I was outside early this morning, getting set up to work, when the fire alarm sounded and quickly everyone was outside. It was not a drill, but thanks to the alertness and quick action by the Health & Safety Officer, William Fung-Schwarz, the problem was almost instantly contained with little more than token cosmetic damage. For that we are all grateful. Add static electricity and a defective power strip and you have the makings of a potential problem. William had us go through a fire drill earlier in our rotation, so we all knew what to do. That everything worked so well was very reassuring. Thanks, William!

With help from William the last bit of tunnel framing was completed and then it was on to covering the upper tunnel frame with green snow fence fabric. By the time the afternoon winds got strong enough to call a halt, more than 2/3rds of the structure was covered.

We also installed a new safety feature today, 6 solar powered trail markers along the path to the observatory. Tonight they are shining bright. MDRS veterans on the next crew will see quite a difference here.

Ben has been busy trying to solve a suite of problems in the Musk Observatory. He has the web cams working, but it is a shame that we have this nice 14" Celestron telescope and it is not operational. We had hoped to use it to observe the Moon this week. Still the naked eye spectacle on cloudless nights is reward enough in this very dark sky location, a hundred miles from city lights.

After the mini fire this morning, we were busy cleaning the upper deck from all the fire extinguisher powder. William supervised this, and then, on a roll, did a major clean up on the lower deck.

Laurel made burritos tonight with soy crumbles instead of hamburger. They were quite delicious. Our vegetarian diet has been surprisingly easy to get used to. That's not saying that we won't pig out on burgers and fries at the first fast food restaurant we come to on the way home!

Our Moon Mission is in its final days. We did not find time to do everything we wanted, but we have accomplished a lot and we all feel good about that - good, and tired too. This has been one set of experiences none of us will every forget.

Plans for Tomorrow: cleanup; and when we have time, work on some of the study projects we had not yet found time for.

Peter Kokh
Commander, MDRS Crew 45
Artemis Moonbase Sim 1