>> 
LEVINE: In January of this year, I spent two
weeks at a simulated Mars base. So, I call
this talk not Mission to Mars but Mission
to "Mars". My name is David Levine. I'm a
science fiction writer. I have about 40 short
stories published. And I've won a number of
awards; have been nominated four or one just
about every major science fiction award in
the field but I don't yet have a novel but
you can find my work in a lot of magazines,
anthologies in online. So, in January of 2010,
I spent two weeks not on the real Mars but
in at a simulated Mars base located in the
Utah dessert near Goblin Rock State Park,
which is where a lot of science fiction movies
have been filmed. We were in this habitat
which I'll talk about a little bit more later.
The way I came to this started on December
7th of last year. When I posted a list to
my live journal of a number of space related
things that I would like to do someday, starting
at the top with a trip to the actual international
space station which can be yours for only
$35 million and going all the way down to
a ride on a zip line; number two on that list
was a visit to the simulated Mars base which
I knew that they--I knew that it existed but
I didn't know very much about it. And a friend
of mine chimed in on the Facebook echo of
this live journal post saying, I know some
people at the Mars Society and I could get
you involved with one of those things if you
are interested. And I was interested and you
know I went back and forth and after a while,
I did get a response back from somebody to
Mars Society saying, I'm not with the Mars
Society anymore but, what I recommend that
you to do is just go ahead and apply because
sometimes people have to drop out and they
need somebody to replace them. So, I send
them my application on the 23rd and on the
24th of December, Christmas Eve, I received
an email back from the head of the Mars Society
saying that, "I have read your resume and
we'd like to invite you to be part of the
crew on January 9 through 23," which is to
say, two weeks later. So, basically, she said,
"Could you possibly make it in two weeks?"
And as it happens, I could. So, I packed up
my little bag, which is exactly as big and
exactly as heavy as the airlines will allow
you to take on with a few things that I thought
I might need during two weeks on Mars including
you'll notice the very last item is duct tape.
And my goals for the two-week mission were
fairly simple. As a science fiction writer,
I wanted to learn those little telling details
that make a science fictional story come alive.
If you get the little things right, people
are more willing to believe you on the big
impossible things in the story. So I wanted
to find out what is the inside of the space
helmets smell like and how does the dust feel
under your boots. I also wanted to get a great
author photo and not to die. Now, you may
wonder why I was so concerned about not dying
because I wasn't going to the real Mars, there
wasn't any vacuum that were going to exploding
spacecraft but there were these guys. We'll
talk a little bit about--a little bit about
them later. So, I became part of the crew.
I was part of Mission 88 that have this cool
mission patch. The other members of the crew
had already been coed, they're already had
been communicating and coordinating together
for sometime before I came on board. This
is actually the revised patch. They had patch
with only five names on it but this is the
new one. So, this is Crew 88. There have been
88 different rotations of two weeks or one
week each at this station which is been going
since about 2006. Stephen Wheeler was the
commander of the mission. He is--he's a university
professor from Dora University in Texas and
is also ex-Air Force. Laksen Sirimanne was
the executive officer and chief engineer.
He is from Sri Lanka originally, lives now
in the Los Angeles area. He is the VP of R&D
for a major biochemical--biomedical firm working
on ways to replace damage heart valves without
having to crack open chest. He is a brilliant
person, a licensed pilot. He's building a
gyrocopter in his basement and one of the
kindest most generous human beings I have
ever met. Paul McCall, our astronomer is a
grad student from Florida. He is dedicated
to becoming an astronaut and this is just
one of many steps on his road to achieving
that goal. Diego from Columbia is an electrical
engineer. He is, of all of us probably the
one most likely to actually make it into space
first. He is, right now, one of the finalists
for something called Mars 500 which is a simulated
a full 500-day Mission to Mars, that's happening
in Moscow starting in just a few months. He
is one of four European finalists for the
two European spaces on the Sixth Persian Mission
and they're going to spend the full 500 days
in a simulated mission to Mars and back. I'm
very excited and I hope he gets in. Bianca
is a high school teacher from Belgium. She
is also committed to space. She's a space
educator works at planetarium and was also
selected to be Belgium's representative to
the International Space Camp which was held
in Huntsville last year. And then the sixth
member of the mission was me. I'm a science
fiction writer and my job on the crew was
to be the crew journalist. So, we were living
in this habitat which is a 30-foot diameter
cylinder two stories tall. And as you can
see there is a couple of out buildings––I'll
be talking about them in a minute. The lower
level is on your left--sorry, yes, lower level
is on the left, the upper level is on the
right. You can see that there are six little
bunks in the upper level and one large main
room. This is a view from up top of the main
room, that is our kitchen, our dining room,
our workroom, our office; basically, our single
common space were just about everything happens.
