Dispatch from Mars Society Arctic Expedition Robert Zubrin
The day began chill and rainy, and I awoke feeling like a cold might be coming on. I switched into
thermal underwear and woolens, and after some hot tea and the onset of slightly warmer and dryer weather
after breakfast, I felt a lot better.
John Schutt suggested that our crew could make itself useful by going up to the hab to help clear away the last of the construction debris and set up the water line, and so we did.
When I got to the hab, I found Frank Schubert outside rigging up a spare 1.8 kilowatt generator. One of our two 5.5 kilowatt units had failed, leaving the station power strapped. The two largest power consumers in the hab are the incinerator toilet, followed by the water heating system. If the two are run together, the single 5.5 kW generator can’t handle it, and throws its circuit breakers. I suggest installing a prominent switch and adopting the practice of turning off the water heater when the toilet is in use. Frank says he’ll do it, but indicates that will probably result in severe limits to our hot water. I say, so be it. We can get by without hot water but we can’t get by without power. As a further backup, I talk to John Schutt to set in motion the process of getting us another 5.5 kW unit before our last one fails.
Bill, Vladimir and Katy take on the task of laying out the water line while I help Frank and A.C. move away the construction debris. The hab this year will not recycle water, but will use Devon Island water pumped up from the Lowell Canal that runs in the valley separating base camp from the Flashline Station. Relative to a Mars mission, that is of course unrealistic.However we will count the water that we use in order to develop the specifications for the throughput of a water recycling system that we will develop for next year. (The design of the water recycling system also requires testing the quality of our input and output water, which is why I sent a water testing kit north via DHL on June 28. Unfortunately, DHL has thus far failed to deliver the shipment, airbill#8899435366. They have, however, removed the embarrassing information from their website which reported that they shipped the cargo from Denver to Edmonton, thence to Cincinnati, Seattle, and then back to Edmonton. This kind of service has real potential. Next year, I plan to send the IRS my tax check via DHL.)
While working with Frank, I get a more complete picture of the way the simulation as run by the first crew is going. Basically, it’s a mixed picture. Starting pains have made it necessary to break simulation constraints repeatedly. This is understandable, and in fact was expected. The crew has been quite liberal in taking hot showers, which in my view is not realistic and is contributing to their power problem. Conserving water is essential to reduce the mass and cost of human Mars missions, so I intend to be much more strict in this area. Instead of daily showers, my crews will be held to sponge baths every other day. The first crew also had its dinners cooked at base camp and sent over in plastic bags, under the belief that the meals of a Mars crew would be precooked and packaged on Earth, like MREs or TV dinners, to save crew time. I don’t believe this. I think it would be very bad for morale for a crew of a 2.5 year Mars mission to eat MREs every day. The ritual of cooking real meals is an important part of human life. Accordingly, my team will cook its own dinners.
On the other hand, Pascal has been much more strict than I will be in enforcing prebreathing as part of EVA activity. Under the assumption that the hab on Mars will be pressurized to 8 psi, he has specified a 30 minute prebreathing period prior to EVA in order to prevent decompression sickness when entering 4 psi spacesuits. Such a prebreathing period would indeed be necessary if a Mars habitat were pressurized at 8 psi, but it imposes a heravy impediment to the kind of frequent EVA an effective Mars mission will need. For this reason, I don’t think a Mars mission should be conducted with a habitat pressure of 8 psi. Instead 5 psi (3 psi oxygen, 2 psi nitrogen) should be used, as it was on Skylab. If this is done, no prebreathing will be necessary. Instead, the only delay during egress will be about a 5 minute wait to allow for airlock pumpdown.
Around noon, the Darlene Lim and Sam Burbank, two members of the first crew, conduct a pedestrian EVA along Haynes Ridge, where the station is located. Haynes Ridge is the site of a Devonian coral reef, and is rich in fossils, including corals, ammonites, and stromatolites. They take about an hour to walk from one end of the ridge to the other, and appear to collect more than a few fossils. I wonder if a robot like Sojourner, if landed on the same ridge, would have been able to find any. I doubt it. The ridge is covered with sharp rocks ranging from the size of coconuts to that of basketballs. A small wheeled rover like Sojourner would not have been able to traverse it at all. And while the fossils are relatively plentiful, their appearance is subtle, perhaps too much so for robot eyes to detect. Later in the mission, during my third crew and Pascal’s fourth, we will put the ability of robots to explore the ridge to the test using some advanced systems that are being lent to our project by the US Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
After the EVA, Frank and I perform the ritual of replacing the worn and torn Martian tricolor flag that had flown over the station since last summer with a new one. The flag is of the same general form as the French flag, but red, green, and blue, with the red band closest to the mast, then green, then blue. It’s origin goes back to our scouting expedition here in 1999, during which Pascal and I had a conversation which somehow drifted into a discussion of what a Martian flag should be like. Pascal, who is French, suggested the red, green, and blue tricolor, with the colors chosen following the Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars titles of Kim Stanley Robinson’s epic science fiction trilogy which recounts the transformation of Mars by future settlers from its current red, dead desert state to a green world harboring life to a fully living blue planet like the Earth. I liked the idea for that reason, and for others. Red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light, and thus symbolize enlightenment and reason. And the admirably simple tricolor is the most classic form for flags of republics, governments dedicated to liberty, equality, justice and fundamental human rights – 18th century ideals which are still well worth taking to Mars.
The Flashline Station features decal flags of the United States, Canada, Nunuvut, and Mars. But as its fundamental purpose is to advance the cause of a people who are yet to be, those who will bring life to Mars, and Mars to life, it is fitting that it is their banner that adorns its mast. Three cheers for the red green and blue.
My crew moves into the station tomorrow night. DHL 8899435366 where are you????
