FMARS Mission Support August 1, 2001

It's been a slow day for mission control. The KSC questions were answered by both Dr. Pascal Lee on Devon and by Dr. Zubrin here at Mission Support. Dr. Pascal Lee's took a little too long to get to KSC so Dr. Zubrin's answers were used instead.

In Mission Support we were inspired by the questions (and answers). It's ironic that some of the questions that seem simple cause the most discussion--such as "How long can you survive on the Mars without a pressure suit?" We decided that you could probably make it to the Rover from the Hab without a suit, but you'd be in bad shape by the time you got there. We also talked about doing some astronomy from Mars, and how effective it would be.

Even though there were no problems for us to solve, we all stayed late to listen to the radio interview with Tony Muscatello, Lorraine Bell and Bob Pohl. We liked it very much. I was glad that interviewer had a basic knowledge of space flight and the basic problems involved in a journey to Mars. Fantastic PR, guys!

Crew in Mission Support were Tony Muscatello (Mission Support Director); Jim Rankin (Engineering Officer); Katya Muscat (CapCom); Jim Oliver (Journalist).

We had a brief discussion about the number of people required in Mission Support. It seemed that much of the time we didn't have a lot to do. Although that did leave us plenty of time to get into some really good discussions.

-Jim Oliver