This is the view from the other end of the
same room. You can see there are those the
stickers on the doors. Every member of every
crew puts their name tag on their door and
it has become the tradition that you leave
your name tag on the door when you go there–-that's
mine. And so, you can see here a history of
all the people that have stayed here. This
is a view to the inside of my spacious state
room. You can see there's just about enough
room to turn around there. Basically, there's
a little bit of storage, there's a shelf to
sleep on and when I say shelf, I mean it's
a piece of plywood. You're sleeping in a sleeping
bag and there's enough room to hang up your
clothes and that's about all the private spaces
that you have, didn't spend a lot of time
in our rooms. And you may be wondering why
is the bed so high off the ground, that's
because of the room next door where the bed
is underneath. So, basically what you have
is you have bunk beds where half of the--where
the upper bunk opens on the one room and the
lower bunk opens on to another room. So, you've
got a whole room to yourself but there's not
much room in that room. We cook on this, a
three burner propane stove which was lit with
a match. The sink here, you can see the sign
that says, "No, you may not use any of the
following things that includes any kind of
soap." The only things that we're allowed
to go down the drain were baking soda and
a very, very biodegradable soap that they
use. This is because all of our water was
filtered through the green house for later
re-use. This is the storage area located above
the bedrooms where we had all of the food
and everything that we would need for our
expedition. There was no--there were no re-supply
emissions theoretically. You had to bring
with you everything that you needed and this
influenced what we did a lot. This is me at
my duty station. Because of my background
in high-tech, I use to work for Intel and
for McAfee and protrectronics. Because of
my background in high-tech, I was in charge
of the Internet and the computers and in addition
to filing, my journalist's reports, I was
also in charge of basically all of the electronics
and small plug-in buzzy things. This is our
networking station. You can see we had a couple
of different Wi-Fi antennas, satellite Internet
and a lot of this stuff is not connected,
not working but it's still there. This becomes
a theme. Our Internet connection was through
this satellite dish. This is the same kind
of satellite that if you have friends who
live out in the boonies, they're getting there
Internet from DirecTV or somebody like that.
It's kind of slow, kind of glitchy but it
was a lot better than the other forms of communication
we had which was none. We had no landline,
we had no cell service; satellite Internet
was our only contact with Earth. People always
ask, "Do they put in an artificial 20-minute
delay? We did not have an artificial 20-minute
delay. We had very real 24-hour delay and
then our mission support people who all volunteers.
This is entirely non-profit all volunteer
organization. So, our mission support people
were only online once a day from 8 o'clock.
So, if you had an emergency, we had some emergency
protocols to contact, a remote medical people.
But, in general, we were completely on our
own and we only had email and that wasn't
responded to very frequently. So here we are
in the main area and you can just barely see
in this picture two of the six webcams. We
were on webcam 24/7. It only transmitted a
still image every six--every three to six
minutes because of bandwidth limitations.
So, if you did something really stupid there
was a possibility you had not been captured.
But we did have somebody who went downstairs
and said, "Okay nobody come downstairs, I'm
going to take sponge bath and then we told
her, you know you're on webcam. So, but apart
from that, we had no serious webcam related
incidents. So now we're going to go downstairs.
The two most dangerous things on Mars are
the ATVs and this stairwell. We've had plenty
of people injured themselves in this stairwell,
fortunately, nobody on my shift got hurt.
This is the bottom of that same stairwell.
And looking from the top of the stairwell
down–so now we're moving from the upper
level, which is on your left to the lower
level which is on your right. Looking from
the top of the stairs, this is the scientary,
this is actually a well-equipped science lab.
There was an autoclave and a glove box and
a number of biomedical and biological and
geological experiment stations. It's quiet
well-equipped. Our particular group didn't
have a bio or geo scientist so we weren't
a making full use of this material but it
was available for a lot of the other teams
had people who are more focused on these areas.
So, we get downstairs turning back to look
at the ladder. The door you see to your right
leads into the EVA preparation room which
is where the spacesuits are racked. Yes, we
had to have spacesuits, we were not allowed
while we were in the simulation to go outside
on to the dessert surface without wearing
a suit. This is another view of the suit area.
And on the left, you can just barely see the
airlock door to the outside. Going through
into the airlock, you can see it's all simulated
but it's all designed to give you the feeling
of actually being on Mars. We're not going
to go outside just yet. Now, we're going to
turn around, go back out of the EVA room into
the science lab, which is also our engineering
work area and around back to the engineering
airlock; two airlocks, one front, one back.
The engineering airlock is located in the
engineering area and to the left there you
see all of the stuff, all the tools and materials
and equipment that we had to keep the hab
going. It's a lot like living in an isolated
cabin where you're responsible for maintaining
and repairing all your own stuff and there
is no possibility of going back to home depot
or what have you incase you got the wrong
size bolts. You have to make do with what
you have. Therefore, nothing ever gets thrown
away. You bring with you what you think you
need and anything that you can't use, you
put it on the shelf or you put in the box,
or you throw it out back in what we call the
arctic pile because it might come in handy
later on. Also in the engineering area, you
can see just past those wrenches is the one
bathroom that the six of us were sharing for
two weeks and that wooden thing on the wall
there is the hand pump which are used to pump
water to flush the toilet. The water that
we used in the sinks and then the shower,
when the shower was working, would be ran
down through the greenhouse and filtered through
a couple of different layers of plants which
I'll show you in a minute to produce what
we called gray water. Gray water was not drinkable.
