1201-CommandersReport
Commander Report
Susan Jewell
SOL 2 – 0012012015
Life on “Mars”
I am sitting in my tiny commander’s room in the Hab and starring out of the window. I see a beautiful landscape of “Mars” which feels me with a sense of awe. To imagine in our lifetime, Humanity will be inhabiting another world beyond Earth… something I have always envisioned but others said “ET GO HOME” was just science fiction and not reality. Now we have entered a new millennium, the 21st Century technologically driven-focus world that will make this vision a real possibility. I start to contemplate about the risks, challenges and life on Mars.
I think this excerpt has some resonance for me for the early Martian pioneers.
― by Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
Tuesday on Mars Sol2 is just like any other weekday on Planet Earth except we cannot leave the safety
of the Hab without wearing spacesuits and life support systems and going through decompression and recompression protocols. Living back on Earth we truly take it for granted when we wake up in the morning and open the front door to feel fresh air and the full sensations of Earth’s elements on our bodies. Here on Mars none of that is possible. We have to be constantly reminded about our safety and to be cognizant that opening the airlock and exiting the Hab will mean instant death!!
So, locked inside the our ‘container” the thought of enjoying fresh air and feeling the hot tingling sensations from the Sun’s bright rays is something we can only imagine from the deep recesses of our Mind. Our neurons firing from oldmemories triggered by the beauty of the expanding Martian landscape as we precariously lean forward on the rickety chairs to touch the coldness of the Hab’s portholes. Condensation blocks our view! Funny and strange our human behaviors…this urge and curiosity to get closer to the ‘real’ thing even when there is a physical barrier preventing and obstructing our Path we still need to get physically close. Maybe, this “knee-jerk” action might trigger some familiar sensory feedback, some familiar smells, sounds of “home”...who knows why? But it was fun and after the laughter and jokes about being “locked in” we return back to the tasks of the day.
REST, RELAXATION and REGENERATION for the crew!!
Anyway, no matter what the activity it will always be about crew bonding and interactions. Testing human factors and psychology for teams living in isolation and confinement in the extreme environments of Space is essential and of importance if humans want to traverse beyond Earth’s orbit and settle on Mars.
This is a reason we are living and working here. We are the Analog Astronaut Martian family!