Today we drew back from simulation and had a day to catch up on personal projects and for some strategic planning.

After our usual morning routine from 0800 to 0900, I gave the morning brief to the rest of the crew from 0900 to 0930.

After the morning brief, Jamon and Richard took the initiative to build a shelter and move the generator and fuel underneath it. Edwin worked on his rover tether system as there had been issues with deployment and retraction of the rover over the sheer face.

As mentioned in yesterday's log, EVA communications were problematic and therefore we took all of the handsets outside, gave one to each person and asked them to pick a specific direction and try to communicate as the distance between them became greater. The communications gear proved to be working fine but it was the way that each of the crew members spoke that proved to be the decider between good and bad communications. Clear, concise and slow speech proved to be the best means of clearly communicating with other crew members. We will try and use this form for our EVAs tomorrow.

As we were not in simulation today, it gave us the opportunity to conduct some strategic planning with respect to our EVAs. Jamon and I sat down and reviewed the many Excel spreadsheets constructed by previous crews. We consolidated all of the waypoints onto the one map -- 110 in all. This gave us a good overview of those areas that had been explored and those that had yet to be. Jamon and I will sit down and decide goals and priorities for EVAs over the next three days.

Tomorrow we enter full simulation again, this time for three full days. The crew seemed to hold up pretty well with the full day simulation on Tuesday, although they were very tired at the end of it. It will be interesting to see how that fatigue is managed when they have to get up for a second and third day in simulation. Extending this even further, I am intrigued to see how they will handle the final test of the full five days in simulation. Given this will be conducted at the end of their time at MDRS, I expect to see that their mental and physical fatigue will be offset by the extra motivation they are experiencing due to the end of their rotation being in sight. We shall see...