The International Space Station has a recycling
system that can turn gray water into drinkable
water but it cost $250 million. We can't do
that, but we did have this re-circulating
gray water system in order to give us some
idea of what it would be like to be dealing
with this. So you had to manually pump water
into the toilet in order to flush it and you
had to pump 50 times, I counted them and there's
the sign over the toilet that says, "If it's
yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush
it down." Water was scares. Our water was
delivered in a tank truck, a small tank on
a trailer once every week or so and so, we
had to really conserve our water. But at the
same time, we couldn't conserve it too much
or the greenhouse would die because it wasn't
getting enough water. So, it's a real balance,
water on Mars is a constant problem. And too
much water can be as much of problem as to
a little. We also had a shower but as I said
there've been a hard, hard freeze the week
before we arrived and so the pipe burst and
so the shower was out of commission a year
so, or a week. So, we were just reduced to
sponge baths. So, going out the back door,
the engineering airlock and now we're on the
back porch. Now, you maybe wondering how I'm
standing out there in the vacuum and the answer
is that I'm not in the vacuum, I'm in this
pressurized tunnel, the RA Heinlein Memorial
Tunnel. So this is--it's just a sketch of
a tunnel but it represents a pressurized tunnel
that connects the hab with the greenhouse.
So, we're passing through the tunnel here
to the greenhouse, the auto-memorial greenhouse.
So, in this space, the greenhouse is divided
in to two areas, the front half is where you
can raise plants if you're raising any plants
on your rotation; we did–-I'll talk a little
bit about that later. And then at the back
half is where the water is filtered. The water
is filtered through three different tanks
containing different kinds of water plants.
And I'll give you a closer look at that sign
there, you may recognize that symbol. That's
actually the orchid symbol. So, the water
is filtered through several different tanks
and several different layers of filters and
a number of different bacteria to the point
that it actually stunk much less by the time
it was through with all that and we could
use it for flushing the toilet. Now, it may
seem that going through all that work just
to flush the toilet doesn't seem worthwhile,
but, actually, something like 60% of the water
that a typical house uses is used to flush
the toilet. So, by using recycled water to
flush the toilet, we could dramatically cut
our water use. And in a real space station,
you'd be using something other than water
to flush the toilet but this is--it's only
a simulation. So, from here you can see that
in the addition to the hab and the greenhouse,
we also have an observatory. The path leading
up to the observatory is also a "pressurized
tunnel," so as long as you don't step pass
that line of rocks on either side, you will
not die. The green--sorry, the observatory
itself is too small to move around and inside
in a spacesuit which is why we have this pressurized
tunnel. And it has, as you can see a gorgeous
view and the skies in this area are about
as dark as anywhere on this continent. We
had spectacular views at night. This is astronomical
photograph that Bianca took. And here is a
view down from the observatory to the hab
by night. And that bright orange star you
see in the upper left hand corner is actually
Mars. So, while we were there, we were doing
real science in simulated Mars conditions.
One of the projects we were working on was
a Micropaleontology project which is done
by Steve who is an amateur paleontologist.
He would go out and climb on rocks that none
of us were brave enough to clamber and come
down with samples of various materials from
formations that he thought might be good microfossil
beds. Some of his paleontologist friend said,
"That sounds a great experiment but you're
not going to find anything." Well, he spent
a lot of time sipping through samples and
a lot of times staring through microscopes
and he did eventually actually find this.
This is called an ostocot. It is a 150 million
year-old crustation, craters like this still
exist today and this kind of sorting and serting
and sifting and finding is something that
is probably going to be one of the major things
that we do when we do get to Mars because
if there was any life on Mars, even million
of years ago, it would probably be quiet small.
So, this microfossil thing--the existence
of these microfossils is one of the reasons
that the Mars dessert research station is
located where it is because there are plenty
of microfossil beds in that vicinity. Another
experiment we were doing was what we called
the Suit Constraints Study. In this study,
we would go out and look for plants, we would
mark out an area of the dessert and then try
to count, identify and take samples of every
plant in the vicinity. Everybody did the--we
had four different areas and everybody did
each area once and we randomized whether you
would do it in a suit or not in a suit. So,
we did all of the non-suited parts of the
study at the very beginning of the mission
before we went in to simulation. After that,
we were all going out and doing what I called
cotton picking on Mars because it was tedious,
back breaking work, crawling around hands
and knees looking for all these little plants
samples. And I swear, wearing the gloves,
the gloves was the worst part. Imagine dealing
with Ziplock bags and a little pair of scissors
and a pencil and a pad and the camera so you
could record and write down and note down
every sample that you took. I swear, I collected
my pencil a lot more often than I collected
any of those plant samples. So, while we were
out there on our hands and knees collecting
samples, Diego was monitoring the experiment.
But since he was out there and we really weren't
getting into much trouble, he decided that
he would do a little side experiment on Extremophile
Life Forms. So, he was looking for what are
called Extremophiles which is to say life
forms that like extreme conditions which involve
picking up a lot of rocks and breaking them
open and looking inside. In this case, he
found a green line in the middle of the rock
which when examined under the microscope yielded
this. This is an alga. This life form exists
on Earth and lives inside of a rock where
there's no light and no water. And we think
that if there are life forms on Mars today,
they're going to be craters like that. Another
experiment that Diego, our biologist did,
was growing Physallis Peruviana which is a
plant that grows in Peru at very high altitudes.
