The Days Are Just Packed     
The ongoing saga of David D. Levine's writing and other adventures.

I'm a geek, fan, and writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. For more information about me, please see my web page. If you have questions, comments, or just want to chat, you can send me e-mail. Or you can post a comment on my LiveJournal.

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Feelin' the love

I am feeling very much loved right now. And that includes both the warm-and-fuzzy and the cold-hands, butterflies-in-the-stomach aspects of that emotion.

It started at Ignite Portland, where I presented the five-minute version of my Mars talk in front of about 600 people. The feedback on my talk at the event, on Twitter, on the forums, and from my MDRS crew and others who watched it on YouTube has been most gratifying.

The next day we headed to Seattle for Potlatch, which was as usual filled with lovely people, both old friends and new, and we had many fine conversations and excellent meals. I was amazed by the number of people who came up to me to say they liked my work, even people I barely knew or didn't know at all. The "Writing the Other" panel on Friday evening went well, and then at the auction Saturday night I got to do the Happy Snoopy Dance for a bid of over $100 many times -- including when my MDRS mission patch and "Mars" rock went for $120. Color me astonished!

The peak of the weekend for me came at brunch on Sunday, when I presented the 30-minute version of my Mars talk. People laughed in all the right places, there were tons of excellent questions, and I was just bowled over by sustained applause at the end of it. After that several people came up to me to talk about presenting my Mars talk at other events (I'm told that one person from Wiscon said to someone else "we'll have to be sure to get a big room for it!"). Some of those discussions are beginning to bear very exciting fruit, which I hope to be able to report on soon.

Online, I participated in a "Burning Question" discussion at the blog of Laptop Magazine, in which several SF writers answered the question "Which Technology Makes You Feel Like You’re Living In The Future?". (Thanks to K. Tempest Bradford for the invitation.) That's nice enough, but then the editors of Laptop liked the results so much that they decided to print it in the May issue of the paper magazine. And then Annalee Newitz at io9 picked up one paragraph I wrote in that about "techno-snot" and called it out for a whole article on its own. This attracted the attention of Dearbhaile Heaney, an MA student at the Royal College of Art in London, who is working on an art project investigating the social and cultural perceptions of "goo" and emailed me to pick my brain about the issue. I wound up writing a 300-word flash piece about a fictional techno-goo for the project.

On and on the connections and the links go. There's more in the works, and I'll let you know when I have details.

It's amazingly cool to be at the center of attention like this, and yet it's also scary and nerve-wracking. Although I'm a big ham, performing takes a lot out of me and I have to retreat to a dark room for a few hours afterward to recuperate. I imagine this is a tiny taste of what it's like to be Neil Gaiman. It's exactly what I've always wanted, but I'm also kind of hoping it will slack off and get back to normal soon. Looking at my schedule for the next few months, though, I'm not sure that it will.

The business of being a famous Marsonaut has also interfered with the business of writing. I've written barely half a short story since the beginning of 2010. I've also received a couple of very disheartening rejections recently. But when I look on all these accolades and awards I know that I am capable of writing work that makes people smile. I fully intend to get back on the writing horse this month.

Posted 03/17/2010 15:38 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Jay Lake and I will be "writer gurus" at Writers' Weekend this July 22-25 (Thurs-Sun) at the Ocean Crest Resort on the coast of Washington state. This is a continuation of the former Iron Springs Writers' Workshop at a new location. It's educational, laid-back, and fun, with critique, lectures, and plenty of free time for writing and revising. There are still a few spots left, so if you're interested you should head over to writersweekend.com for more information. To register, email writersweekend@hotmail.com.

Posted 03/17/2010 07:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

We are coming to San Jose for the ECR@25 square dance fly-in, April 2-4, and have decided to stay on for a few days afterwards, returning on the 7th. Anyone in the Bay Area want to hang out April 4-7? We're also interested in crash space, and information about events happening during those days. Leave a comment below or email me at dlevine at spiritone dot com.

Posted 03/10/2010 22:32 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

At the moment we are at Potlatch in Seattle. So far we have had a delightful Chinese dinner with Janna Silverstein and Jack Bell, dim sum with Allen Baum and Donya White, and vegetarian Thai with Liz Argall and Julie and Greg Sardo. I also participated on a panel about "Writing the Other" with Ellen Klages and Nisi Shawl and hung out and talked with a bunch of other cool people.

We also spotted the May 2010 issue of Analog, containing my story "Teaching the Pig to Sing," at a Seattle magazine shop. My name's on the cover! (Yes, as far as the magazines are concerned it is now May. If you want a copy, run down to your local newsstand before June arrives at the beginning of April. This issue will also be available as an e-book in a variety of formats but I don't know when.)

The video of my Ignite Portland talk has been posted on YouTube:

Someone accidentally opened a fire door at the beginning of my talk, causing a loud alarm buzzer. This made me really flustered and I flubbed some of my lines (like calling the Viking rover Voyager and forgetting where Bianca came from) but I did manage to recover once the noise stopped. Everyone said I handled the interruption really well.

Many people in the audience were on Twitter and you can see some of their comments here. The Mars Society's Director of Operations called it "a very inspirational talk" and says she will be including it in the training videos for future crews.

You can see all 20 talks from Ignite Portland 8 on YouTube. My favorites are Why Wikipedians are the Weirdest People on the Internet and The Beginner's Guide to Psychiatric Hospitalization.

I also participated in a group discussion on Laptop Magazine's blog about Which Technology Makes You Feel Like You're Living In The Future?. Go over there, read it, and if you like it leave a comment. There may be more of these "Burning Question" discussions in the future if there's sufficient response.

Posted 03/06/2010 01:04 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Having driven myself to a frazzle with rehearsing all day, I'm just heading out the door for Ignite Portland right now. If you're coming, bring a nonperishable food donation. If not, you can watch it live -- I'll be appearing in the second half of the show. Wish me luck!

Posted 03/03/2010 17:41 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I wrote 500 words yesterday, and 500 words the day before, which is the first fiction I've committed this year. Nearly two months of writing time sacrificed on the altar of Mars, but I think it's a decent tradeoff given the learning and publicity I've gotten out of it. Still, it's good to get back to the actual writing, though I don't think I'll be producing any words today.

Although I haven't been writing much lately, my little paper children are still out there in the world working on my behalf. In summary:

• My nonfiction essay "How the Future Predicts Science Fiction" appeared in the final (alas!) issue of The Internet Review of Science Fiction. This essay is based on the talk I gave at the Library of Congress last year.
• The audio version of my story "Wind from a Dying Star" was podcast at Escape Pod. It's also available on iTunes. This story was my first professional sale (it originally appeared in the anthology Bones of the World, which is amazingly still available) and I'm still proud of it.
• There's a fascinating discussion of "Wind from a Dying Star" going on in the Escape Pod forums. I'm particularly touched by comment #17, from user Mobius04, which says of this story: "Know that you helped change one soldier's life for the better." (Go read the whole thing.)
• On the same day "Wind from a Dying Star" appeared, I sold another story to Escape Pod: "The Last McDougal's," which originally appeared in the January 2006 issue of Asimov's.
• I learned that Fangs for the Mammaries, including my story "Family Matters," will be published in September. Rich Horton liked my stories in the previous two volumes of this series.
• Finally, the expanded version of Wild Cards Volume One, including my story "Powers," is scheduled for November.

Posted 02/27/2010 13:40 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I had a great interview on KATU-TV this morning and it is already available online!

My previous TV appearance is stil available, if you haven't seen it.

I think this may be the end of my 15 minutes of fame, for this round at least.  I'll let you know if I get any more media attention.

Posted 02/26/2010 13:49 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I just received the following email from the folks at Drabblecast (http://www.drabblecast.org):

From: The Folks at Drabblecast
Date: February 25, 2010 12:26:38 AM PST
To: David D. Levine
Subject: Drabblecast People's Choice Award 2009: Babel Probe by David D. Levine!

David,
Not sure if you were even aware of this, but your story, Babel Probe made the top 5 in the Drabblecast People's Choice Awards.  Out of all the stories we ran last year- listeners in our discussion forums voted for their favorites, and the top 5 were:
Clown Eggs by Jay Lake
Annabelle's Alphabet by Tim Pratt
Teddy Bears and Tea Parties by S. Boyd Taylor
Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs by Leonard Richardson
and then your story.
Finally, our listeners had to narrow it down and vote for their favorite of those-- and you won!  You won "Best Story of 2009" in our 2009 People's Choice Awards.  Congrats!  We announced it on this week's show.  It's a big deal for us.  That story was fantastic and I'm really glad that it won.  Even though we ran it all the back in April, our listeners still remember it and gave it crazy love.
So we have a cup called the "Sacred Chalice of Glory" that we're having your name engraved on and that we'd like to send you, if you can provide us with a mailing address.
Again, congratulations, and thanks for the phenomenal story.  Hope we keep getting submissions from you-- clearly our listeners would love that.
Best, Norm

The winning Drabblecast is a most excellent audio performance of the story, with music and sound effects and everything, and you can hear it here.

This is the story for which thepussinboots drew this awesome picture (click to embiggen):

I am so thrilled!

Posted 02/25/2010 07:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Sunday was my 49th birthday. (Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes!) It was a quiet day, but I ate some of my favorite things and hung out with my sweetie, who gave me the new Mark Knopfler CD.

I am a very lucky guy. I'm retired, which means I pretty much get to do what I want every day, and I have enough money that I can pretty much get myself whatever I want when I want it. This makes it really hard to buy presents for me or to do something "special" to celebrate a birthday. That's okay; I wouldn't have it any other way.

The day before my birthday, the TV interview I taped last week about my trip to Mars finally aired. I'm very pleased with how it came out, and you can see it below:

Today was the tech rehearsal for Ignite Portland, where I'll be giving a 5-minute version of my Mars talk (at the Bagdad Theatre next Wednesday, March 3). I don't feel quite ready but I'm sure it will go fine.

I have more news but this will have to do for now.

Posted 02/24/2010 17:34 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

My appearance on KGW tonight has been bumped to tomorrow, due to breaking news about a police shooting.

Even if you don't have a TV, you'll be able to watch me live at http://www.kgw.com/thesquare when it does air, currently scheduled for 7:00 PST on Friday.

Posted 02/18/2010 17:02 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I got an excellent interview in The Oregonian (Portland's daily newspaper) on Monday, which took up half the front page of section B and continued within. The full text of the article can be found online.

I also had an interview with Willamette Week (Portland's "alternative" newsweekly), which they published on their website but not in their print edition.

I am scheduled to appear on two local TV stations -- tomorrow evening on Live @ 7, (KGW, channel 8, February 18, 7:00 PM PST) and next Friday on AM Northwest, (KATU, channel 2, February 26, 9:00 AM PST). If you're not local or don't have a TV, both are supposed to be available via live streaming at the given web pages, and selected segments should be available online after the program airs. This is live TV, so it's subject to change.

Posted 02/17/2010 23:41 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

A one-R GRM is a rental equation
A two-R GRRM is a writer, Caucasian
But I would bet a can of worms
That there is no three-R GRRRM.

Posted 02/11/2010 10:13 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

One of the hosts of the show, the one who is a space geek and really wanted to do this interview, had to have dental surgery, so my appearance has been rescheduled to February 26. Can't say I'm completely surprised... in my experience, dealing with television means you have to be fast on your feet.

