What will the first tourist experience on the Red Planet be like? If our first day at the Mars Desert Research Station is any indication, it will be in some ways, at least, like the tourist experience at the Grand Canyon, or Niagara Falls -- or any other naturally beautiful place on our own green Earth.

Yep, we admit it. On our first day here, we took photos of everything, including each other, especially when we made our first EVA (extra-vehicular activity) today, wearing our space suits for the first time. But who could blame us? Not many people have been to Mars yet. For some of us, coming to the MDRS fulfills a lifelong dream, or at least the closest we will get to it in this lifetime. We could hardly stop ooh-ing and aah-ing over the fantastic rock formations, the multi-colored hills, the beautiful crisp sky, and the stillness.

The stillness, that is, except for the generator. A very noisy propane-powered generator provides the electricity we need for the Hab, but if you walk far enough away from the Hab, stop for a moment and listen, you will hear a whole lot of silence.

And we're not complaining about the generator. In order for Mars to be more than a far-off dream, a lot of power will be required.

As we six members of Crew 24 sit at our laptop computers at the end of our first full day at the MDRS, we have begun to get an inkling of how much power will be required. Not just electrical power, but human energy. Hard work. The will to work, the ability to work together as a team, the stamina to keep at it past the pain threshold.

Hauling water in buckets, that's hard work. Putting on a space suit -- well, that's a lot of fun, but it's pretty hard, and takes a long time to do, at least the first time. Walking in one of those suits on a dry-mud-and-sand surface for even a short experimental EVA, that's not easy.

Today's EVA in space suits was a practice run, and it went very well. Tomorrow we'll start the full simulation, living as if we were really on Mars. We will wear the space suits every time we leave the Hab. We'll wear them as we collect samples, make measurements, and perform experiments. And we'll still take photos, not those touristy photos of our arrival but photos to illustrate and accompany our reports. (And, as we found out today, even taking photos while wearing those space suits is hard.)

Already we've had a chance to use the MDRS Telemedical Support System, contacting our Flight Surgeon to consult on a foot injury sustained by Crew Member Diego Casa two days before we arrived. The medical support was thorough and careful, really quite amazing. And the result was fortunate: With rest, ice, elevation, and anti-inflammatory medicine, the injured foot is already improving, and Diego should be up and running around the countryside in his space suit within a couple of days. This is fortunate for the rest of the crew, too, because we need all six of us.

An injury requiring medical attention, even a major emergency -- this is the just the kind of circumstance that will sooner or later confront the first humans to arrive on Mars. Using a remote medical team to diagnose and treat an injury is part of a realistic simulation. People will get sick, suffer scrapes and bruises and breaks, but the work can't stop; people won't be able to take the next plane home like they might from an earthly tourist destination.

And it's another reminder that, fun as it is, we're not here as tourists but as experimenters and pioneers. Some of us are scientists and engineers, while some of us, like me, are just amateurs, but all of us are working together for the same dream, the dream of human life on Mars. And this dream will come true because of the work of many volunteers and scientists.

Part of what makes us human is to speculate about the future, to see ourselves in scenes that have occurred, so far, only in our imaginations. On our drive from Salt Lake City to the MDRS, we wondered what we would be feeling in two weeks on our drive back. Would we still be as excited about Mars? (Yes.) Would we be tired? (Undoubtedly.)

What else will have happened in these two weeks? We don't know, but we know we will come back changed.

Who wants to go to Mars?