It's used to lower pressures. It used to a
lot of ultraviolet light. And so we thought
it would be a good candidate for growing on
Mars. So, we had a number of them in the greenhouse
and unfortunately, by the end of the two weeks,
only one plant had come up. So, in the sense
the experiment was as a success and it did
had a result, but in terms of actually growing
plants, not so much. The one scientific experiment
that I was most directly involved in was the
reconstruction of the telescope. The radio
telescope had been put out in 2006 and was
built for the altitude of Jupiter above the
horizon at that year. Jupiter has moved around
since then. So, the telescope needs to be
pointed in a different direction. This type
of telescope just consists of two wires held
up on poles. And so, the altitude, which it
is focus is determined by the--by the height
of the wires above the ground. So, what we
needed to do is we need to take it down and
put it up again in an adjustable way. So,
this was all done in suits, we went out. We
disassembled the existing radio telescope
and took it down. Then we came inside and
used our trigonometric skills to figure out
how long all the guy-wires needed to be and
where the holes needed to be a drilled. And
then, we drilled all the holes, measured all
the guy-wires, drove the new spikes in to
the Marsian soil using a highly sophisticated
astronaut tool. And then put the new one up
using--again, high sophisticated astronaut
tools. And, finally, there's the completed
new adjustable radio telescope and then we
went inside and actually recorded this signal
from Jupiter. So, it's not a very sophisticated
instrument but it's--I mean, a lot of the
people that come to the Mars research station,
a student of one sort of another. So, the
radio telescope has been used by several groups
that who've come after us to do various scientific
studies. The thing that we spent the most
time on each day and the biggest pain in each
day and also the most fun was going out an
extra vehicular activity going outside of
the hab. When you're getting ready to go on
EVA, you start of by putting on a jumpsuit.
Under the jumpsuit, I am wearing a wool sweater,
wool shirt, long sleeves, a long pants, a
long underwear, and then wool net cap. It
was very cold in January in the Utah Dessert.
We put on these gaiters and our boots to keep
the dust and sometimes mud from getting into--from
getting inside of our boots. The backpack
is actually quiet light in weight but it's
a bit awkward to get on. You're supposed to
have somebody to help you on with it but we
got to the point that we could put it on ourselves.
Now, we're all set. For the helmet...
>> Is that the [INDISTINCT]?
>> LEVINE: That's one of them, I got a good
a lot of author photos. This--okay, so you
have your name tag that goes on so we can
identify the body when it's brought back in.
The things on the red line yards are keys
to the ATVs. We have this large red thing
on it so that in case you dropped it while
you're wearing your helmet and wearing your
gloves, you can see it their on the ground
and maybe even have a fighting chance of picking
it up. And we also had handheld radios that
we use for communication. So you hook up the
radio, you run the wire into the earphone
up under the ring of the helmet. Then, you
have to have somebody to help screw the hoses
on to your helmet. That was the one thing
that you could not do for yourself--the angle
was just too awkward. And now, we're all suited
up in the airlock, ready to go; and out we
go on to the surface; and here we are out
in the surface of Mars, and it's not Mars
but with the space suit and the red rocks,
it really felt like Mars. We were doing astronaut
things. We were collecting samples and taking
lots of pictures, and I came home with something
like 2,500 pictures after the two weeks its––it
was–-it's hard not to get great photographs
just pointing--just pointing the picture at
your friends doing all these marvelous things.
And I didn't think that I would really enjoy
being in the desert, but I really did––I
really did––I really did grow to love
it. It's a beautiful, hazardous, it's hazardous,
it's unpleasant, it's uncomfortable. I'll
take––I'll take questions later; I'll
take questions at the end of the talk, thank
you. But it's––it's spectacular in its
way. It, I mean, Buzz Aldrin used the term
magnificent desolation when talking about
the moon and this––this new tide desert
really is magnificent desolation, and the
colors of the rocks were constantly changing,
depending on atmospheric conditions and what
time of the day it was. Many different kinds
of rocks, many different vistas and you could
climb on things and see for a long, long way.
This particular rock just fascinates me; this
is a case where you have an over-layer which
is made of harder rock and under-layer made
of a softer rock that could just been eaten
away over the years. We never did find out
the name of that feature but it's quite spectacular.
And the rocks that you would see underfoot,
red like mars and––and that there––there--that's
a beautiful shot of––of the hab from the
ridge above and this is the area that was
known on our maps as Valles Marineris; all
of--we have our map of the area with all these
Mars names on it. The Bureau of Land Management
who owns this land has all of their own names
for this stuff but we would call it Valles
Marineris or Olympus Mons or what have you,
but you can see just how much it looks like
Mars; how––how, you know, you've got the
rocks laying around--well, actually this is
Mars. This is an actual Mars surface shot,
and apart from the fact that the real Mars
is a little bit more rusty red and Utah is
a little bit pinker, it--you'd kept seeing
the shots that just reminded you of the shots
that you'd see from the actual Mars mission.
