Crew 168 Mission Summary
MDRS Crew 168 was an ongoing partnership between the Mars Society and the Wilderness Medical Society. The WMS brings expertise in running educational courses for medical providers in remote and austere environments, and the Mars Society brings experience in simulating one of the most remote and austere environments imaginable. The partnership, based on a mutual interest, seemed natural from the start.
Crew 168 was composed of eight medical providers, all with a keen interest in wilderness and aerospace medicine. Our goals were to simulate medical scenarios unique to spaceflight and a Mars habitat. To do this, we spent half of each day in some type of didactic session- lectures on topics from group members, previously recorded videos on relevant topics (to simulate the asynchronous nature of how crew education would occur on Mars), and group discussions. We covered an incredibly diverse array of topics: dysbarism/decompression illness, space toxicology, roles of flight surgeons and crew medical officers, radiation, behavioral health and psychology, sex/gender issues in spaceflight, the Visual Impairment/Intracranial Pressure Syndrome, and nutritional concerns, among others.
We then conducted EVAs that placed the crew into situations requiring them to diagnose and treat these conditions. While each EVA had an operational or scientific purpose (collect samples, setup a comm relay, create a radiation shelter), the crew also had to deal with medical conditions, including decompression illness, a femur fracture, kidney stones, and hypothermia. Each brought unique challenges, many of which were not anticipated by the scenario planners. We even discussed responses to the death of a crew member.
Crew 168 faced challenges as well. We had significant rainfall for half of the days of our mission, and were unable to perform EVAs because of active precipitation and mud. We had to contain several leaks in the Hab. Because of the cloud cover, we were unable to perform our anticipated astronomy mission. We did lose power several times while on the back-up generator, but these were brief interruptions.
These challenges seemed very realistic to us, and gave us a sense of the difficulty of balancing resource utilization on Mars, where no re-supply will be possible.
Overall, the entire crew very much enjoyed this opportunity. We leave excited about the possibilities of Mars, but also somewhat daunted by its challenges. We learned this from our didactic sessions, we experienced this with our simulated patients on EVAs, and we lived this in the Hab. We welcomed this experience, and are excited for a time that it is not just simulation. We all hope to contribute to such a mission.
Thank you very much to everyone at the Mars Society for their hard work and support of our adventure. We are excited about continuing this partnership!
Respectfully submitted,
Ben Easter
MDRS Crew 168 Commander