Meanwhile, I've had two interviews with local print media in the last two days. One of them may or may not publish the piece, depending on what the other one does and when. This process is fascinating to watch. I'll let you know when and if either of these interviews bears fruit.

I also got the February Locus, with a big picture of me in my space suit in the People and Publishing section.

My fifteen minutes of fame are ticking away...

Posted 02/10/2010 12:13 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, the current East Coast Snowpocalypse has put the kibosh on our planned trip to Washington, DC for the ACDC square dance weekend. Poot.

The event is still going on, as they expect the weather to have cleared somewhat by Friday, but our plane tickets were for Wednesday and the airline canceled them today. We could have tried to reschedule, but given the number of stranded and desperate people who will be trying to rebook and the likely condition of the airports and roads, we decided with great reluctance to bag the whole thing. Because it's a weather-related cancellation we can get all our money back from the airline, and ACDC will roll our registrations over to next year.

But, as they say, every dark cloud has a silver lining, and when one door shuts another opens, and three skinks are as good as a lemur: This weekend is also Radcon, a science fiction convention in Pasco, WA. Everyone's been asking whether I'm going anyway, so since we no longer have any plans for the weekend we're embracing serendipity and going to that. It's also a chance to visit Kate's folks in Kennewick.

The convention hotel's sold out, but the amazing Radcon Bob has managed to scare us up a room, and he also says he'll find a spot on the program for me to present my Mars talk. I might also be on some other programming. Whee!

In other news, I'm told there's a display at Powell's Cedar Hills of ten local SF writers' recent books and their favorite books by other authors. I believe I'm represented by Space Magic and Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas. Also, I'm getting a lot of media attention on the Mars thing and hope to have some news to share with you soon. I'm no longer worried about making it back from DC in time for my appearance on AM Northwest on Tuesday morning, so if you're in Portland, set your TiVos for that!

Posted 02/09/2010 20:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Sorry I haven't blogged lately. I spent most of the first week back just recovering and digging out from under two weeks of email. Much of the time since has been spent working on a Keynote (Apple's answer to PowerPoint) slide show of my trip to Mars, mostly photos -- I'm about three-quarters done with it and I suspect the first draft will take about two hours to present, but once I have it organized and structured I can cut it down. I also have begun outlining a science fiction story incorporating my experiences at MDRS; right now I'm trying to get the orbital mechanics to work with the plot I have in mind. (Can't have a Mars base with two-week rotations when there's only a launch window every 26 months!)

I sent out a bunch of emails to the local media right after I got home and they've begun to bear fruit. I'm giving an interview to a reporter from Willamette Week (local alternative weekly newspaper) on Tuesday, I'm scheduled to appear on AM Northwest (local TV morning show) the following Tuesday, February 16, and on March 3 I'll be presenting a rapid-fire talk as part of Ignite Portland -- 20 speakers each presenting 20 slides in 5 minutes on a topic they're passionate about. (I described it to a friend as being like a cross between TED and speed-dating.) All of these should be available on the web after they're done; I'll provide links when they are available.

On March 6 I will be speaking, with slides, for about 20 minutes at the banquet of Potlatch, a science fiction convention in Seattle. I've also been asked to produce short text pieces for the website of the Science Fiction Writers of America and the progress report of Renovation, the 2011 World Science Fiction Convention, neither of which I've yet begun writing. Once I've written those I plan to pitch non-fiction pieces to many other markets, which is a new thing for me. I also hope to present my Mars talk at Wiscon, the Worldcon, OryCon, and other events, if the organizers will have me. (Not Radcon or Norwescon, alas.)

In writing news, my non-fiction essay "How the Future Predicts Science Fiction" will be appearing in the final issue of The Internet Review of Science Fiction and my story "horrorhouse" made the BSFA Award longlist. "horrorhouse" might also be (re)printed in a forthcoming paper version of DayBreak... I'll keep you informed of any progress. The cover and final ToC of Retro Spec, including a reprint of my story "Nucleon," have also been announced... it's scheduled for publication in October 2010. And I got a nice wooden base made for my Endeavour Award.

Today is a busy day, with a manuscript-mailing party, a critique group meeting, and two square dances. I need to finish my Keynote presentation, prepare slides for Ignite Portland, and select photos and edit videos for AM Northwest. There's several kinds of writing to do. We're having a small party on Sunday and there's prep to do for that. There's laundry and dishes and taxes and all those other mundane details. And all of this has to get done before we leave for a square dance event in Washington, DC on Wednesday (assuming they've dug out from under their Snowpocalypse by then).

What else? Oh, yeah... must remember to breathe.

Posted 02/06/2010 10:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I'm back from Mars, but my head's still in a strange space. This will probably continue for some time.

I've been spending some of my time doing catchup chores, like clearing out my spam traps (I have five, for my various accounts) and unpacking and doing laundry. Most of the rest of yesterday was spent working on a Keynote presentation (Apple's answer to PowerPoint) of my Mars mission. It's going to be mostly photos. I have 2500+ photographs to sort through and in two passes I got them down to the 1000 best and then the 400 best. I really need a 100 best and 30 best for various purposes. And that's not to mention the videos.

Most other daily stuff isn't happening yet. I need to take the car to the shop (battery died while I was gone) and vote (deadline is today) and answer some important paper mail and clean the kitchen and stuff like that there, but it's hard to concentrate on Earthly life.

The new MDRS crew is going great guns, fixing the shower and water heater and fourth rover which have been out of commission for a long time, putting up GPS tracks on Google Earth with their heart rates and everything, and finishing the erection of the radiotelescope. I am so proud of them! You can see their group blog at http://www.wkiri.com/mdrs_crew89/.

Posted 01/26/2010 08:05 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Now that I'm back on Earth I have the bandwidth to post videos and higher-resolution photographs. Here's the first: a two-minute tour of the habitat and the view from the observatory.

Posted 01/24/2010 12:43 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I posted photos every day during my trip to Mars, but for technical reasons I could only post them to LiveJournal rather than here. Here's a link to all of my photo posts on LJ (about 6 photos per post). Enjoy!

MDRS-88 sol 1 photos
MDRS-88 sol 2 photos
MDRS-88 sol 3 photos
MDRS-88 sol 4 photos
MDRS-88 sol 5 photos
MDRS-88 sol 6 photos
MDRS-88 sol 7 photos
MDRS-88 sol 8 photos
MDRS-88 sol 9 photos
MDRS-88 sol 10 photos
MDRS-88 sol 11 photos
MDRS-88 sol 12 photos
MDRS-88 sol 13 photos
MDRS-88 sol 14 photos
MDRS-88 sol 15 photos

Posted 01/24/2010 10:47 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Woke up in the hotel in Grand Junction, and even though I'm no longer in an isolated station in the middle of the desert I felt very alone. I miss my crewmates. Had another hot shower to the point of wrinkled fingers. Aah.

Didn't have a great breakfast. My waffle stuck in the waffle maker, then I spilled a whole cup of coffee getting the creamer out of the fridge, and by the time I got that cleaned up the torn-up waffle was cold. Fox News was babbling away on the TV, talking about how a nun had been saved from being run over by a train and a dog was rescued from floodwaters on the L.A. River, and I reflected just how much I had not missed the news from Earth. About the only news I did catch was the fact of a horrible earthquake in Haiti, but the news was... well, it was so irrelevant to us that it might as well have been on another planet.

I realized only later that I hadn't had to take full responsibility to clean up the coffee spill. It simply never occurred to me to ask anyone else to do it.

While I ate my cold waffle I pulled out my iPhone to check my email. But as soon as I connected to the network, the very first thing I pulled up was the MDRS webcam. All the new kids were gathered in the kitchen area; looks like they're doing the dishes together. Good for them. Then I read my email, and the first couple of messages were between the new crew and Mission Support (crew members are included on the hab mailing list for the previous and following rotations as well). The crew was asking about how to get the water heater in the kitchen working (it isn't working because there isn't one; we heated water for our sponge baths on the stove) and Mission Support sent them a reminder about getting your daily reports and photos in on time. And while I was reading a trivial little exchange about getting a network hard drive set up on the hab laptop I started sobbing, right there in the Best Western's breakfast room. I can't really describe my emotions at that point. Loss? Homesickness? Relief? Exhaustion? If it's homesickness I'm not sure whether it's for Portland or Mars. Whatever it is, I'm crying again right now as I type this.

It's now 9:00 AM and my flight home isn't until 4:00 PM. I could go to the airport now and try to get on standby for an earlier flight, but that would be a hassle and I'd most likely wind up spending the day in the Grand Junction and/or Denver airports rather than home with my sweetie. I have a lot of things to do on my computer anyway, and my hotel room has a nice desk and fast free Internet, so I'm just going to stay here until my scheduled departure time.

Posted 01/24/2010 07:55 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

The day dawned clear and cold, with most of the snow melted and the ground mostly frozen rather than muddy. By noon it was about half dry, squidgy in a few places but no impediment to travel at all.

Spent the morning packing, taking a last few pictures and videos, and doing a few bits of paperwork, but mostly just waiting for Crew 89 to show up. I put on my space suit for the last time, to get a video of the process; I walked up to the Musk Observatory for the last time, to get one more set of photos of the splendid view; I walked around and got a few pictures of things that had come to be important for me without ever being photogenic, like the Engineering shed. I said a fond goodbye to my radios, my faithful rovers, my trusted backpacks -- even cantankerous #4. I gave Laksen a signed copy of Space Magic. I must confess I got a little teary-eyed.

Crew 89 was about an hour late, which made us even more pleased to see them when they finally showed up. Even better, they came in a huge 4x4 that would easily handle any rough roads and could accommodate all our luggage. They came in with a huge load of food, including many things that had run out early in our mission or even before we arrived. Lucky bastards!

We spent about three hours in hand-over meetings, walking them through the hab's systems and answering questions. Having written the Quick Guides, I could answer questions about areas I never even handled. They seem like a smart bunch, but so naive in the ways of Mars. They intend to do jazzercise every day and have a clever plan to get showers which seemed horribly overambitious to us, but hey, if they can make it work, more power to them.

After the traditional group photos on the front porch, we drove off, leaving the starry-eyed young'uns to make their way on Mars. They have an exciting and challenging two weeks ahead of them, but I'm sure they'll find their way just as we did, and in two weeks they will be the old hands, doing the same for Crew 90.

In any endeavour, from running for the bus to serving a tour of duty, one naturally paces oneself, conserving energy and attention to last as long as necessary. If this were a three-week mission I'm sure I would be much more ready to go on at the end of two weeks than I am right now, but as it stands I am completely spent and more than ready to go home. I am so very glad we didn't have to spend even one additional night at the hab.

We had a little excitement not long after departing the hab, about which I'll say no more. Then we got a panicked phone message from the commander of Crew 89, saying that a jacket and wallet had been left in our car and he was running after us in New Blue. We were not pleased at the delay, but it would have been churlish to keep driving, so we waited by the side of the road for about half an hour until he caught up and got the missing jacket (the wallet was not in the car; I hope it turns up). If we'd been able to call him back, though, I think we might very well have left the jacket hanging on the milepost 152 sign and kept going. Do not get between the outgoing crew and their showers.