So this is Utah, and this is the real Mars,
you know, look how similar they are to each
other. And you can tell the shots of the real
of the––of the assimilated Mars because
they have people wandering around on them.
But it was so cool and I left my footprint
on Mars. We also had in addition to our footprints,
we had these rovers. This was--there were
kind of frightening to me at first but I really
grew to love them. Each of these little guys
had its own personality. They were a lot like
animals, they had that, you know, they were
temperamental, they would––they would
sometimes take off without you. We had––we
had some thrills, we had some spills, nobody
was seriously hurt, fortunately. But with
the rovers, we could get out a lot further
and this was--anybody here had been to––had
been to Disneyland, you know, the Indiana
Jones ride? It felt like the Indiana Jones
ride on the territory of Thunder Mountain
Railroad. So after––after a long, hard
day of going out and collecting rocks and
looking for--looking for samples and taking
lesser great photos, the sun would go down.
And at the end of this day, we climb up to
a butte right nearby and had this gorgeous,
amazing view. This was-–these are just––just
a spectacular, just awe inspiring vista. And
so, as the sun went down, we would gather
our materials and head back to the hab, and
come back at the end of the day. Now when
you're on Mars, things break down all the
time. So I became a member of the engineering
crew. Usually, there is only one engineer
and five scientists. In this case, we really
had three engineers because, although, I was
a journalist, my journalistic test only took
up about a third of my day. So I spent the
rest of my time helping to fix things. So
I became the one in charge of all the small
electronics, which included the backpacks.
Also when we had a crack in the space helmet,
you can see that little gray rectangle near
the top, that's duct tape; we would repair
everything we had with anything that we could
get. Dealing with water, was a big part of
our day, we had to pump––we had to pump
the gray water out of one tank and then do
another tank a couple of times a day. You
can see that piece of paper taped up on one
of the tanks in the greenhouse, it says gray
water system has recently undergone major--a
major renovations, do not do anything without
checking with mission support first. Everything
was changing all of the time because all of
the systems have been built and then you go
out there and something breaks in, you have
to fix it with whatever you've got. So the
systems were constantly changing. In this
case, we had to go in there with the filter
and hold this filter under the pipe at a certain
point in the process because the regular filtering
system wasn't working. We were constantly
having to fix and improvised; the whole thing
was like, there's a scene in the movie, Apollo
13, where the mission support people come
and they dump a whole bunch of stuff down
on the table in front of the engineers and
says, you have to fix--you have to make this
fit into that using only this stuff. Everyday
on Mars is like that. And I know from talking
with people who've worked on the--on the Viking
missions and the––and the Mars rovers,
that this kind of improvisation is just part
of the space travel, because anytime you go
some place new and some place distant, you
have to cope with whatever the environment
throws at you with whatever you have with
you. So, it's always improvisation, it's always
putting together and fixing. Now, on the other
end of--this is also a pressurized tunnel.
On the other end of this pressurized tunnel
is the engineering area or shed, where we
have our motor generator that keeps us in
power. This runs off of diesel fuel. This
new generator called Kitty was delivered the
first day we were there. The previous crew
had had very serious problems with generators.
There are actually five dead generators in
this pile. In addition to two dead generators
that are behind me when I took this picture.
And so on day three when our power went out,
it was not completely surprised, but as we
sent there with no power and no heat, getting
colder and colder and as the sun was going
down, it was getting darker and darker, it
was kind of scary and it really felt like
we were out there on our own. Fortunately,
this man came through to help us. This is
DG is his real photograph; I think this is
the only picture anybody has of him, and he
is a guy who lives in Hanksville which is
about two, three hours drive away and comes
in when the problems get too severe for us
to solve on our own. So, he came in and he
managed to diagnose what the problem was with
the generator which was that when we shut
it down in order to change the oil, it wouldn't
restart. It turns out that it was running
the power system just fine but it wasn't charging
its own battery. What we wound up doing was
taking it a trickle charger and plugging it
in to the outlet running an extension cord
out of the hab to a trickle charger so that
the motor generator could charge itself, constant,
constant improvisation. So, our water was
delivered--our drinking water was delivered
on a tank. It had to be pumped by hand from
that tank in to this tank from which it could
be electrically pumped up into this tank which
is located above the bedrooms, and from there,
it would gravity feed down into the sinks.
If you didn't pay attention when you're pumping
this tank full, it would overflow and if you
went above that green line at the top, the
one that says, "Do not exceed" then the water
would run down in to your bedroom. This, of
course, never happened to us, right? So, dealing
with water, making sure that the batteries
for the backup system were being charged,
making sure that the plants in the greenhouse
did not die. Engineering is pumping up, keeping
the rovers gas and oil. Just dealing with
the systems of the hab was really more than
one full time job. There were two and a half
of us and we were able to get a hab. Usually,
most teams fall behind. So, we were doing
very well and actually Laksen, our chief engineer
was asked to join the permanent engineering
staff and he'll be going back their in June
to get the place ready for the next rotation,
the next year because they don't do it during
the summer. They close up at the end of the
season and open up again and I think about
September. So, our daily life, we had pretty
much the same schedule everyday. Got up at
7:30, had breakfast in a morning, briefing.
