Dispatch from Mars Society Arctic Expedition Robert Zubrin July 8, 2001
The plane from Resolute to Devon was scheduled for 4 AM, but at 12:30 AM my phone rings. It is
Colleen Lenahan, calling to tell me the flight has been rescheduled for 1:45 AM, because that is when
the Otter is coming in and the pilot doesn’t want to stick around. Everyone needs to be at the airfield
by 1:20.
There is a problem. No one can find Vladimir Pletser. Colleen has phoned his room and knocked on his door, with no answer. Since there is no where else to look, I go down to join Colleen at his door and give it a proper pounding. The door opens wide, and there is a bleary-eyed Vladimir, dressed in the garments God gave him. Colleen, an Anglo Canadian appears embarrassed, but the Belgian Vladimir is fazed not at all. I tell him to throw on some clothes and hop in the van. Fortunately, the hotel owner has left the keys in the ignition. We barrel on down the dirt road and get to the field in time to meet the plane.
Twin Otters are small planes, and it does not seem possible that the little craft can contain our party with its extensive baggage and scientific equipment, plus plenty of cargo that had been shipped up earlier by First Air to support the expedition. There are 8 boxes of spacesuit simulators from Denver, four crates of seismic sensing equipment sent by the French Space Agency CNRS for Vladimir to use as part of the research program, plus lots of other stuff. Unfortunately missing however are three boxes I shipped from Denver June 28 via DHL containing water testing equipment vital to my research, plus some Mars Society logo hats and shirts for the crews. It now appears, according to the DHL website, that my shipment, airbill# 8899435366, arrived in Edmonton June 29th, but instead of handing the consignment to First Air for shipment north, DHL chose to send the cargo to Cincinnati. From there it went to Seattle, and finally back to Edmonton, where, at this writing, it still is. If anyone at DHL is reading this column, please have your people send my cargo north.
But I digress. We filled the plane and took off at 2 AM, into a brilliantly sunlit Arctic night. The sky was cloudless, and looking down we could survey the barren terrain of Result’s Cornwallis Island, then the beautiful crazed patterns of the sea ice, and then the primal Mars like landscape of Devon Island itself. The plane began to descend and then suddenly there was the Flashline Station, flying the red green and blue tricolor flag of Mars. An instant later we were on the ground.
It being about 3:30 AM, we were greeted by only two people, camp manager John Schutt and his deputy-manager, Joe Amaralik, an Inuk from Resolute. We unloaded the plane, pitched our tents, and sacked out.
Hot breakfast is available at camp at 8 AM, and nearly everyone wakes up for it. Then after a short general camp briefing by John Schutt, the newcomers, who include my crew plus a reporter/cameraman team from Popular Science, are taken out for ATV and shotgun training. The ATV (All Terrain Vehicles) or “quads” are like four-wheeled motorcycles and serve as the primary method of travel on Devon Island. They are quite versatile, and in capable hands can be used to travel rapidly over terrain that many might think impassible for a wheeled vehicle. The informal type of equestrian mobility they offer will be essential for Mars explorers. But they can also be quite dangerous, being prone to topple over in injure those riders who do not show them sufficient respect. Last year, a member of our expedition experienced a serious injury from one. This year, with crew members wearing spacesuit simulators which will significantly impair our situational awareness, agility, and dexterity, the hazards they pose will be worse. The crew wisely seizes the opportunity of our stay outside the station to get some training.
Then there is the polar bear briefing. Polar bears are a real threat on Devon. Their natural habitat is the sea ice, where they prey on seals. In summer, the ice breaks up, and they are forced to come ashore and fast until the ice returns in the fall. The bears can weigh over 2,000 lbs. and run at 35 miles an hour. At that speed, they don’t even need to strike you with their 12 inch claws to kill; being hit by a charging polar bear is like being hit by a truck. And the bears are smart. They will stalk prey from downwind, move very quietly when they require stealth, and cover their black noses with their white paws to camouflage themselves if they are approaching over snow. In short, Michael Crichton’s Velociraptors have nothing on polar bears.
Our weapon of defense against polar bears is a pump action shotgun, with each shell loaded not with shot, but with a massive lead slug. Effective range is about 50 yards, which a charging bear can cover in 3 seconds. John Schutt shows us all how to use the weapon, and we take turns firing it at a cardboard box located about 30 yards away. Most of us miss, and the kick is such that one wonders how many shots such inexperienced marksmen would get off in the span of a polar bear charge. Fortunately, however, the shotgun in the hands of the Mars scientists is only a backup of last resort. The real security for our EVA teams will be provided by experienced Inuit hunters, armed with rifles and practical knowledge of bears. Beyond them, there are the ATV’s which can outrun a polar bear, at least on easy terrain. Finally there are the dogs, who can provide early warning, and sometimes more. In 1997, Pascal’s first expedition to Devon was caught off guard on its final day by an adolescent bear, when their guns were packed away in preparation for pull out. They are saved by Bruno, half Saint Bernard, half Greenland Husky, who put up such a fierce faÁade that he chased the bear out of camp and up the wall of Devon’s Haughton Crater, which is therefore now named the Bruno Escarpment.
The training sessions over, I deal with the press, who are here in large numbers to cover our activity. There are 7 people from the Discovery Channel, who are working on a 3 hour documentary that will air this fall. Then there are three more from Discovery Channel of Canada, two from Popular Science, another from National Public Radio, and the list goes on. Apparently the press knows what I know; that the people, frustrated with 30 years of stagnation of the space program, are thirsting for any news about anyone who is taking any steps towards opening the way to Mars. NPR interviews me about the meaning of the search for life on Mars. Discovery Channel asks me about my feelings comparing last year to this.
That takes me back. Last year, when Frank Schubert and I arrived here, we found a desperate situation. Our first 6 paradrops delivering the station components had landed wide of the construction site, and the last drop had been a disaster, with the payload separating from the chute at altitude leading to the complete destruction of the habitat’s floors, the trailer needed to move the dispersed components to the construction site, and the crane needed to erect to huge heavy habitat wall panels. With the loss of the crane, the construction crew we had flown to the Arctic to build the station had deserted. So there we were, in mid July, with the Arctic summer half gone, our station in pieces all over the landscape, and we without floors, trailer, crane or crew. I can still remember one reporter who asked me; “So doctor Zubrin, how would you compare the failure of your program with that of the Mars Polar Lander?” I had replied; “Yes, there’s a parallel in that we both hit a rock. But we have a human crew here, and we are going to find a way out of this.”
And we did. In place of the runaway construction crew we pulled together a new team, a taxicab army, composed of a mixed group of Mars Society scientists, Inuits, and reporters. We built a substitute trailer out of wood and parts of a wrecked baggage cart from Resolute Bay airfield. We got some rickety old scaffolding from Resolute, and working our team in massed gangs Roman style, we used the scaffolding and a block and tackle to get the walls and the dome up. We had a favorable break in the weather, and we seized it, instituting 14 hour work days to get the station up in the two weeks left to use before pullout. It had been tense, dangerous, totally exhausting, and yet incredibly exhilarating.
This year couldn’t be more different. The ground may be wet, but the sky is blue. After 20 years of talking about it, and three years of working on it, we now have a Mars Arctic Research Station. The first crew finally went into simulation mode today, performing one short EVA. Tomorrow they will begin testing exploration operations in earnest. My crew will move in Tuesday night. At long last, we are about to get a taste of what the first human explorers of Mars will experience.
I wonder what it will be like.