Once we made it out to where I had proper cell phone service I checked the hab webcams on my iPhone. The new kids seemed to be settling in nicely, but there was a weird moment when one minute they were all at the table and the next they were all gone; a few minutes later they'd returned. A sudden crisis, or did they all just go out to look at the stars? We may never know. It's very weird looking at the MDRS webcam and seeing other people in "our" hab. Imagine seeing live video of your own kitchen with a different family in it! Surprisingly addictive to watch.

After a stop at Wal-Mart to return a few unused items and buy some souvenirs, we had one last dinner together -- real meat, and non-dehydrated vegetables, and soda pop, and wine, and all the water we wanted, just for the asking. Heaven. Bianca had to go back after visiting the loo because she realized only after leaving the bathroom that she could flush the toilet. I washed my hands in warm water for the first time in two weeks, and also saw myself in the mirror for the first time in two weeks (I caught a lot of sun, apparently, because those spots aren't washing off). We reminisced and cracked in-jokes at the expense of the new crew and generally acted like crazed prospectors just returned to town.

Then the hotel -- just a Best Western, but oh so luxurious with its soft soft beds and clean white sheets and acres, just acres of space. Waiting for me at the front desk was a surprise package from Kate: gingerbread astronauts (with red sugar Mars dust on their boots) and computers and space shuttles and stars and red-frosted planets Mars. I love my sweetie so much. We shared the cookies all around, hugged and shook hands and promised to stay in touch, and I cried a little again. Might see some of them tomorrow at the airport, but we have to assume this is our final goodbye.

Finally, after settling into the room, dealing with some email questions from the new crew, and a long phone call to Kate, came the eagerly-awaited moment: a long, long hot shower, with real soap and everything. I washed my hair three times and scrubbed myself all over with a washcloth until I felt actually clean. I stayed in there until my fingers were all wrinkled. And I flushed the toilet too, just because I could.

And now to sleep, in my soft warm luxurious motel bed. Tomorrow I return to Portland and my beloved and much-missed snookie.

This is David D. Levine, Space Cadet For Mars, signing off!

P.S. You can track Crew 89's progress on their group blog at http://www.wkiri.com/mdrs_crew89/.

Posted 01/23/2010 22:48 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Here's what I submitted to my commander for his End-of-Mission Summary Report to the Mars Society.

MDRS-88 Mission Summary
David Levine Background information: David is an award-winning science fiction writer who worked for 25 years as a technical writer, software engineer, and user interface designer for Tektronix, Intel, and McAfee. He came to MDRS looking for the "telling details" that make stories believable, and got not only that but an amazing adventure as well.

Journalism: David fulfilled his primary mission as Journalist by posting almost 10,000 words of daily reports to his blogs on livejournal.com, dreamwidth.com, and bentopress.com, along with over 70 photos (N.B. photos were small, only 20-80 KB in size). He also posted several brief status updates per day to his Twitter and Facebook readers. These updates reached nearly 2000 "friends" (registered readers) and an unknown number of unregistered readers, and received over 100 comments. He also took over 700 photos and 25 video clips, some of which will be used in future outreach, public education, and publicity opportunities. After returning to Earth, David will write articles and essays about his experience at MDRS, as well as fiction incorporating the things he has learned here, and attempt to place them at national publications. He will also speak about his experience at science fiction conventions and other venues.

David also maintained MDRS's official web presence by selecting and uploading the crew's daily photos (despite many technical issues), managing the MDRSupdates Twitter feed, and fixing and maintaining the webcams. When we arrived at the hab we had only 3 working webcams; now all 6 are working, and all are level and pointed at interesting things. These are all important public-relations and outreach elements of MDRS's mission.

Engineering: In addition to his journalistic duties, David used his technical background to assist Laksen and Paul in keeping the hab and rovers running. He participated in the daily engineering rounds, diagnosed and repaired electrical and plumbing problems, and made sure the radios were properly stowed and charging every night.

David took responsibility for the EVA suits, making sure that all backpacks were properly charged and straps tightened after each EVA. When we arrived we found only five working backpacks and one badly cracked helmet; David repaired the helmet and replaced a dead battery to bring us up to six functional suits, then fixed hoses, replaced fuses, repaired cables, and unstuck zippers to keep all six suits running for the whole rotation.

David also used his technical writing skills to create a series of one-page Quick Guides to help get new crews up to speed quickly on the hab's systems and to offer fast, focused answers to their questions when things go wrong. These are intended to be the documents we wished we'd had when we first arrived. They have been emailed to the Mars Society and to the next crew; laminated printouts will also be handed over to the next crew, and the "Quick Guides.doc" file has been left on the hab laptop so that it can be updated by future crews.

Other: David also worked on the reconstruction of the radiotelescope (much of this work was done in EVA suits), rode along on GPS tracking runs, and participated as a research subject in the food study, suit constraints study, and hab architecture study.

Posted 01/23/2010 07:47 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Spent a big chunk of last night with Paul, sitting around a bucket of water in the lab cleaning mud off our boots with a toilet brush and talking about how to become a for-real astronaut. Just about everyone here but me has taken serious steps toward becoming an astronaut, and it sounds like it's even harder than getting a novel published. They have so many applicants and the requirements are so stringent that the tiniest problem -- or no probem at all -- can knock you out of consideration. In fact, it might just be that the easiest route to becoming an astronaut is to become a US Senator, like John Glenn. That's a position you can obtain with no qualifications but a substantial bank account.

Internet is back up and running at full speed today, thank goodness. It went down again this morning, and I volunteered to go out and clean the dish, but while I was putting my boots on it came back up by itself. Apparently I have become so mighty an engineer that just the threat of a visit from me is enough to make balky equipment cooperate.

On the flip side of that equation, backpack #4 -- the one that wasn't working when we arrived, and whose battery I replaced -- never did charge all the way up and Mission Support recommended I try completely discharging it and charging it for 24 hours. I did so yesterday... and it reacted to this treatment by dying altogether. I was extremely annoyed to be leaving the next crew with a dead pack, after managing to keep all six running for my whole rotation. But after another 12 hours it seems to have mostly recovered: the light is yellow rather than green, and it doesn't blow air quite as forcefully as the others, but it's at least usable. Given another 24 hours of charging it might even be all the way up to 100%.

We had more snow overnight. Bianca and Diego went out for an EVA in the snow but Laksen and I were more cautious; we stayed inside and worked on the Engineering Rounds Quick Guide. This completes the series of Quick Guides -- the planned Power Systems Quick Guide could not be completed because we haven't seen DG this week. I also wrote up an email detailing the problems we've had with our Internet connection this week, with lessons learned and open questions, and mailed it to Mission Support. I hope future crews will find these documents useful.

With the snow and mud, I'm concerned about the next crew making it up Cow Dung Road (really no more than a trail) from the highway to the hab, but if they get the 4WD vehicle from the rental agency as they are supposed to (we didn't) they should be okay. It's been clear and cold all day here, but there are threatening clouds on the horizon and at the moment the wind is blowing so hard we can feel the whole hab shake. Every once in a while there's a frightening crash as ice comes cascading down from the hab roof.

This week has been a real lesson in You Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone. We had such gorgeous weather for the first week and a half and we didn't think it would ever change, but since Wednesday it's been completely different -- much harder to work in and much less conducive to beautiful "Marsy" photographs. I'm glad we made good use of it while we had it, and I hope it clears up soon for Crew 89. The same goes for fast and reliable Internet, come to think of it.

We spent the middle of the day cleaning up the hab, the major part of which was sweeping and vacuuming up the dust that has gotten everywhere since the last cleaning. We also organized the tool benches in Engineering and the EVA room, and cleared off the counters in the lab... yesterday those were valuable geological samples, but today they're just rocks. When Diego asked what he should do with his unneeded samples, I said "Throw 'em out the airlock!" I have never before had the opportunity to say that for real. Bianca even cleaned up the muddy rovers. When we were done the place looked fabulous. Oh, it's not spotless -- this place will never be really clean -- but it's much cleaner than it was, and we think even cleaner than it was when we first arrived.

In the afternoon, we laid various contingency plans to make sure Crew 89 actually makes it out here to relieve us despite the snow and mud. We have a powerful four-wheel-drive vehicle, New Blue (I referred to it as V'ger earlier but V'ger was replaced by this better vehicle), which we can use to drive out to the main road and pick them up if the car they get from the rental agency isn't up to the task. We also made a large sign saying <– HAB so they won't miss the turn-off we missed when we came in. We are in email communication with the new crew and we'll make final plans before they leave the hotel tomorrow morning.

Dinner tonight was a repeat of some of our favorites from earlier in the mission: salad of fresh alfalfa sprouts, corn, and onions with a balsamic vinaigrette, and vegetable couscous. Tomorrow we will treat the newly-arrived Crew 89 with something dehydrated, as is traditional (at least, that's what Crew 87 did for us, and let me tell you we appreciated it).

I think we're leaving the hab in excellent shape for the next crew and we eagerly await their arrival tomorrow.

Posted 01/22/2010 18:54 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Spent most of the morning on paperwork, one way and another. We have to do an end-of-mission summary report, and most of us spent much of the morning working on our sections of it. It's really rather amazing what we've accomplished in the last almost-two-weeks. We've done some serious science, we've had some amazing adventures, we've become experts at things that we'll never do again. (Unless we return, of course -- there are quite a few people who've gone on multiple MDRS rotations -- but even if we do return, things will have changed.)

I helped people with wordsmithing and such, and as we were working on the brief personal biographies for each section I was struck once again by what an amazingly qualified crew we have. Laksen has four advanced degrees and is a VP of a major biomedical company; Bianca represented Belgium at International Space Camp; Paul was a semifinalist for the "academic Heisman" award; Diego is well on his way to being an ESA astronaut. I am so honored to have had the opportunity to be part of this crew.

Despite the fact that much of yesterday's snow is still around, Paul, Laksen, and Bianca took off on a GPS-tagging EVA. The mud was terrible, though, and they soon had to turn back. I prepared hot cocoa for the poor chilled Marsnauts. Paul's radio came back from the EVA muddy and nonfunctional, but once I scraped the mud out of the little USB port on the bottom it came back to life. (In the process I also discovered tht these radios have a powerful LED flashlight built in. Good to know about in case of emergency.)

In the afternoon it began to rain, making the already horrendous mud even worse. Also, our Internet connection is currently limited again, even though the bandwidth usage report shows that we did not use more than the usual amount of bandwidth yesterday. (I've asked the Mars Society to contact HughesNet and find out what's going on but haven't heard back yet.) So with horrible weather outside and no Internet to speak of, I pulled out the game Set and taught it to Bianca and Paul. They are both very smart people and caught on immediately -- in fact, they both beat me handily.

It's snowing now. The snow is building up on the satellite dish and at the moment we have no Internet at all, so this report may not go out until tomorrow, but I'm going to try to send it now just in case.

(Later:) Well, that didn't work. Diego brushed the snow off the dish and that brought the signal back, but it went back down to zero again within 20 minutes. At the moment I'm watching the signal meter wobble between 2 and 4, which is not enough to get a lock on the satellite. So nore more Internet until the weather clears.