We went out on a morning EVA anything from
two people to four people would go out on
one or two EVAs in the morning; lunch about
noon and then usually time for two different
EVAs in the afternoon. We'd get together for
dinner and then we'd spend the rest of the
evening doing our daily reports. The hab was
equipped with quite a large selection of books.
I took this picture because it really represents
what living in the hab is all about. We have
Joy of Cooking, Fundamentals of Radiology,
Microgravity Research and the Home Improvement
1, 2, 3 book, because it really is like living
in a small cabin except for the fact that
you just can't go home and get anymore stuff,
you're stuck with what you've got. What we
were eating was dehydrated food of one sort
or another. This is some of it and there's
a lot more of it in the loft above the bedrooms.
This is a fairly typical breakfast before
you add the water. So, that's powdered milk,
dehydrated fruit of some sort of looks like
mangoes, little sugar and oatmeal. This is
breakfast basically everyday, was oatmeal.
We had a lot of other things for lunch and
dinner but–-and that thing at that large
brown rectangle on the right is shelf-stable
bread which is developed for the military
and was about as tasty as you might think.
The dehydrated fruit was quite nice and actually
we got in trouble with mission support because
we ate more than our share, the dehydrated
fruit. We were able to bake, if the--with
the stove which was lit with a match. And
this was--this is, I think was a kuskus that
I fixed one day. Diego, who raised us some
sprouts in the greenhouse and I have to tell
you, after a week and a half of eating dehydrated
food having a simple salad of green sprouts
with a vinaigrette and a few dehydrated onions
on top was probably the best salad I've eaten
in my entire life. And Paul was a big eater
as you can tell. That was made by mixing together
several different varieties of dehydrated
food and adding water, it wasn't actually
quite--it wasn't actually that bad. So, this
is me working on my journalistic duties. We
had a lot of reports. We all had a lot of
reports to do. These were filed over a web
form to the Mars Society server back in Boston.
So, I did my journalist report everyday. There
was also--I also copied my journalist reports
to my live journal for my friends and family
and a lot of other people, of course, who've
read them online. We had the engineering report
which listed all of the water levels and gasoline
levels and diesel levels and oil levels of
all the systems and just was a quick checklist
of everything that might conceivably go wrong.
So the people back home could know what the
state of the hab was. We had an EVA report
that the person who was in charge of any individual
EVA would fill out about where did you go,
how long did it take, what did you do? There
was the science report for each of the science
experiments that was ongoing. We had to have
file our science report everyday. We had to
upload photographs to the Mars Society for
their use on their webpage. We had our daily--was
this the food study? Yes, this is the food
study. We had to fill out a survey on what
we ate every single day and how we felt about
it. We had the hab architectures study which
we filled out twice a week was, what do you
think about the space that you're living in?
Are there any changes that you would make?
How long do you think you could live in this
space before we're going insane? Hopefully,
the answer is more than two weeks. This was
the report that we filled out after each of
our suit constraints studies. And the inventory
of all the food, what have we eaten, what
was remaining. And the quick guide that I
wrote. I was a technical writer for a lot
of years. And so, when I got here and I discovered
how messed up and undocumented the hab systems
were because there was plenty of documentation.
We had binders and binders and binders of
documentation. Every one of which was out
of date, even if it was only a couple of months
old because the hab systems were constantly
changing. So, I wrote up these quick guides
which were one page bullet lists of this is
what you need to do everyday and if something
goes wrong, this is what to do about it because
we had lots of background material, but no
very focused useable documentation. So, I
wrote about a dozen of these quick guides
and laminated them and left them, and I left
the file on the computer in the hab saying
with explicit instructions to say, whenever
anything changes, you need to update the quick
guides. And I've gotten feedback from people
that have followed that this has been incredibly
valuable to them. So, technical writing saves
the day, for sure. So, this is why if you
look down in the webcam at any point during
my two week mission, you would probably see
me sitting at my computer type, type, type,
typing away. But then, at the end of the day,
we were on Mars and we had this marvelous
view out of our port holes everyday. So, what
did I learn from my two weeks on Mars? Shared
adversity creates strong relationships. We
were out there all by ourselves. There were
six of us and we were dependent on each other.
Nobody else could tell us what to do, nobody
else could help us. We had to depend on each
other and we got really, really close. We
were like a family. The isolation are great
distance from any kind of shop, anybody that
could help us, forced us to become ingenious,
to improvised, to be self-reliant. And what
I called protagonistiness which is behaving
like the protagonist. Protagonist of the story
is somebody who takes action to change the
plot, you have to. When you see a problem
beginning to occur, you learn to take action,
you learn to see that problem and take action
to do something about it. You do not wait
for approval, you do not ask somebody to help,
you do not assume that somebody else will
deal with it. You deal with it yourself. And,
I, just an example, when we came back, I was
having breakfast in the hotel on the way home
and I spilled the coffee and I immediately
grab the rag and mop up the coffee and put
everything away. Never even occurred to me
to ask somebody from the restaurant to clean
the mess up, I was just totally in that mode
of everything that happens is my responsibility
but I did not die. I got this fabulous author
photo. And I made my new Mars family. These
people are people who will be important to
me for the rest of my life and I'm so glad
to have met them. So, this is me. So, we got
15 minutes for questions. Yes?
