If today's events happened on an actual manned Mars mission, they might have been described in newspaper headlines around the world as 'catastrophic.' To put it simply, our power source quit. The generator (hereafter referred to by its colloquial name, "China Special") did not restart. This alone wouldn't be worth noting if our back up power source didn't die as well. The reason for both failures has yet to be determined, but it was likely exacerbated by recent filter problems. After only four weeks of operation, the China Special had managed to deform its filter housing beyond practical use. Since yesterday, after the housing came apart completely, the generator has been sucking in air - and dust and grit and sand - straight from the desert atmosphere. Don Foutz, our one-man local support crew, arrived to assess the problem and tried to start our back-up generator, but that one failed as well for reasons unknown. Save for a few solar panels running pumps in the GreenHab, and a couple of 12-volt batteries that Commander Frederick had the foresight to lug along (with nearly every piece of electronics that he owns), we were completely without power. Communication with Mission Control was impossible. No doubt if we were on Mars, or any other mission for that matter, communicating with Mission Control would take a back seat to, say, maintaining oxygen supplies, cabin pressure, etc.

I have resumed writing this entry two days after I began it. Our third generator, a loaner from Don Foutz, suddenly quit in the middle of the night as the entire crew was in the middle of writing their daily reports. We have now come full circle and are now on our fourth generator, a resuscitated China Special with a new filter assembly that Don scrambled to repair. Now, back to Sunday's interrupted report. There is concern among the crew about how the power generation difficulties will push back the time when we go into full simulation mode. Presently, we cannot do that for obvious reasons. Without power, the only analogous activities that we could successfully and realistically simulate are our own deaths. None of us are that enthusiastic. However, the crew is staying busy putting out fires, figuratively speaking, by figuring out cunning ways-check the engineering reports for more details-to keep water levels, for example, from reaching critical levels, in the GreenHab or the toilet. Our engineers are very good at jury-rigging electrical sub systems to keep certain pumps running, or gauges logging data. Although we are not in simulation mode, it's arguable that we couldn't be closer to sophisticated reality, with all its glitches, of a space mission.