The feeling of isolation I am feeling right now is, I think, the most important thing I've gotten from this experience. The dust and the mechanical failures and the sound of breath in your space helmet are all part of the Mars experience, but I don't think that any smaller-scale simulation could have given me this very genuine feeling of complete isolation and self-reliance. We are a long, long way from home and from anyone who could help us, and we are reliant on the materials we have here and our own wits to survive, and even though we are not actually on Mars the situation is similar in emotionally important ways. It's not just our current situation that makes me feel this way; I've felt it the whole time, but right now I'm feeling it very keenly.

This feeling makes me more adventurous, more willing to take risks, and it also makes me more what I call "protagonisty." Protagonists don't just sit around or wait or expect other people to do things. They try to better their own situation; they take actions that affect the plot. Making your protagonist more protagonisty is an important way to make a story more engaging; making yourself more protagonisty is an important way to improve your own life.

It was being protagonisty that got me here, and I think the same is true of all the other people here. I've been a lot more protagonisty in these two weeks than I usually am -- leaping in to fix things, trying things that might have a downside, seeking forgiveness rather than permission. It's been an important life lesson to me and I hope to hang onto it for at least a while after I get home.

But I am ready to go home now.

I sure hope this weather doesn't stop crew 89 from getting here on Saturday...

(Later:) Okay, Paul's going out to try brushing the snow off the satellite dish again...

Posted 01/21/2010 20:50 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

You know, given enough time you can get used to just about anything. Even though sleeping in the hab is a lot like trying to sleep on a park bench with an idling semi nearby, I'm now getting at least seven solid hours of sleep every night. My hands have gone from being so rough that they catch on my sweater to just being dry. And although I can't claim that I don't notice when I'm wearing a space suit, the feelings of claustrophobia and the harsh oppressive sound of my own breathing have vanished from my perceptions completely. The daily engineering tasks have become second nature, and crises that would have dominated our day in the early part of the mission are now taken in stride, with all of us leaping into immediate action so that no serious consequences occur.

Must be almost time to go home.

Even though we're only in the middle of our second week here, we feel the end of our rotation breathing down our necks. The new crew arrives Saturday, and we need to spend Friday cleaning up and doing our end-of-rotation paperwork, which means that today and tomorrow are our last two days in sim. Fortunately we have completed all of the suit study trials, have collected a bunch of rock samples for the microfossil and extremophile studies, and have finished work on the telescope, so we are in good shape, but there's still plenty of data analysis to do on those projects and lots of GPS tracking and geotagging yet to do.

And then we woke up and found the ground covered with snow from the front porch to the horizon. We thought Monday was a snow day, but that was really just a heavy frost and it was all gone within hours. This was SNOW -- at least a couple of inches of fluffy white stuff. Quite a shock after yesterday's blue skies and 50-degree temps.

And then the Internet went down! Trapped in a tin can, miles from civilization, and NO INTERNET!? Surely we would be shortly reduced to eating our own shoes! Fortunately, power-cycling the satellite modem a couple of times brought our connectivity back. We learned a few things from that incident that I documented in the Quick Guide.

Even with the Internet back we weren't sure what to do -- the fossil-hunting and GPS-tracking EVAs that we'd planned out last night weren't going to be possible with everything covered with snow. But Paul pointed out that we really needed to warm up the rovers so they'd be ready for tomorrow.

So we did. We made sure those rovers were good and warmed up. I believe the technical term is "Yee-Ha!"

Laksen and I came in while Paul, Diego, and Bianca were still warming up the rovers; I fixed corned beef hash for lunch while Laksen dealt with his daily engineering tasks. Then the gang came in to the traditional welcome beverage for those who come in from the snow, which is hot cocoa. Except that since this bunch is from Florida, Texas, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Belgium, none of them knew about this tradition and I (from Wisconsin) had to explain it to them. They enjoyed the hot cocoa, though.

After lunch we saw that the sun had come out and the temperature had climbed to 47 degrees, so Laksen, Bianca, and I decided to try a GPS tracking run -- we'd stick to the main road and keep our speed down for safety. At first it was delightful, motoring across the fresh crisp snow, which sparkled in the sun and provided a delightful contrast with the red rocks and blue sky. But as we got further down the road and the temperatures continued to climb, the dirt beneath the snow changed to mud and the going got kind of nasty. We were slipping and sliding all over the place and the rovers' wheels were kicking up great quantities of brown and red goo; climbing hills turned into a real trial. I got stuck at one point, and Bianca had to take over my rover to get it out, but then I remembered the first lesson of driving in snow -- Don't Stop, Don't Slow Down -- and from then on I was fine. Still, it was pretty unpleasant, and then we couldn't find the next stretch of trail in the snow, so we decided to bag it and head back to the hab.

When we got back from that and cleaned up as much as possible, I worked on the Quick Guides. I have 9 one-page guides completed (ATVs, radios, webcams, white water system, black water system, gray water system and GreenHab, Internet, communication with the Mars Society, and EVA suit maintenance) and 2 to go (power system and engineering rounds), but I decided to print out and laminate what I've got. I also emailed them to a bunch of folks at the Mars Society and I hope they will be helpful for future missions.

Then it was time for dinner. I whomped up a batch of fried rice with tofu, miscellaneous vegetables, and rehydrated egg whites, which wasn't bad despite the fact that we're all out of soy sauce. Meanwhile Bianca rehydrated some cauliflower, topped it with Hollandaise sauce and rehydrated cheese, and popped it in the oven. It all came out delicious; just the thing for the end of a snowy day.

Posted 01/20/2010 20:16 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

We had a busy day planned today, so as soon as we all finished breakfast (oatmeal again for me) we got straight to work. Diego, Laksen, and I took off for the final set of suited trials of the "determination of error in biological sampling due to EVA suit constraints" study. Laksen did his first, then headed back to the hab while I did my two. These weren't as much of a pain as the first two I did, because I'm more experienced in the suit and in the specific skills needed for this plant-gathering task. Though I did seem to collect my pencil more frequently than I did some of the plants. I took lots of pictures of Laksen's trial and of Diego looking for extremophiles in the rocks while waiting for Laksen to finish.

Once I was done with my suit trial I headed back to the hab, where I met Laksen and Paul who had just suited up for the final assembly phase of the radiotelescope. With the aid of a drill and a big hammer we got it all done and we posed for celebratory photographs. In the afternoon I wrote up a handoff report for the next crew, who will take over the work where we had to leave off due to lack of the right kind of coaxial cable. (It's working, and the height is adjustable, but it can't be raised to the ideal height because the connecting cable's too short.)

I came in after two and a half hours in my suit to a fine bowl of soup for lunch, and the welcome news that our Internet seemed to be back up to speed. We will monitor our usage closely to be sure the problem does not recur.

After lunch I worked on the radiotelescope handoff report and the Quick Guides for maintenance of the EVA suits and the GreenHab (with Laksen's help) while Steve, Paul, and Diego went off searching for fossils, with great success. As soon as they got back, Laksen, Bianca, and I hopped on the rovers and went out on another GPS-tracking run, looking for a trail that is called Cactus Road on our map. But the map is three years old and several previous attempts to find it had failed. Perhaps it had washed out. Finally, though, we did manage to find it, and it was a gorgeous run through a spectacular canyon labeled Valles Marineris on the map. (Though I'm told the canyon at Muddy Creek is even more spectacular.) We didn't make it to the end of the trail, but we'll try again tomorrow. I'm getting much better at navigating bumpy terrain and stepping over obstacles in first gear, and I'm very grateful to Paul, Laksen, and Bianca for their tolerance and support.

A big wind kicked up today, making the whole hab rattle like rain on the roof, and we can see some clouds that look like heavy weather on the horizon. We made sure to cover the rovers tightly against the weather and take in all equipment from the rover garage. I feel rather proprietary toward faithful Opportunity Girl, my favorite rover, which has served me very well. The rovers, and even the EVA backpacks, have developed individual personalities for me and I will miss them when I return to Earth.

Posted 01/19/2010 17:42 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Woke up this morning to snow! A light dusting of snow on the ground and just a bit in the air. Changed the appearance of the place completely -- very pretty, though not very Marslike.

The snow threw our plans for the day into a cocked space helmet. The suit constraints study, for example, couldn't be done because you couldn't see the plants under the snow. So we brainstormed a bunch of other stuff that could be done, most of it in the hab.

It was at around this time that we noticed our Internet was running exceptionally slowly. We tried restarting the wifi router and the satellite modem, but that didn't help. We suspected the weather, which was overcast as well as snowy and very cold, but we've had overcast before and it hasn't hurt us like this. We contacted Mission Support -- connectivity was present, though very slow -- and they suggested that we might have hit our satellite Internet connection's bandwidth limit. However, even the bandwidth usage page was taking forever to load. Finally I managed to determine that we'd used over 250 MB -- more than 5 times our usual hourly usage -- between 8 and 9 AM. That might explain why our Internet usage was throttled, but we'd all been at breakfast at that time! We tried and tried to figure out what had been the cause, not to scapegoat anyone but to keep it from happening again. Eventually it seemed that one of us had not managed to completely turn off updates and their computer had perhaps automatically downloaded a large Windows update during that time. That's turned off now, so with any luck our connection will return to normal speed at midnight tonight and the problem will not recur. I really hope so, because being without reasonable Internet connectivity is a royal pain!

Once we got that issue sorted out -- or at least diagnosed -- Laksen and Bianca took off on a GPS trail-mapping run and I started work on some more Quick Guides. But what really got us excited was the idea of shooting our official portraits. For a backdrop we set up the Official Flag of Mars (red, green, and blue), a map of Mars, and a plaque about the Mars Society that usually hangs in the airlock, and we prepared to pose in front of it in our space suits (holding the helmet) and in our official crew polo shirts. But then various people wanted to spruce up for their photos, so we kind of lost momentum.

While we were waiting for the photos to happen, Paul and Laksen decided to go off on another GPS trail-mapping run. It looked pretty darn cold out there but they talked me into going along and I had a great time jouncing along on an ATV across barely-tracked rough terrain. In fact, if you've ever been to Disneyland, imagine the Indiana Jones ride over the countryside of Big Thunder Mountain Railway. Only rougher and longer. I quickly learned that on an ATV your suspension system is your knees, not your butt, and after a while I was galumphing across ruts and gulleys with hardly a second thought. It was great fun and we saw some fabulous scenery and picked up some fossil shells as well as mapping out the trail system.

We got back just in time for our crew photos, smiling for the camera in our space suits and polo shirts. Bianca takes the school photos for her kids' school, so she had the whole thing down pat. It was very familiar, but also kind of surreal, and I think the photos came out great. (Paul thinks I look like Michael Farraday in Lost.) School photo day on Mars.

Today is a cooking day, and we got kind of ambitious. Bianca and I prepared pasta, pesto sauce from a mix, and canned spaghetti sauce beefed up with sauteed onions, TVP, and spices. Bianca also made muffins, which came out great, and Diego popped up with alfalfa sprouts from the GreenHab, which we served as a salad with a dressing of balsamic vinegar and rehydrated onions. A meal fit for a king!

We had an excellent conversation over and after dinner, including Star Trek and Monty Python references, but now it's time for the writing of reports and other paperwork. With the Internet still throttled it's going to take a while to submit this so I think I'll stop writing and send it in now.