>> This is so cool. I have so many questions.
I have to pick one, I guess from now. So,
I guess, it would be–-when I see like videos
and like articles about the Space Station,
they don't rotate the whole crew at once.
I guess not to keep, not to bring like a pack
of four, five new people...
>> LEVINE: Right.
>> ...to this environment.
>> LEVINE: Yeah.
>> Did anything like this--is anything like
this considered for this like...?
>> LEVINE: We actually--that is exactly one
of the recommendations that we made to the
Mars Society is that, when you come in the-–you
fly to Grand Junction, Colorado, which is
the nearest town with any--excuse me--nearest
town of any kind of airport and then you rent
a car and you drive about three hours to the
hab; you have the hand over exchange crews.
The old crew takes the car and drives back
to Grand Junction that takes about three hours.
So, because of that three hour drive, you've
got, maybe a couple of hours for the hand
over during which time, you have to try to
tell the new crew everything you couldn't
write down and a lot of information gets lost
in this big game of telephone. So, we were
saying, we recommended to the Mars Society
that rather than rotate the entire crew that
you have some people stay over into the next
crew and that is exactly what they do on the
International Space Station and you've got
to have that continuity that institutional
memory because we made a lot of mistakes in
our first couple of days and looking at the
reports from subsequent crews, I see again
and again, people make mistakes in the first
couple of days. That's when if you were to
have the tank overflow and ran down into your
room, that's when it would happen if it happened
which it didn't happened to us, officially.
So, yeah, that's an excellent thing they do
on the Space Station and I would, you know,
I wish we could do it. The economics, the
whole thing is really running in a shoestring.
The hab cost, I think $2 million which was
donated by a couple of large donors, but all
of the maintenance and everything going forward
is all done on donations. And so, there's
never enough money to do anything the way
that you would like to do. And so, just–-the
difference between running a car to drive
all the way out there and back once every
two weeks, as supposed to every week which
you would want to do to have that hand over,
to have the overlapping cruise, you know,
that's one of the areas where they had to
cut back. And also, each crew is independent.
Our crew belonged to the Mars Society but
a lot of the other ones are sent by Georgia,
Texas out of crew and the Mars Society-Europe
send out a crew and there are a number of
different organizations that have, that filled
a full crew of six. If you had overlapping
personnel, you couldn't do it quite that way.
So there's all kinds of reasons they do it
this way, but I think for practicality sake,
it would be better if they did have overlap.
Yes?
>> Oh me?
>> LEVINE: Yeah, you.
>> You know, to me, I think the most amazing
thing is that, at your age and level of education,
you still have trigonometric skill.
>> LEVINE: Yes.
>> Most of us have lost a long ago.
>> LEVINE: Yes. Yes. Well, see this watch?
Trigs functions.
>> Okay.
>> LEVINE: This is a 1980 vintage [INDISTINCT]
watch with trigonometric functions. And all--and
actually, you know, we all did, I mean Paul
is an electrical engineer; Laksen is also
an engineer although he's mostly a manager
these days. We all had those skills and between
us we manage to remember the formulas.
>> Okay, David. You are a writer and a narrator,
what books did you take with you?
>> LEVINE: I did not--let's see, I only took--well,
I took a copy of Space Magic, my award winning
collection of short stories which, I don't
know if you can sell books here but actually
I have copies. And, I brought--I did not bring
a copy of Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars,
but they were copies in the library there.
Honestly, I only brought one book for leisure
reading and I'd never cracked it, I couldn't
tell you what it was. Good question though.
Yes?
>> Hi. Two questions. The first question is
what did you have in your backpacks along
with your spacesuit?
>> LEVINE: Right.
>> Was it [INDISTINCT] weighed down or...?
>> LEVINE: Yes. Fortunately, no. The backpack--when
I went in to repair the backpack for the first
time, I was really surprised because under
that quilted cloth cover is, you know those
plastic bins, you put shoes in and slip under
your bed, that was what was under the cover.
And in that bin was two muffin fans like,
you'd find inside your typical PC, a rechargeable
12-volt battery about that big, a switch and
a fuse. The rest of it was entirely empty.
But, the airflow through that empty space
was such that the air would come in, would
actually cool off your back which is nice
during the warmer parts of the rotation and
then be pumped into the helmet. So, it was
really, you know, the bulk of the pack was
mostly just for visual effect. But keep in
mind, of course, that on Mars it would only
weigh one third of what it does on Earth.
That pack is mostly empty but it was functional.
>> And the second question is, why did you
have to do that [INDISTINCT] paper work? Who
was reading all of that stuff?
>> LEVINE: A lot of the paper work that we
were doing was for the Mars Society itself.
