Much to the disappointment, I suspect, of some of the human factors researchers tracking our mission, our crew has gotten along astonishingly well. I put this down in part to luck, but also in part to some common values, including the stereotypical Canadian ‘niceness’, which a lot of Americans (at least, the ones on our crew) obviously share. Matt is our poster boy for this trait: he’d make you breakfast in bed, then apologize for undermining your diet.

Even with all this harmony, however, sometimes a girl just gets up on the wrong side of the bunk. I had already snarked at both James and Ryan today for no good reason, when an issue came up that actually causes me some real stress: how to make sure that we get all the data we need before we leave (there’ll be no popping back for one more sample once we’re gone). Problem was, I was too irritable to deal with it in an even-tempered, rational way. So, what to do?

One of the human factors studies is looking at coping strategies, which seem to fall into a few broad categories: actively working towards a solution; seeking advice and support; emoting; denial; booze and/or prayer; and so on. Here, many of our habitual strategies just aren’t available: no pets to cuddle or oceans to swim in, for example. In this case, I just wanted to go somewhere else, and do something else for a while – but there’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. So, instead, I stopped working, went to my bunk, put in my earplugs, and played stupid computer games for a couple of hours. As coping strategies go, it may not be the healthiest, but when I came out I was able to discuss the EVA schedule without biting anyone’s head off. Mission accomplished.

Tragic News

The Weekly World News is ceasing publication. Not only did they introduce the world to my fave celebrity, Bat Boy, but they have been publishing insightful science stories on Mars for many years. It's a sad day for journalism.

Would someone mind grabbing a copy of that last issue for me?

C'mon, people. I need comments. It would be too sad if I were to crack up a mere month away from the end!

One more LOST parallel: webcams all over the hatch/hab...

LOST vs. FMARS: a side-by-side comparison

We've become more than a bit obsessed with LOST, partly because it's a great show that we have watched through, as a crew, from the first season; but mostly because we have a sneaking suspicion that we're on that island. Yes, I know, the human factors researchers will be delighted to take this as evidence that we've finally gone irredeemably nutso, but check the evidence (I don't know why the software's putting a big space here, but live with it):

LOST	FMARS
the hatch	the hab
polar bears	polar bears
Dharma-brand canned food	Safeway-brand canned food
Button must be pressed regularly; may be part of cruel experiment	Button must be pressed regularly; definitely part of cruel experiment
The Others, mysterious researchers who live on the other side of the island	The Others, mysterious researchers who live on the other side of the stream
Bulky suits must be worn outside; may or may not serve useful purpose	Bulky suits must be worn outside; may or may not serve useful purpose
Little bottles of booze from the plane, last way longer than expected	Little bottles of booze from the plane, run out almost instantly
Guys at polar station receive signal from island, send help	Guys at Polar Shelf receive signal from island, know help is not needed
Jack	Matt
Charlie	Ryan

...and so on. We even have photographic evidence.

Jack/Matt:


Charlie/Ryan:


Our hatch:

Mars Clock

If you'd like to know whether I'm up or not and can't be bothered to check the webcam, have a look at the FMars Time Clock. I particularly like that the 24th hour has 99 minutes.

Oddly, my circadian rhythm seem to be naturally on Mars time. On a 24hr day, I always want to stay up just that little bit later, and sleep in that little bit later, than a normal schedule allows. The extra 39 minutes in a Martian sol allows me to do just that, without throwing the whole day off. Kinda neat.

Recent hab food: chicken pot pie, a really good beef stew made with jerky (the first one didn't simmer for long enough, and the meat was still chewy), and Matt's chocolate tofu pudding (delicious). Just so's you know.

Kim vs. Mud Part II

I got my boot back! And Simon's! The mud dried out just enough to be diggable, so we dug. Here are the triumphant boot hunters:



For the sticklers out there, I'm not wearing my EVA pack and helmet because I'm just about to get on an ATV, so I've switched to a motorcycle helmet for safety. Ryan was our polar bear monitor for this jaunt, so is au naturale-ish.