Posted 01/18/2010 20:07 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

It's very hard to believe that we are now more than halfway done with our mission. We arrived at MDRS last Saturday and the next crew will arrive this Saturday. We have been working 18-hour days, so we're pretty tired, but we're still excited and we have plenty more to do before we head back to Earth. But the Best Western in Grand Junction is going to feel like the Ritz.

It being Sunday today, we decided not to have our morning briefing at any set time but just to sleep until we woke up. I woke up around 7:30 anyway. We'd turned the heat down last night because it was over 75 degrees F upstairs, but in the morning it was 41 degrees F downstairs. I needed to go to the bathroom, which is downstairs, but I hesitated at the top of the stairs like a cat at the door on a cold day.

Before breakfast I had to go into the EVA prep room to check out something that had been bothering me during the night. We discovered recently that the new radios we just got are much easier to use if you attach them to your suit with a belt clip instead of tucking them in a pocket, but I didn't know if we had clips for all of them. But after I looked in a few places I found the clips for all six. I also verified that they were all properly turned off and charging -- it's really easy to drop them in the charger in such a way that they don't actually make contact.

Breakfast was oatmeal with dehydrated mandarin oranges. Over breakfast we talked about how much we wished we'd had some kind of simple, up-to-date one-page checklist and troubleshooting guide for our most important procedures, rather than the detailed and, unfortunately, obsolete manuals we have. I responded to this challenge like a good technical writer and quickly whomped out one-page Quick Guides for the ATVs, radios, and webcams. Quick Guides for the power and water systems will follow as soon as possible.

In the latter part of the morning Laksen, Paul, and I continued setup of the radiotelescope, working mostly in the rover garage. Most of this work consisted of measuring out nylon ropes, tying knots, and drilling holes. We got just about ready to set up the masts when it was time for lunch. I snarfed some ramen noodles (amazingly, Steve didn't know what they were -- I thought every college student in America lived on them) and then headed back out with Paul to continue work, while Laksen and Bianca took off on an EVA to do GPS tracking and photo geotagging of all the trails around the hab. Paul and I got the four masts erected, the guy wires loosely wrapped around the stakes, and the antennas attached to the masts. The adjustable masts are currently at their lowest point, 10' high, because we don't have the coaxial cable necessary to reach the antennas at the 20' height we need to pick up radio signals from Jupiter at this point in its year, but at least we could check out the antennas and make sure they work. And they do! We picked up a signal that seems to be varying with the time of day as the sun's signal would be expected to do. It sounds like static, but it's the music of the spheres.

We'd planned a fossil-hunting EVA in the late afternoon, but the geotagging EVA got back later than scheduled and we didn't think there would be time to reach the fossil bed and return before dark. I was disappointed, but then Paul and Laksen invited me along on a second GPS run, looking for a trail the first run had failed to find. We did manage to find and tag the trail, and I had a fun time on the ATVs and saw some spectacular scenery. Thanks guys!

Dinner tonight will be Kung Fu Chicken, the first dehydrated meal we had and still the tastiest we've tried. We've all worked up a good appetite today and we're really looking forward to it.

Posted 01/17/2010 18:47 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Oatmeal for breakfast today, immediately after which I suited up and headed out with Diego for his study on "Determination of error in biological sampling due to EVA suit constraints." Each trial in this study consists of one test subject spending 20 minutes going over a patch of desert and identifying, photographing, counting, and taking samples of each different type of plant found there, either in a space suit (experiment) or not (control). There are 5 patches of desert and each of us is doing all of them, randomly selected as to whether each is suited or non-suited. The luck of the draw was that I was scheduled for one non-suited trial and four suited.

I did the non-suited trial at the beginning of the mission, and today I did two of my four suited trials. Man, what a pain! The gloves are the worst part. Imagine taking a photograph, writing down a brief description, breaking off a bit of plant, and stuffing it in one of several plastic bags, all wearing heavy winter gloves. (You are also juggling the camera, clipboard, and plastic bags in your hands, which is not the way I think a real biological survey would work, but that's neither here nor there because we did it the same way in both trials.) The helmet makes it hard to see, the backpack makes it hard to balance, and all in all it's painstaking, tedious, hard work -- stoop labor on Mars. The worst part is when Diego throws all the samples away at the end of each trial (we aren't measuring accuracy, only number of samples collected). And I have two more suited trials to do. I can really see why the astronauts in The Right Stuff despised the scientists so much.

Right after I got back from that, I joined Paul and Laksen in the lab to work on the radiotelescope. We think we've thrashed out a workable design for an adjustable support structure that can be constructed using the materials at hand, and when we finished work yesterday we made sure all the relevant bits were taken inside so we could do as much as possible in the lab. We got the cables measured and cut, and later today we plan to drill the holes and tie knots so that we can do an EVA tomorrow morning and just set the thing up. Wish us luck.

Lunch was canned corned beef, which looked disgusting to me, but Bianca sauteed onions and added tomato powder and spices and served it over mashed potatoes and it was pretty good.

In the afternoon I was still kind of beat from the suit study in the morning and I decided to not participate in any EVAs and take care of some other business. I backed up my computer, rearranged my Monster Bag (there's no place to unpack it, so I've just been digging in it for everything I need and it's all gotten horribly jumbled up), vaccumed the lab (just to beat back the encroaching dust a bit), and took a nap. But when I saw the cool photos and videos everyone brought back I regretted not having done another EVA today.

While everyone else was returning from their EVAs, I cooked dinner. Usually at home I work from recipes, but Bianca's an improviser and after consulting with her I whomped up something I'd call Tofu Enchilada Style: sauteed dehydrated onions, tofu, a package of enchilada seasoning, canned spaghetti sauce, and dehydrated cheese served over a mix of white and brown rice. It was darn tasty, actually, but the real hit of the meal was the muffins Bianca made.

Our daily reports at http://desert.marssociety.org/mdrs/fs09/ are supposed to include photos, but they take 24 hours to be posted when it's working and it hasn't been working lately. In fact, we only have photos posted for 1/11 and 1/13, plus two (of the seven we submitted) for 1/14. We've been going back and forth with Mission Support on this, but the webmaster's on vacation and nobody else has the necessary passwords to address the situation. Frustrating. (I've been posting photos on my personal blog but they're not the same ones.)

Posted 01/16/2010 18:42 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Today started with the now-usual ATV warm-up run. We had gorgeous weather again today, despite the fact that snow was in the forecast -- for some reason the weather we've been having has been much drier and warmer than forecast for Hanksville, just three miles away. (Mind you, it was 14 degrees F when I got up. Brr!) Because the weather was nice and the trip back from Engineering is so scenic, I stuck my camera in my front pocket with the lens sticking out and took a short Rover-Cam video. It's not quite level but otherwise turned out quite well. Like the other videos I've mentioned, I'll upload it to YouTube after I return to Earth.

After our morning briefing I tackled the EVA room webcam, which has been down since before we got here. The camera itself is in a difficult location to reach, at the end of three USB cables. I checked all the connections, unplugged and replugged it, rebooted the system -- nothing. So, suspecting that perhaps one of the cables had been gnawed by Martian mice, I un-duct-taped the camera from the wall and plugged it directly into the computer. This resulted in all sorts of uninformative Windows errors and also knocked the printer offline. I tried all the USB troubleshooting steps I could think of -- no dice (though I did get the printer back up and running). Finally I gave up and decided to put the camera back where it had been, just so it wouldn't get lost among all the other bits of miscellaneous computer hardware here. But when I plugged it back into the third extension cable, I heard a little bing-bong from the computer. I looked... and it was online! I have no idea what I did but I'm not going to mess with success. I taped it back up and, with Bianca's help, got it pointed at what I hope is an interesting part of the EVA room. (Bianca and I are both on the short side, so if you see the taller Marsnauts walking around with their heads cut off that's why.) So we now have six working webcams, up from three when I arrived.

Once I got done with that I helped Laksen pump water around. We have to haul out an electrical pump to move our clean water from the trailer in which it is delivered into the external tank next to the hab, and then run a separate pump to get it from the external tank to the internal tank in the loft. We also have a third pump to move gray water from the underground tank in which it is collected into the greenhab, where it is filtered and processed by duckweed and water hyacinths until it is clean enough to use for flushing the toilet, as mentioned earlier. The gray water is then moved from the greenhab to the toilet via a hand pump, which takes quite a bit of effort, whenever you want to flush. This is one reason we say "if it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down." We also fired up the heater that keeps the pipes under the bathroom from freezing. Maintaining human life is all about water -- too much water, or water in the wrong place, can be as much of a problem as too little, even on Mars.

After a nice lunch of rehydrated noodles with vegetables, courtesy of Bianca, I sat down with Laksen and Paul to continue work on the radiotelescope. We spent about half the afternoon designing the guy wires that will keep the telescope's masts vertical and properly positioned; this involved a lot of basic trigonometry and quite a bit of figuring out what we have in terms of hardware, rope, and cable. This took enough time that we did not get out on the surface today for this project.

In the late afternoon I went out on a geological EVA with Steve and Bianca, looking for microfossils. As I had no idea what to look for, and wasn't brave enough to climb up as high as Steve, I just picked up interesting-looking rocks and took photos. The light was excellent and the photos came out very Marsy. I took some videos too.

Most MDRS missions have only one engineer. We have three, in effect -- Laksen is the official engineer, and Paul and I are both handy with tools and available to help. For myself, I've been spending a lot of time on engineering tasks because I don't have a scientific mission and because I enjoy solving problems. It's great for me because anything I can do in this area is a bonus -- nothing was expected of me coming in. I understand that life on the International Space Station is similar: broken equipment and daily maintenance can easily take over the whole day. But with the three of us working on maintenance and repairs, we can actually get ahead of the game and leave the hab in better shape than when we came. This is very satisfying to me.

Posted 01/15/2010 19:09 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Today started out much like yesterday, with a quick trip out to Engineering to warm up and gas up the ATVs. The weather was gorgeous, clear and crisp but not too cold, and even on that short ride I was struck anew by the sere beauty of this alien place. If it's nice again tomorrow I'll try to take a video.

After breakfast and morning briefing, Paul, Laksen, and I put our heads together over the bits of the radiotelescope in the science lab. As in the movie Apollo 13, our challenge is to make this fit into that using only this stuff. In our case the available stuff is a little more than they had in the Apollo capsule but it's still weirdly limited. The radiotelescope consists of four twenty-foot masts holding up two dipole antennas, and they have to be braced with guy wires, but we don't have wire, just rope (and it's several different varieties of rope scavenged from various other projects); we don't have turnbuckles or eye bolts; and we don't have all the tools we'd like, but we do have an entire large plastic container full of various kinds of adhesive tape. It's like trying to do a home remodeling project at your beach house, if your beach house were too far from the nearest town to buy anything you left at home.

Another thing we did this morning is that we decided the hab was getting pretty scruffy, so we buckled down for a couple hours of cleaning. If you saw on the webcam that Bianca, the only woman, was mopping the floor on the residential level, please be reassured that the guys were sweeping and vacuuming like mad in the lab and the EVA room (where the webcam is still out of order -- sorry, I'll look into that soon, I hope). We also took out all the garbage and discards, scrubbed the toilet, and swept out the airlocks. The place looks much, much better now and we've instituted a strict shoe policy (no outside or downstairs shoes upstairs) to keep the dust from getting into the residential areas. It's a bit like being Japanese.

