Journalist Report
02/13/2013
Kent Nebergall
Time and Heroes
Our morning opened with calculating how we could function biologically and what our back-up plans would be if the current back-up plan continued to back up, so to speak. We were rescued by a very large honey wagon that drained the huge septic tank, along with the PVA facility as a favor. The guy had a great sense of humor about the situation of helping rescue Mars astronauts with his, erm, honey wagon. I almost regret not shooting high-def video of his efforts by the habitat to set to a score of “Heroes” by David Bowie,
or preferably the Wallflowers version.
Hey, Apollo 13 had duct tape, and every moon mission had a supply of special bags with adhesive, which also served as back-up when the facilities failed on the first few shuttle missions. We got a … truck. I was trying to explain why it is called a “honey wagon” to my European crew members, and after our struggles the last few days, they had an easier time understanding why than they would have otherwise.
I once watched the video of Apollo 11 walking on the moon’s surface uninterrupted, as they were only outside the vehicle a couple hours. I was stuck by the mix of American accents over the radio stream as guys from Houston, Huntsville, and MIT worked out minor issues with aligning equipment. There was something very shade-tree mechanic about our first moon landing when looked at as a whole. MDRS is that dynamic in abundance. We have to form strong bonds with local communities, here and in Canada for the nearly-identical Flashline station above the Arctic Circle. Many stories about Flashline involve Inuit culture, and naturally MDRS depends on local services as well. And sometimes those services involve really long thick rubber gloves and a punchy sense of humor. Contrast is what makes us human. Otherwise we’d be machines or stereotypes. The most tragic thing to me is a human being who is one thing and one thing only, and never steps out of that role or culture or mindset.
There is a tradition of putting nameplates for each crewmember on the doors of the cabin they stay in at MDRS. The doors are almost completely covered now. The first morning here, I realized that walking past all the nameplates on the doors is like looking through a high school yearbook. Most of the names mean absolutely nothing to most of the crew. But to me, quite a few of these names are friends and associates of the last seven or eight years of my life. For some, I know where they were in their lives relative to the future they experienced since then. So in a sense, it really is a bit like a photo album. A lot of amazing projects have gone through this place. Robert Zubrin’s book “Mars on Earth” only covers the half dozen crews here. Several other books have been written by crewmembers over the years. It’s inspired habitat designs in a few movies as well. But it has a real history for such a “fake” place. NASA uses it, and we’re using it for NASA and the European Space Agency right now. I have a crew coming back from EVA as I write this, hopefully with good documentation supporting our mission goals and sample collections. The University Rover Challenge has also come a long way. The first team robots resembled vendor carts, but they quickly progressed to machined duplicates of the Opportunity rover suspension, and now teams are moving past even that level.
I’m seeing the names of NASA scientists now working on Curiosity on these doors. I’m probably not familiar with more than 5 percent of these names or their current status, but given the sample set and the people I know, there is an amazing number of innovators and brilliant souls who have spent two weeks in these bunks surrounded by these multi-colored hills and driving these ATVs on sequential adventures. My EVA buddy last time is now trying to build private rockets in Denmark and has been in Wired magazine. I wonder what this “class” will produce someday? When I came here initially, twice as many people had climbed Everest as had been on an MDRS crew. Now, I think it’s closer to three times more likely that a given adventurer is an MDRS vet. There are other incubators of adventure. One of my crew and one of the previous compared notes briefly on their adventures working in Antarctica. But this is my adventure for now. My command for the next couple weeks – my break from my sweet little seventeen year old tabby cat and business analysis and everything that goes with my conventional life.
The commander of the previous expedition and I discussed his work on Red Dragon and Mars Sample Return and biconic aeroshell designs briefly before his departure, and I showed him part of my PowerPoint on Project Rigel (my sample return design that won an award in 2008). As he left, he asked me what NASA center I was from so he could keep in touch (he works for NASA Ames). I explained that this is not my day job, but didn’t have the heart to tell him where I really get my paycheck at the moment.
But for today, I’m not a business analyst. I’m commander of a mission that has fixed what’s broken and gone into full Mars mission simulation. And as I’ve said before, nothing is the same after that.
If you can be here two weeks and not come home changed, you’re doing it wrong.
We can be heroes. We can be, even when commander’s reports are interrupted by email asking how to change the litter box back home in Illinois. That’s kind of the beauty of being human.
Contrast. MDRS is nothing if not a study in contrast. And so are the people who pass through these airlocks and leave their names on the doors, and sometimes leave the Earth more brilliant, and Mars a bit more mechanically and scientifically understood. Humans never change, while cultures may come and go. It’s amusing to find 3000 year old letters in Egypt where students complain to parents about strict teachers and demand more allowance. We will be humans on Mars as well, with our mix of foibles and virtues. We’re on “Mars”, but we are still us. We change in some ways for being here but not others. The trick is to learn new virtues and creativity, while looking at being human from a new angle, from a new world.
Time will make more heroes, and this little cylinder in the desert is where many of those lives, these lives, are kindled. Sometimes there are sparks, and sometimes, as Thomas Gray said 250 years ago, “hearts burn with celestial fire”.