Sedimentally Yours

One way in which the Arctic is not very Mars-like is that there is surface water, and several small lakes and ponds dot the landscape near the hab. One of our studies is looking at the sediment at the bottom of these ponds. The story goes something like this: there are little wormy critters called chironomidae that live in lakes and ponds. In warm years, there are more of them; cold years, fewer. When they die, their little skulls settle on the bottom with the rest of the sediment for that year. So, you can find out about climate change by taking a core of pond gunk, and meticulously counting every chironomid head in each layer using a microscope. It's a bit like tree rings, but with worm skulls.

Here's me gathering a core of pond sediment. Our regular EVA suits don't function well in water, so I'm working the nautical look:

Dog Days of Summer

For those of you who haven't met her, this is my dog Leia:



She's sweet and I love her, but she chose to welcome the new house-sitters by barfing and crapping all over the carpets. So, the poor folks came from the airport to find, not the lovely tropical getaway they had been expecting, but a place that looks and smells like a discount vet's dumpster. Thanks, Leia.

Mud, mud, gloooooorious mud

Before I show the picture, I would like to point out that I'm not a complete idiot. The ground looked OK, I swear. Besides, what's a little mud? You get dirty, it dries, you brush it off. A nuisance at worst, and a featured attraction at some bars.



I was stuck for one hour. Simon rushed in after me, and got stuck too. Matt then had to build a bridge out of tarp and rocks to get to Simon and haul him out, sans one boot. Digging away the mud didn't help at all - it just shlurped back in. I waited patiently, not that I had much choice, contemplating the fate of the dinosaurs and experiencing the first step of becoming a fossil. The guys extended the bridge to reach me, and started pulling. It took both of them - two big strong guys, hauling away with all their strength - 20 minutes to drag me out, and I too left a boot tribute. In the photo, you'll notice I'm not wearing my pack and helmet, which had to be removed before I could be extricated. This makes me 'sim dead'. Luckily, I will be reincarnated tomorrow, with a lesson learned: Mud sucks.

House/pet sitting in Hawaii??

I'm in sudden and urgent need of someone to house and dog sit for me, in Hawaii, from July 6th. Please let me know if you're interested!

Life is just like hair...

...nasty, reddish and short.

Way back in March at MDRS, Kathy enthusiastically volunteered to cut my hair this summer. I said it wouldn't happen until the words "Get this f******* thing off my head" passed my lips.

Well, that day came today.

Before:



After:



OK, the first picture is cuter, but that's my attitude, not Kathy's handiwork. Thanks, Kathy!

There has been some clamoring for Mars Ho specific goodies. Enjoy.

Buy our stuff. You know you want to. There's even a cute little logo-wearing polar teddy bear. Who can resist that??

Time

Yesterday was summer solstice which, below the Arctic Circle, is the longest day of the year. Here, we're in the middle of a four-month long day, so let's just call it "noon". We celebrated by leaving the window-shades off all night long, so that we could feel the full effect of the bright, bright midnight sun.

It's a transition period in many ways. Although there are still patches and occasional deep drifts of snow, there is now more brown than white in the landscape, and starting Monday, we're taking ATVs rather than snowmobiles to our sites. Our science is changing, too, from projects that were focussed on the snow and the permafrost to those that are interested in the now-uncovered rocks and the crater itself.

We're also embarking on a unique experiment: Mars time. The Martian day (or 'sol') is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. For the month of July, we'll be working on Mars time, so will gradually drift out of synch with all you Earthlings. Each sol, we will take several cognitive tests and keep a sleep diary, so that any physiological or psychological disruption can be detected. Because we have fairly constant daylight (clouds passing over the sun cause more light variation than the time of day), we don't have any natural cues to tell us what time it is, so any discombobulation we feel will be due to the shift itself. I expect we will feel better, if anything, thanks to the 'extra' 40 minutes in our daily schedule, but it's an important question to answer before we send astronauts to Mars to cope with it for real.