After a really thorough cleaning we were ready for a good hot lunch. As it is a "cooking" day, we could fix whatever we wanted... though, again, it's a matter of making this fit into that using only this stuff. We have nothing fresh, very little meat and very little that isn't dehydrated. We wound up with a very nice creamy wild rice soup, chili, and mashed potatoes with cheese. Hot and filling.

Most of my afternoon was spent in a space suit, just outside the hab, setting up the radiotelescope. We started by driving lengths of pipe into the ground to act as bases for the masts, using what I call The First Tool: a big rock. Then we drilled holes into the masts in some places and attached pipe clamps in others so that we had somewhere to attach the guy ropes, measured and cut the guy ropes, and erected one mast. But as soon as we got it up we realized the antenna's coaxial cable is not long enough to reach the antenna at its new height. We took measurements, took the mast back down, and called it a day; an unknown number of days of work remain, but we are optimistic that we can finish it before the end of this rotation. If there's more coaxial cable in the hab somewhere.

I was pretty wiped out after that and I declined to join in the afternoon's geological EVA. While they were gone I recorded a brief video tour of the hab, which is something I've been meaning to do for some time, and caught up on some paperwork. Steve, Bianca, and Laksen came back with some great pictures, lots of geological samples, and the story of having run into a couple of local tourists who were just pleased as punch to get their pictures taken shaking hands with a real live Martian. Steve's microfossil search achieved success: he found a fossil ostracod! Diego also found life this afternoon, specificially endoliths (cryptoendolithic algae) in some minerals he collected this morning.

Then came the time of staring into the cupboard and wondering what to fix for dinner. We found a box of couscous and Bianca got the brainstorm to prepare a vegetable couscous. We rehydrated onions and sauteed them, added broccoli, corn, peas, and carrots rehydrated in water with a couple boullion cubes, and topped it off with half a can of tomato paste and a variety of spices. Served over couscous cooked in the water we drained off the vegetables after rehydration, it was really really good. We also had "blueberry" muffins that Paul fixed from a Jiffy boxed mix. Best dinner yet, and great conversation over it as well.

Unfortunately that dinner took rather a lot of time to prepare, so I didn't get around to writing my report until quite late. I have to submit this in the next five minutes or Mission Support will be unhappy with me, so off it goes!

Posted 01/14/2010 20:04 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

The plan for today was to split up into teams morning and afternoon. In the morning, Diego and Bianca would perform the first experimental (suited) trials of the ergonomics study while Paul, Laksen, and I did a preliminary survey of the radiotelescope from the pressurized tunnel (i.e. path to the greenhouse). Then after lunch, Steve and Bianca would go off looking for microfossils while Paul, Laksen, and I began actual work on the radiotelescope.

What actually happened was that after Paul, Laksen, and I filled up the ATVs' tanks and checked their oil and tires, we went to pump water from the trailer in which it is delivered into the hab's external tank and the pump wouldn't run. It had been fine yesterday.... I tried unkinking the hose and poking at it in various ways, up to and including a complete disassembly, but still it would only hum when plugged in. At one point when we had it disassembled it began to spin, and we cheered and put it back together. Naturally once it was back together it wouldn't work any more. Fortunately we have enough water in the tank for several days so this isn't an immediate crisis, and right after lunch the water pump began working again, apparently all by itself. We went out and filled the tank right away, as long as it was working. (I still don't trust it long-term).

While I was working on the pump, Laksen looked for the source of water we'd seen leaking out from under the hab. It turned out that the U-bend under the sink in the science lab had come loose -- someone in some previous crew had put a bucket under it, but we'd been using it unawares and it had filled up and spilled over. There was ice at the back of the cabinet and water on the floor as well. Laksen started to look for PVC pipe cement to reattach it but I thought I remembered that gluing a U-bend in place would be bad -- you need to be able to get it off to clean out the trap -- and that it should be possible to just finger-tighten the joint. Turned out the gasket in the joint was in backwards, and once reversed and finger-tightened it no longer leaked (well, maybe seeped a little). We did manage to get about a half-hour in on the radiotelescope, reading over the documentation and surveying the current state of construction.

While lunch was cooking, I also ran up to the Musk Observatory to see if I could fix the #1 webcam there, which was completely washed out even when the sun wasn't shining directly into its eye. Poking around at the computer there, I stumbled into a deeply-buried settings screen where all the contrast, brightness, and gamma controls were seriously messed up. A simple press on the Restore Defaults button brought the camera back to life. Go me! There were three working webcams when we arrived and now we have five. I'll tackle the sixth when I get a chance.

For lunch we had split-pea soup from a mix, with dehydrated peas and corn and some yummy yummy TVP added. It was actually pretty tasty. We Marsnauts are research subjects in a food study, where we alternate cooking and non-cooking days and fill out a survey each day about how we liked them and what our current mood and energy level is, and today is a non-cooking day. On non-cooking days we eat only rehydrated foods (the sort of thing you would find at a camping or survivalist store); tonight's dinner is Texas BBQ Chicken with Beans. Some of these dehydrated meals are really good. (They're also expensive.) On cooking days we can cook whatever we like from what is available -- which is, more often than not, something else pre-prepared. One night I got ambitious and made a stir-fry of tofu, rehydrated broccoli, and rehydrated onions, served over real rice. It was pretty good, in my opinion, but I don't think it was good enough to justify the time it took.

Our time is fully occupied here. The days are filled with EVAs and various maintenance and repair tasks, and the evenings are largely taken up with the daily reports we have to file with the Mars Society, planning the next day's activities, and blogging. Blogging is a serious activity here -- it's public outreach. Diego and I had blogs before being selected for this mission. Laksen started blogging after he was selected, and Paul and Bianca both started blogging after they arrived here. Only Steve is blog-resistant.

After lunch we suited up for our radiotelescope EVA. The radiotelescope we have here is a very simple one based on designs provided by NASA's Radio Jove project (http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov/). It just consists of a pair of dipole antennas -- basically two parallel wires -- which can receive a signal from a powerful radio source such as Jupiter or the Sun. The height of the two wires above the ground determines the angle in the sky where the antenna is focused, and right now that height is fixed to the position of Jupiter when the telescope was first constructed (it's since moved). We're replacing the poles that hold up the wires with telescoping assemblies so the telescope can be "pointed" at different parts of the sky. Two of the poles were replaced by the previous crew and we're going to try to finish the job. Today we managed to get the two fixed-height poles taken down and all the necessary parts moved into the lab; the next step is to build the telescoping poles.

Almost immediately after that EVA Paul and Laksen decided to go out on one more EVA to check out some repairs we'd made to the suits. I was tired, but when Paul invited me along I said "I'm never going to have this opportunity again" and I suited up with them. We're getting pretty good at the suiting process and it went quickly; we then took ATVs a short way away and climbed up a mesa. It was cool to be walking across the stripes you can see from the hab, and the whole thing felt exceptionally Marsy. The view was spectacular, but I pooped out before reaching the summit, alas. I rested on a rock while Laksen and Paul climbed to the top and got some great pictures.

After everyone got back from their various EVAs we sat down at our computers to prepare our daily reports and began boiling water for dinner. So ends another day on Mars.

Posted 01/13/2010 21:33 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

If my updates are only whetting your appetite, here are some other sources of up-to-the-minute information on MDRS-88:

• Live webcams: http://freemars.org/mdrscam/
• Official daily logs and some photos: http://desert.marssociety.org/mdrs/fs09/
• Laksen's blog: http://laksensblog.blogspot.com
• Paul's blog: http://paulgoestomars.blogspot.com
• Diego's blog (in Spanish): http://www.eltiempo.com/blogs/dejame_mi_espacio/
• Bianca's blog (in Dutch): http://bloggen.be/biancagoestomars/
• My Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/daviddlevine
• Diego's Twitter feed (in English and Spanish): http://twitter.com/diegou
• MDRS Updates Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/MDRSupdates

Posted 01/13/2010 18:12 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

After dinner I fixed both of the space suit backpacks that came back from EVA with problems. One of them had a fuse that wasn't making proper contact (just removing and replacing it fixed the problem) and the other had a spade lug that had worked loose from the battery.

Flush with that success, I looked at pack #4, which had been dead since before we arrived. With Paul and Laksen's help I determined that the battery itself was not taking a charge. We replaced it with a similar battery we found in the cabinet and it seems to be good to go.

I didn't mention in my earlier report that we had a problem after today's second EVA where one person's space suit zipper jammed really badly. Paul managed to get the occupant out, but only by tearing a couple of zipper teeth out. I used my science fiction convention costuming experience to get that zipper working better by rubbing a candle along its length.

Feeling very smug now. Probably I will get myself in big trouble trying to fix something tomorrow.

Posted 01/12/2010 19:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Today was a fix-it day for me. After the morning's briefing I checked over the EVA packs to make sure they were all charged up for the day's activity, but pack 4 was not charging and not functional. I tried all the basic useful stuff like wiggling the connections but it seems completely dead. It's probably just a loose connection somewhere. We decided that we could make it through today with only 5 packs. I also attached Velcro to our laminated name tags so we can all have our names on our space suits.

In the second half of the morning, Laksen and I went up to the Musk Observatory, which is out of commission for now because the telescope has failed and been sent back to the manufacturer, to see if we could get the two outdoor webcams back on line. We had been told that the computer at the Musk, which controls those webcams as well as the telescope (when the telescope is there) had failed due to low temperatures. Maybe it did, but it's a bit warmer today than it was last week and the thing booted right up. However, both webcams were really messed up in their positioning. This might have something to do with the fact that for a camera mount each one was just duct taped to a rock. I un-taped them and re-taped each one's stand firmly to the shelf on which they sit. We got one camera working properly and the other came up by itself later in the day, when the sun was no longer shining directly in its eye. That gets us up to five working cameras out of six (it was only three when we arrived) and I'll see if I can fix the sixth and improve the positioning of the second Musk camera tomorrow.

After lunch, Paul, Steve, and I went out on EVA #2. This was Steve's first EVA and Paul and I, now the Old Hands, walked him through the suiting procedure. We took the three ATVs out to the very end of the trail, which put us within hiking distance of a mineral formation where we had reason to believe we might find microfossils (Foraminifera, Radiolaria and Diatoms). The formation proved to be pretty inaccessible, but Steve bravely clambered up an unstable slope and collected two bags of samples. Steve's initial microscopic analysis didn't find any fossils, but he did find a micrometeorite and there are more samples yet to examine. We also got a bunch of fine photos.

This is the farthest and the fastest I have ever gone on an ATV. For safety's sake we wore motorcycle helmets, with our EVA helmets bungeed on the back rack, but on the way out all three of us managed to have the helmet fall off at some point. Mine suffered a cracked sun shield but that was the worst of the damage, fortunately. This explains why four of the six helmets have some kind of crack in the visor. After the third such incident we switched to carrying the helmets in front of us, perched on the gas tank. It was exciting and a lot of fun, but when the MDRS came in sight at the end of that trip I must confess I said to myself "Hab, sweet hab!" I'm a little achy but feel very satisfied and pleased with myself.

