Tony Muscatello

February 13, 2002

I left Denver for the Mars Desert Research Station today to command the second rotation of the 2002 season. Four members of the crew will stay on for a second week. Dr. Zubrin, who commanded the first week, and Frank Schubert, the MDRS manager, will return to Denver. A new crew member will join me for the second week.

I didn’t get packed until this morning, having worked Mission Support at Pioneer Astronautics last night until almost 11 pm. I bought some chemicals requested by the crew and gathered up the last of the six space suits and some other equipment at Pioneer Astronautics this afternoon after working some with Mark Berggren on our project. I left Pioneer and went shopping for several more items requested by the crew. I didn’t get out of Lakewood until 6 pm so I only got as far as Fruita, CO tonight. Tomorrow morning, I’ll get up early and head for Hanksville. Gary and K. Mark told me the road to the Hab is hard to find, but easy to backtrack to since you can see the Hab from the main road. Hopefully I’ll find it without too much effort.

I checked into a motel in Fruita and did a little channel surfing as I got ready for bed. Amazingly enough, AMC is showing ‘Robinson Crusoe on Mars,’ an early ?60’s scifi movie about the first manned mission to Mars. In this movie, Mars is a lot more benign than we know now. (It looks like it was filmed in Utah.) There, there is almost enough atmosphere to breathe and it’s rather warm (the hero runs around in short sleeves and Friday is shirtless). Initially, the marooned astronaut gets additional oxygen by heating rocks in a fire. Incredibly, my project at Pioneer right now is to extract oxygen from the soil and rocks by reacting it with carbon monoxide, a strange parallel. The plotline for the movie gets rather far out, with aliens in War of the Worlds-like spacecraft mining on Mars and using slave labor. I won’t have time to watch it to the end, but its fun to check it out.

Time to sign off. Tomorrow I begin my rotation. I wonder what adventures are in store for me. It’s very unlikely alien spacecraft will be involved, but I expect it to be full of good science and discoveries.

Tony

February 14, 2002

I arrived at the Hab today at 11 am after wandering through the Utah wilderness for an hour. I got to Hanksville at 10 am, but since I don’t have a GPS, I had to guess on where the road to the Hab is located. I went too far at first, but got a great view of the Factory Butte, which is west of the Hab. There was a detailed map posted on a sign at this road and I got a rough idea where the road was heading back to Hanksville. I first took the wrong one, and gave up after a couple of miles of four-wheeling in my front wheel drive Avalon (not recommended). The terrain didn’t have the right colors shown in the Hab photos on that road.

I finally found what looked like the right road and headed north, flying on instinct and what I recalled from discussions with Gary Snyder and K. Mark Caviezel, who had been out here. Lo and behold, there it was in all its glory as I rounded a bend in the road. The Hab is 30 ft tall and is an impressive site, even with the spectacular geology around it. Up close, it looks a little beat up from the shipping from Kennedy Space Center, no doubt, but so would a real Hab after entry into Mars atmosphere. As I drove up, I could see that they weren’t in sim conditions – Frank Schubert was over at the generator showing two guys something without space suits on. This is necessary in many circumstances, mainly for safety reasons, e.g. you don’t want to refill gas tanks in the suit because you might spill gasoline on them and not notice until you lit up from contact with a hot spot on an ATV (also not recommended).

Anyway, I got settled in after meeting Andy de Wet, the other new guy, and Steve McDaniel. Robert Zubrin had gone into town to copy some papers and to look for me (since I was a bit late). I went upstairs to meet the rest of my crew and Robert came along soon. He gave Andy and me a quick course in ATV driving. They’re not too bad once you know the basics.

The crew had planned a long EVA, but we decided to stay closer to home since the change over had caused a delay in the start time. Heather Chluda, Jen Heldmann, and Andy de Wet headed out in full space suit regalia on ATVs to explore to the southwest. Andy was especially interested in establishing a geological stratigraphic column for the area. This means to establish the layering order. He also will establish the strike and dip for the formations during his watch here. This means determining the angle of the plane of the rocks relative to north and the angle of the plane versus the horizontal. As Andy explained, it’s a way to define the plane of a bed of rock in three dimensions. We will need to do the very same thing on Mars.

I can’t do justice to the beautiful scenery in the vicinity of the Hab. Just look at the pictures and multiply by ten when you’re here in person. The banded sandstones are just awesome, with yellows, pinks, and pale browns alternating. The unusual erosion patterns do add an unearthly, Mars-like feeling to the place. The views out each porthole in the upper floor of the Hab are like you’re on Mars, looking at an alien landscape. The team who chose this site deserve lots of accolades.

I’m feeling right at home here tonight. The crew members are all great and we had lots of fun at dinner. Everyone has a great sense of humor and sense of cooperation. I have a few major goals for my rotation – get lots of good science and engineering done while learning how to do so under Mars exploration conditions, get these things done without exhausting anyone, and to get the hab in a little neater condition. It looks like I’m in for ‘My Greatest Adventure’ (an old comic book from the ?60s). On to Mars! With people like the ones here and throughout the Mars Society, we’ll be there sooner than you think.

Gotta go now. The crew did such a great job finishing reports fairly early tonight that they’ve earn the right to see a movie (‘Charlie’s Angels’). Should be lots of fun!

Tony