Here's the view from the hab at 10pm on the night of June 21st:

Food News

Simon got all nostalgic for the Quebec sugar shack experience, and made maple syrup taffy in the snow:



Damn yummy. We've also figured out how to make beef stew from beef jerky, and decent scrambled eggs from dehydrated egg powder (the trick is to add enough veggies and cheese that the eggs themselves are only about 50% of the resulting mix). Last night: cheese fondue. Next up: a turkey feast for our halfway point. Mashed potatoes and gravy are no problem, stuffing and pumpkin pie should be fine, but the turkey itself... molded canned turkey? Turkey loaf? Any ideas??

In any endeavor like ours, there will be attention from the press. Hell, we seek it. A major part of our mission is to get people to imagine, vividly, the exploration of Mars by human beings, and we’re eager to put up webcams, post blogs, and invite reporters into our lives, in the hopes that the exposure will turn minds towards that vision.

With this attention comes criticism – fair enough. How much do analog missions contribute to the goal of exploring Mars? To what extent do simulation conditions mirror those of a long term space mission? Aren’t unmanned missions to other planets just as productive as proposed manned missions, and much less risky? If not, why not? We’re asked these questions every day, and the answers are the subjects of intensive investigations, both here and at research institutions around the world.

What’s more difficult to deal with is ridicule. We’re wearing fake spacesuits and pretending to be on another planet – it’s not hard for a hack to make fun of that. Luckily, most of the journalists who spend time with us understand that we simply can’t answer the important questions about long duration space missions – what is tolerable? what isn’t? what works? what doesn’t? – without some of us looking like fools some of the time. I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of personal dignity to find the answers, but that does means laughing it off every now and then.

Oh, and my friends? You can mock me as much as you want - I'd feel neglected if you didn't!

Polar bear prints. 'nuff said.

News from the North

Since you asked... my efforts to buy a house while living at the North Pole have taken a step forward. My offer was accepted! There are still a lot of hoops to jump through (or rather, for Jen to jump through in my stead), but it's progress. It also looks like Paul, one of the advance engineering team who made the hab livable before we arrived, might help me fix up my new place, when he stops in Hawaii for a couple of weeks en route to Antarctica. Yep, he's going to both poles in one year. Nutjob.

Exciting food this week: thai 'chicken' curry with pumpkin and coconut milk, maple syrup snow taffy, and an omelet made entirely of dried or powdered ingredients, including the eggs, butter and cheese. Just add water! The only problem was that the bottom was cooked long before the top, and the oven wasn't behaving, so I finished it off with the blowtorch:



Finally, the ongoing thaw means that some of our drilling sites are becoming pretty damn muddy. For the record, mud and spacesuits don't play well together:

I'm mmmeeeellltinnnnnngggg....

It was a sweltering eight degrees Celsius (that's 46 degrees Fahrenheit) outside yesterday morning, well above freezing. Two of the five lakes we visit regularly have melted, and there are brown patches all over the landscape. We even saw a flock of ducks flying over the crater rim - the only animal life I've seen on Devon Island, aside from the odd speck of a bird in the distance. Spring has most definitely sprung.

This isn't entirely good news. Several of our science projects are about observing changes in the permafrost during the seasonal transition, and the seasons have gotten a bit ahead of us here. We have been in a mad rush to get pre-thaw samples, and will be very busy for the next few weeks, now that the thaw is well under way. To make matters worse, the snowmobiles will be useless when the brown patches outnumber the white - but the ATVs won't be able to replace them as long as there are deep snow areas between the hab and our sample sites. We're hoping the vehicular transition period will be short.

Here's a snapshot of the temperatures so far. These are 16cm and 32cm deep in the ground, so generally colder than the air temperature. Note the very regular daily fluctuation, up until a few days ago - then everything gets messy, as the upper layers start to thaw. If you're wondering about the jump in the Trinity Lake data, we had to move the sensors there a couple of times.

It's getting toasty!