Very shortly after our return Laksen, Diego, and Bianca went out on EVA #3, their first EVA. Paul and I helped them suit up and took tons of pictures. They were all very excited, like kids on the first day of school. Paul and I waved as they rode off into the distance, pleased and proud at our babies leaving the nest. When they came back we helped them unsuit. It was a busy and productive time and I felt very professional, checking each pack to make sure its straps were tight and hoses properly fastened. "Looks like we've got an intermittent malf on #3," I said in my Astronaut Voice. After all this work with the backpacks I felt almost proprietary toward them as I racked them up. My babies! Two of the packs actually came back from EVA #3 with problems, which means we currently have only three working packs. Paul and I will look at the malfunctioning ones after dinner in hopes of bringing at least one or two of them back online.

We had a bit of excitement this evening when one of the crew went downstairs to take a sponge bath at the sink in the Science and Engineering Bay. When this person asked us to not come downstairs for a little bit, we pointed out that there's a webcam covering that area. Eek! I rushed to cover the camera (without looking) and wound up falling down the last couple of steps. Fortunately I landed well and didn't hurt myself, no Naughty Bits appeared on the webcam, and we all learned an Important Lesson.

You may have noticed that an ongoing theme of this report, and all other reports from MDRS, is fighting with malfunctioning infrastructure. (And I haven't even mentioned the fun times we've been having with the toilet.) I believe that this is an important part of our mission here -- the problems we are having are not the same problems a real Mars mission would have, but the time we spend on problems and the way we react to them are representative of the schedule and psychological problems a real Mars astronaut would have. Certainly the daily struggles of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers to survive on the surface of a harsh and unforgiving planet show that persistence, ingenuity, and improvisation will continue to be necessary skills for all kinds of explorers in new environments.

Posted 01/12/2010 18:31 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Last night I went out after dinner to admire the stars. When I was a kid I didn't understand about stars twinkling, because when you live in a city you can only see the very brightest stars and they don't twinkle visibly. But here there are billions of stars, they are big and bright and they twinkle most merrily. But when I got back to the hab... the inner airlock door wouldn't budge! I knocked but got no answer. I walked back around to the Engineering lock and found Paul and Laksen doing their engineering rounds. They had locked the front door not knowing I was outside and were extremely apologetic.

When we awoke this morning we were officially "in sim." I arrived on Mars while I slept! Kind of like a cruise ship, except without the luxury, natives, and air.

As I was getting dressed I stubbed my toe on the milk crate provided as a step to get into my upper bunk. It was still hurting a while later so I took off my shoe to inspect it and found it bleeding. Bianca, our Health & Safety Officer, was concerned about infection so she treated it with peroxide and mecurochrome and bandaged it. It still hurts a little -- only a little, but I feel really stupid to have injured myself (albeit trivially) on my first day on Mars.

After a breakfast of oatmeal with reconstituted dehydrated fruit, we had the commander's briefing and a briefing from our Health & Safety Officer. We do have procedures for emergency medical aid here, but we hope not to have to use them. (Stubbed toe doesn't count, even if it's bleeding.)

Our first official activity in sim is to establish the controls for our study on Determination of Error in Biological Sampling due to EVA Suit Constraints. "Control" in this case means surveying several patches of desert for plant life, while not wearing EVA suits. (Even though we are in sim, we have special authorization to perform this activity without suits. We were supposed to run the controls yesterday, before the start of sim, but most of the day was consumed by the power problem we had.) The "experimental" runs of the study will perform the same task while wearing suits.

We had two working sessions today, with two teams going out in each session. As it happens I was randomly selected to participate in only one control and four experimental runs, so I went out only once. During the first run I was the only person in the hab. I checked in by radio every 20 minutes with the teams on the surface, updated the MDRS Twitter feed, and tried to diagnose the malfunctioning webcam in the EVA prep area (to no avail). I also effected a temporary repair on EVA helmet #1, which has a cracked visor. Duct tape to the rescue!

For my control run, I had a nice walk out to the study area, a square of desert marked out with flags where my job was to identify as many different plant species as possible, count the number of plants of each species, and collect a small sample of each plant, all in twenty minutes. It was kind of fussy work and I can tell that it will be much harder in an EVA suit (which I will have to do four times... oy). At the end of it I just dumped the samples out on the ground -- the point of this exercise was just to measure the number of samples collected in the time allotted rather than to actually use the samples. I could really identify with the Mercury/Gemini astronauts who got angry with the scientists who treated them like lab animals.

When we were done with that, Paul was really agitating to do a proper EVA, and we finally got the go-ahead for that with about an hour of light left. We helped each other on with our suits, went through the airlock, and stepped out on the surface.

What. A. Blast!

The goal of this first brief EVA was just to gain experience walking and driving in the suits. We were out for 40 minutes, including a hike over gently rolling terrain and ten minutes on the rovers in the immediate vicinity of the hab. I was grinning like a fool the whole time and Bianca got some awesome pictures.

Now I really feel like the first science fiction writer on Mars!

Posted 01/11/2010 18:00 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

We had a whole bunch of prep and setup on the schedule for today, our last out-of-sim day. But Mars has its own agenda.

(Sidebar: "Out of sim" means that we don't have to wear space suits outdoors or keep the airlock doors shut at all times. We'll be "in sim" starting tomorrow.)

The hab is full of strange noises at night -- whirs and thumps and gurgles -- making sleep difficult, but eventually I put in earplugs and got a pretty solid night's rest, finally getting out of bed around 7:00. I understand the ISS is also very noisy.

Paul made us pancakes for breakfast (using the last of the Bisquick and syrup, alas) and Bianca added a nice fruit compote made from dehydrated apples and berries. Then Laksen and Paul headed out for their first daily engineering round (surveying system status and performing maintenance). While they were doing this, I busied myself making name signs for our doors with the crew logo on them (hey, it's a tradition). A while later they radioed in from Engineering to tell us they were going to shut down Kitty, the new generator, to check its oil, and we shouldn't be alarmed if the power flickered a bit as the backup batteries took over.

(Sidebar: "Engineering" is a wooden shack full of oily equipment at the other end of a rocky path from the hab. In sim, we pretend that the shack is a bubble and the path is a pressurized tunnel. In addition to Kitty, the new generator that was just installed yesterday, this shack contains Casper and Wendy the old generators and Honey the backup generator.)

Okay, we said. And then the lights went out completely. Also the Internet, the heat, and everything else.

That wasn't so bad, we thought; how long can it take to check the oil on a diesel engine? But the outage went on and on and on... eventually Laksen and Paul came in with some disturbing news: having shut down Kitty, they were unable to restart it; they didn't know why the backup batteries hadn't kicked in; and they'd tried switching over to Honey but that didn't do the trick either.

With the Internet out, we had no way to contact Mission Support, and none of us have cell phone service here. Steve tried walking up to Observatory Ridge in hopes of catching a signal, but no dice. Finally Steve, Laksen, and Paul took V'ger into town in hopes that they'd be able to find DG at Hollow Mountain.

Through all of this I was feeling very much like a passenger, or maybe cargo, rather than crew. All I could do was sit and wait while the hab grew slowly colder. But after a couple of hours, V'ger came back with the sainted DG, who gladly came out on Sunday to get us up and running again. At least we were able to give our brave engineers a hot meal of chili and rice, which Bianca and I had prepared.

(Sidebar: V'ger is our Plymouth Voyager "pressurized rover" and DG is a Hanksville local who is absolutely essential to the continued operation of MDRS.)

It turns out that Kitty was keeping the hab running but was not charging its own battery, so when it came time to restart it, the starter didn't turn over. Meanwhile the backup batteries, which were supposed to take over when Kitty shut down, had become completely discharged because the inverter (which is more than an inverter, it's the brains of the operation and quite old and demented) had gotten confused by all the changes when Kitty was installed yesterday. The same demented inverter refused to accept that the power from the backup generator, Honey. Having diagnosed the problem, DG reconfigured the system so that Kitty is powering the hab and charging the hab's batteries, and there's a trickle charger plugged into Kitty charging Kitty's battery. He'll be back tomorrow or the next day to try to de-jury-rig this setup, but in the end we'll probably need a new inverter.

Having gotten power back up, we tried to accomplish as many of our planned tasks for today as possible. I helped Laksen and Paul finish their engineering rounds, including pumping swampy-smelling gray water from the collection tank into the GreenHab, where it will be purified by running through several filters and three tanks of aquatic plants before being used to flush the toilet. Diego and Bianca went out to do the control (non-EVA-suited) on an experiment to determine the impact of EVA suits on efficiency of gathering biological samples, and Steve and Paul went out to examine some strata, looking for likely sites for microfossils.

(Sidebar: We can't get the gray water clean enough to drink or even water edible plants with, but in a real Mars base such recycling would be necessary.)

As part of the engineering round, Paul got the Spirit rover, which had earlier failed to start, up and running, and Laksen and I each got to take it for a test run. Neither of us had ever been on an ATV before and it was deemed a good idea for us to try it once without the encumbering space suit. Paul offered me a radio to call for help in case I got in trouble, but I declined: "Don't worry about me doing anything crazy. I don't DO crazy." "Dude," he said, "you're on an ATV in the middle of Mars." "Woo-hoo!" I replied, and took off. I didn't go all that far or all that fast, but it was still a thrill and the terrain is magnificent, alien, and very Martian.

(Sidebar: We have three ATVs, called Spirit, Opportunity, and Viking 1. A fourth ATV, Viking 2, is out of service.)

So we didn't accomplish as much today as we'd planned, but we did get a lot of useful stuff done. Tomorrow when we wake up we will be in sim -- on Mars for real!

Well, for analog, anyway.

Posted 01/10/2010 21:13 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Awoke bright and early for breakfast with the crew. Bianca Nowak, the final crew member to arrive, did not have an easy trip from Belgium, culminating in the failure of her luggage to arrive with her. The airline promises that it will be here later today and they will deliver it to the hab's mail drop at the Hollow Mountain convenience store in Hanksville, about 3 miles from the hab. (Hollow Mountain is, in fact, carved into a mountain; some of the walls inside are raw rock. Fascinating!)

We checked out of the hotel and drove out to the hab, stopping at Wal-Mart on the way for some supplies. (Yes, Wal-Mart. Not much in the way of alternatives here.) The drive from Grand Junction to Hanksville took about three hours and treated us to some spectacular views. The terrain was mostly snow-covered but as we approached the hab it became more and more Mars-like, especially after we passed Hanksville. We did get slightly lost in that last stretch -- we were following a vague and extremely sketchy map drawn on the back of a cash register receipt by the clerk at the Hollow Mountain -- but we were only half an hour behind schedule when the white cylinder of the hab, familiar to all of us from photographs even though we'd never been here before, peeked out from behind a rust-colored rock formation. Excitement! Our new home and a new adventure begins!

The current crew (MDRS-87) greeted us warmly and gave us a whirlwind tour of the hab, complete with safety instructions, an EVA suiting demo, a short hike to a nearby fossil bed, and instructions on dealing with the temperamental ATVs (every one different from the others). Because we are not yet "in sim" we were able to bring our bags in and do other necessary chores without having to put on our space suits. Also, by happy coincidence, we were just in time to help install the new generator, which we hope will solve the power problems that have been bedeviling the last few crews. (Most of the work on that was done by DG, a local resident who is instrumental in keeping the hab running.) The shower, however, is definitely dead for the duration, as is the telescope. Alas.

