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Friday, July, 27th
Journalist Report
Mission Support today consisted of Katya Muscat at CAPCOM, Tony Muscatello
as Mission Director, and Ingrid Leth as Journalist/Liaison. Jim Rankin
supplied engineering support for the first part of the shift.
Interaction between FMARS and KSC went smoothly today. The questions from
the audience were relayed to Devon by e-mail, and the answers were sent by
Dr. Zubrin to KSC in an audio file. The questions were:
- Why is Mars red?
- Why are Mars's moons shaped differently
- How much stuff will be brought back from Mars?
- What kind of vehicles will we use on Mars?
The voice report from Flashlilne contained a surprise- the hab received a
special visit from "Dr. Carl Sagan," who addded some interesting remarks to
the report.
At Mission Support, daily tasks were taken care of, and then the messy task
of cleaning out CAPCOM's To Be Sent folder was begun. A large number of
messages, documents, and other files from the past week had been placed in
the folder, but it was soon restored to an organized state.
Good news from the crew today, they received the radio battery chargers,
spare radio batteries, fuses, and other electrical parts for the backpack
charging circuit repairs. Packages are taking from eight to 14 days to get
to the Hab. This part of the simulation is too good! Devon Island isn't as
remote as Mars, but is still very difficult to reach.
The bad news from the Hab is that the Incinolet (incinerating toilet) is out
of service, needing a new plug. They're having an electrician flown over
from Resolute Bay to fix it and look at the Hab wiring. This is really
ironic: now that the crew has enough liners, the Incinolet itself fails!
Murphy lives on Devon Island, too. We finally managed to buy and ship two
new diesel generators today, after a major bout of wrangling with the bank
to allow the credit card charge. At least the generators had already been
shipped to Edmonton and will leave for Resolute on Wednesday, next week.
See how long it takes to get something there?
This was the final day of the third rotation, and the current crew expects
to leave Devon tomorrow morning, if the weather permits.
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