable crater terrain was too superficial. Yes we drove over it in advance, but only in ATVs. We should have done more, perhaps taken a trailer down there, loaded with rocks to match the geophone weight. If that had gotten stuck, we could have just tossed the rocks and returned. On the other hand, if we could make it to the site with the rock-loaded trailer, we would have had proof-positive that the mission was doable, and commitment of the geophone would have been justified.

So much for how we got into trouble. Now how did we get out? We got out with the help of John Schutt, but not because of any extra muscle or equipment that he added, or because he could operate out of simulation burdens. Indeed, even after Schutt started helping, nearly all the labor was still done by us, and those things that he did do, any of us could have done. The key thing that Schutt brought that allowed us to save the equipment was his intimate knowledge of the best ways to use ATVs under difficult Arctic conditions.

Knowledge is power. Mars explorers will need to train with their rovers until they know their capabilities as well as John Schutt knows those of his.