The departing crew clearly had mixed feelings about leaving. Although they were doing a little happy dance at the thought of big greasy hamburgers in Hanksville and hot showers in Grand Junction, they seemed a little misty-eyed as they piled into the van and headed back to Earth.

We all looked at each other. "We're on Mars! Now what?"

Well, "now what" consisted of hauling our massive load of Stuff up to the residential level, eating the surprisingly tasty meal of freeze-dried chicken and corn the outgoing crew had prepared for us, and discussing our plans for the next day and the next two weeks. Steve and Bianca then drove into town (using "V'ger", our Plymouth Voyager "pressurized rover") to pick up Bianca's baggage and all the food we will be eating for the next two weeks, while Laksen and Paul performed an engineering walk-through and inspection of all the hab's systems and I got set up with Twitter (@MDRSupdates) and fixed up the web cams (http://www.freemars.org/mdrscam/). When Steve and Bianca returned, we all helped load in the groceries. The sun had set, and I got my first view of the vast and magestic desert sky. Oh wow.

We don't plan to begin sim until Monday. Tomorrow (Sunday) we will do a lot of necessary prep and setup that will be much easier without space suits, including running the control for a study to determine how much EVA suits impact our efficiency.

We aren't really on Mars yet. But we're definitely a long way from home.

Posted 01/09/2010 18:55 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

I'm not quite all the way to Mars yet. This is as planned. Currently I am safely ensconced at the charming Best Western Sandman Motel (which Diego, from Colombia, calls "a road motel like in the movies") in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Kate dropped my Monster Bag and I off at the airport at 5:45 this morning, where the MB weighed in at 50.2 pounds -- a hair over the limit but the agent let it slide. If I want to bring home any Mars rocks I'm going to have to leave something behind.

After an extremely uneventful security and flight experience I had a decent lunch at the airport in Denver, where I spotted fellow Marsonaut Diego Urbina by the many space-related patches on his laptop and backpack. He was not scheduled to be on my flight, but he'd missed his connection in Houston yesterday and then his flight from Denver to Grand Junction was canceled, so he was on standby for my flight. Fortunately he got on, as did his luggage, and we shared a shuttle to the hotel.

We both took a nap after that (I'm running on about three hours' sleep here) and then met up with Paul McCall and Laksen Sirimanne for dinner, over which we had a humorous, round-robin discussion of the early days of the mission. They're all great guys, very talented, very interesting. Diego is serious about becoming an ESA astronaut and I think he has a shot at it. Laksen is committed, brilliant, and humble. Paul is quiet and sincere -- a real All-American type. After dinner we met Stephen Wheeler, just arrived, and talked over plans for tomorrow and the following week. The final member of our crew, Bianca Nowak, was to arrive later (she's probably here by now but I haven't met her yet).

It is FREAKING COLD here. Currently 0° F with a bit of wind and some snow and ice on the ground. Even wearing long underwear, jeans, a flannel shirt, wool socks, a nice wool sweater, a down jacket, and my Tilley hat with the ear flaps I was still shivering when I was outside. Tomorrow I'm switching to heavier long undies and the ugly but warm WWII-surplus wool pants. Could be worse, though -- it's way warmer here than the real Mars (not to mention having way more air).

The news from the current MDRS crew is mixed. They all had colds but they're feeling better today. The main generator is still down but the backup and batteries are holding out. The frozen pipes got thawed out but it looks like the shower is out of commission for the rest of the season, so it'll be nothing but sponge baths for us. And the telescope isn't going to be fixed any time soon so we will try to get the half-assembled radio telescope up and running instead. Doing this in space suits will be an interesting challenge. It's Man vs. Machine and Man + Machine vs. Mars! (Apologies for sexist language, but it was necessary for the alliteration.)

Tomorrow we drive out to the hab and our adventure begins in earnest!

P.S. Check out the MDRS Webcams at http://www.freemars.org/mdrscam/.

Posted 01/08/2010 20:56 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, here's my to-do list for the day before my departure for Mars:

• Deal with all mail (not done)
• Do dishes
• Get money
• Buy wool pants, sweater
• Call hotel for airport shuttle
• Read The Real Mars, return to library
• Turn on international roaming for Kate's phone (not done)
• Yoga (skipped class)
• Resubmit latest rejected story (not done)
• Make appointment for furnace tune-up
• Clear camera memory card (not done)
• See China Design exhibit at art museum (museum closed by power outage)
• Fold laundry
• Pick up comics from Excalibur (not done)

Kate and I also had a nice Indian dinner and watched Shaun of the Dead. And now to bed... early early flight tomorrow.

OMG I'M GOING TO MARS!!

Posted 01/07/2010 21:59 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Well, that's just about everything I'm taking with me. It all made it into the bag, just barely, and the bag is just barely under the airline's size and weight limits (assuming I can trust my yardstick and bathroom scale). I still need to buy a few things -- I wore my wool tux pants the last time I did cold-weather travel but for Mars I think I want someting a little less formal -- and the computer and other tech gear aren't packed yet, but basically I'm set for my early-Friday departure.

I got some good news and some bad news from Mars today. The good news is that I will be allowed to post using Twitter from MDRS, both as myself (@daviddlevine) and as @MDRSupdates. The bad news is that the hab's telescope has broken and most likely won't be fixed until after our rotation. This is a disappointment -- though it's definitely in keeping with the history of Mars exploration, which includes as many failed as successful robot probes -- and we're trying to find out if there's any other equipment we can use in its place.

One more day!

Posted 01/07/2010 21:51 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

Anxious and busy preparing for an early Friday departure. The radio station in my head keeps playing "Rocket Man," "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and the theme from "Das Boot." Here's a random collection of the stuff that's been rattling around in my head.

Yes, I'm anxious, even though I know I don't really have anything to be worried about -- apart from lost luggage, bitter cold (tonight's forecast low: 8° F), and the possibility of rolling over my ATV and dying of a fractured skull in the Utah desert. (I had to sign a disclaimer which said, among other things, that I acknowledge that riding on an ATV in the desert wearing a pretend space suit is stupid dangerous.) They've had 87 of these two-week rotations so far and I'm sure nothing serious will go wrong. Right? (But I'm not packing any red shirts.)

I've been reading The Real Mars by Michael Hanlon and it's fascinating. If you've been wondering "why go to Mars anyway?" you might want to gnaw on this: satellite observations of Mars show surface features which seem to indicate that in the past the planet had substantial quantities of surface water. (There are other theories to explain these features, but this is a commonly-accepted one.) But Mars is now far too cold and airless for liquid water to exist on the surface. If Mars was, indeed, once warm and wet enough for rivers and lakes, what caused its climate to change? The answer to this question could help us to understand, and possibly reverse, our own global climate change. And despite the sophisticated robots we've sent, we need close-up hands-on observations by human beings -- with their nimble fingers, excellent senses, and ability to change plans on the fly -- to really understand the early history of Mars.

For some reason, Mars was weirdly omnimpresent in my life even weeks before I knew I'd be going. My favorite ride at Disney World? Mission: Space, a simulated flight to Mars. The last book I read before getting the email? Mars Crossing by Geoff Landis. The last Dr. Who episode I watched? Waters of Mars. And I'd been thinking for quite a while that our upcoming trip to Australia feels a little like a visit to a recently-colonized Mars.

Don't forget to vote in the What should David take to "Mars" poll. If you read Spanish, MDRS-88 Biologist Diego Urbina asks a similar question over in his blog. The MDRS-88 Executive Officer, Laksen Sirimanne, has posted the research goals for the mission (which I helped write) on his blog. You can see bios of the crew, and read the daily reports from earlier rotations, on the MDRS web site. And you can see a nice collection of photos of MDRS over at PopSci.com.

I think I have all my ducks in a row for blogging and such. I should be able to post here once a day, but I won't be able to read LJ, Twitter, Facebook, or email. There's a special email address you can use to contact me if it's important, which I will be sending out to my email correspondents shortly. (If you don't get that email in the next day or so and you think you need it, feel free to email me and ask for it.)

Friday's coming soon. Zero hour nine 7:45 AM. Better get packing.

Posted 01/04/2010 15:28 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

25 years ago I met a cute redhead at a New Year's Day brunch. I got her phone number, but did I call her? Not before she called me. We went on a date the next weekend -- to the movie 2010 -- and didn't spend a weekend apart for five months. Within the year we'd moved in together. (You can get her perspective on that meeting here (part 1) and here (part 2).)

10 years ago I was a manager at Intel, and miserable. I had an Employee From Hell and I had no one to blame but myself, because I'd hired her; I was under enormous stress which I was transmitting to my employees; and I'd just been turned down for a transfer to a position as an individual contributor in Intel's Smart Toy Lab, so I felt trapped in a position for which I was manifestly unqualified. I had written a few short stories but not yet sold any, and I was preparing to apply to Clarion. There were other things starting to happen in my life at that time that have since borne strange fruit, but at the time I had no idea how significant they would turn out to be.

The year 2009 for me was Made of Win. Looking backward from here I see a surprise acceptance into the Mars Desert Research Station; a trip to Disney World; winning the Endeavour Award; the Worldcon and subsequent travel in Quebec; joining the Wild Cards consortium; giving a talk at the Library of Congress; many fun conventions, workshops, and fly-ins; and an exceptionally successful year of short story writing, with the most stories written, most stories submitted, most stories sold, and most stories published of any year in my career. I put my butt in the chair and wrote -- 250-500 words or an hour of editing or research -- every single day this year and it really paid off.

My biggest area of disappointment and frustration this year was my two novels. Remembrance Day was rejected after over a year, and due to an email snafu has not yet been resubmitted (it will go off again in January), while The Dark Behind the Stars languished all year on the desk of an editor who has not, to my knowledge, even looked at it and doesn't return my agent's calls or emails. If I don't hear back on that one soon I'm going to pull it for non-response and send it elsewhere. I really want to be a published novelist, and I'm already working on a third novel, but these absurd (non)response times mean that the effort/reward ratio for short stories is so much higher.

New Year's Eve was spent with my beloved Kate, the abovementioned cute redhead, preparing and eating one of our favorite festive meals (a garlic-crusted prime rib) and watching... 2010. (We also ushered in 2001 with 2001).

New Year's Day was a delightful brunch at the new home of the same friends who hosted the New Year's Day brunch at which we met. It's so nice of them to throw us an anniversary party every year.

The year 2010 looks busy, with my mission to "Mars" coming up next week (gulp!) and a trip to Australia in August/September, as well as many other fun travel opportunities. My new year's resolutions tend to be quirky, and this year's is to read Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin books in order. I have other goals for the year, including a revised pledge to write every day (starting in February), but that's my resolution.

The next 10 years will no doubt include many surprises. If the last ten years are any indication, currents in my life that are already beginning to flow, if only as a trickle, will become the rivers that course beneath my days ten years from now.

25 years from now, if the fates allow, I will be celebrating my 50th anniversary with my one true snookie. Beyond that I'm not going to even try to predict.

Posted 01/01/2010 23:31 [e-mail me] [post comment] [permalink]

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