Filing those reports kept us honest and made
sure that if anything got broken, they would
know about it, so that they could maybe send
a long some replacement parts with the following
people with the next rotation, because people
were able to pick something up on at the in
grand junction on their way out. So they could
also offer advice if anything went wrong,
and having a daily report would let them know
if things were happening that they would consider
problems even if we didn't. And it was basically
just to keep us honest and focused, and also
it's a public relations outreach. The same
reason we have those webcams which are publicly
visible. Also, all of those reports that we
posted went up on a webpage that's publicly
visible so that people can follow along at
home on the mission. And I know that people
were reading my reports and looking at the
web cams and reading my blogs because I got
email about it a lot. We were bandwidth limited,
we were extremely bandwidth limited, but each
of us was instructed, "You will get a separate--a
special Gmail account especially for the mission
and you will not have your regular email forwarded
to that account either, you will only give
that account to people that you know will
not abuse it." So, we were--we had an account
where we could read a limited amount of email,
and we were explicitly told not to use Hotmail
or Yahoomail or any other things, just use
Gmail because it's so bandwidth efficient.
>> [INDISTINCT]
>> LEVINE: Oh yes, yes so some of the other
paper work that we were doing, the architecture
study and the food study were being done by
researchers at a, I believe, at the Johnson
Space Center. This is not an official NASA
thing, but there are a lot of people who worked
for NASA who worked for JPL, who worked for
Lockheed, who were doing this on their own
hook, and they're getting--and they get the
time off in their bosses because the bosses
also think that it will be valuable for them.
So there's a lot to be learned about what
it's actually like to live in these environments,
which if you're designing space hardware,
can be very helpful. It gives you a visceral
gut impression of what things are like that's
a lot more effective than anything that you
might read on paper. So, it's not--it's not
NASA, but there's a lot of NASA people that
are working on it, including the people that
are doing the food study and the architecture
study. And these things are being--they are
being published in refereed journals, there
is some real science coming out. Not a lot,
not a lot, but there is some real science
coming out of here. Yes.
>> So I remember seeing this feature on Discovery
about one of the Apollo missions when they
discovered that they can hop around instead
of walking, making it more efficient in the
space suits.
>> LEVINE: Yes.
>> But they were talking there of how they
can't really like, because of the hostile
environment, they, you know, every time you
try something like that, it's kind of, you
know, if you fall and crack your helmet, it's
not like you're here. So I was wondering if
you guys did any limit yourself at all during
those EVA's to like not go certain places
because it might be too dangerous to the environment.
>> LEVINE: Very much so, yes. The priorities
at the Mars Research Station are safety, science,
simulation, and comfort in that order. So,
bottom line is if there's any question about
whether or not you should do something, if
it's not safe, you take the safer route. And
so there were absolutely places that were
marked on the map you do not go here in your
ATVs. We had--there was a lot of the handover
information that's all about how to use those
ATVs safely. There was, you know, there were
protocols for going up and down that ladder
because you could easily bust yourself on
that ladder. There were--and then, we would
experiment, but one of the reasons you report
on what you've done is so that mission support
can tell you don't do that anymore, it's dangerous.
And the ATVs were the most dangerous thing
and certainly going out in the desert is potentially
dangerous even if you aren't wearing a pretend
space suit. By the way, when all the paperwork
that I had to fill out when I'd signed up
for the mission, included a disclaimer that
said in approximately so many words, I acknowledge,
that driving around the desert in an ATV wearing
a fixed space helmet is really stupid. And
so, you know, so we actually did not wear
our space helmets on the ATVs. We would take
off the helmet and strap it to the rack and
wear a motorcycle helmet. And that's why there
aren't a lot of pictures of us riding on the
ATVs because we didn't want to take pictures
of us not in simulation. But we did wear the
helmets for short times and we would put on
the helmets for photographs. But you compromise
science and simulation for safety were necessary,
which is not to say we never did anything
foolish, but we never did anything foolish
and told mission support about it. Yes.
>> So, I had two questions, the first one
is how did the differential plant survey work
out?
>> LEVINE: Okay, the Peperomia study, we tried
growing that plant in the greenhouse in a
variety of local soils and only one seed germinated.
It was intended to be an experiment that would
go for several rotations because two weeks
says a lot of time when it comes to a plant.
But since only one seed came up, we decided
to terminate the experiment rather than ask
the following--ask the following team to use
some of their limited time to keep going out
in an experiment that we'd given them. Did
that answered the question?
>> No, I was actually asking about the plant
survey you did one in space suits and one
without?
>> LEVINE: Oh, that one. The--I don't remember--part
of the problem there is this that the person
who was in charge of the survey, Diego, who
was the one, who was now in Moscow getting
ready for the Mars 500. So he hasn't had the
chance to assemble and publish his results,
but just for my own personal experience, I'd
say that I spotted and collected something
in the vicinity of 40% or 50% as many plants
in the suit as not in the suit. The biggest
problem was the gloves, and the second biggest
problem was the helmets. Because when you're
wearing this helmet, you can't, you can't
wipe your nose, you can't rub your eyes, if
your hat starts to fall down over your head--I
learned that I could kind of push my head
back and kind of scrape it back on the back
of the helmet. But in general, if your helmet
fogged up, you know, you would, you could
be in serious trouble. And one of the other
teams had some very cold weather they had
the helmets fogging up all the time and sometimes
they just had to abandon sims, "I need to
take of my helmet and clean it, otherwise,
I couldn't see at all." So, in addition to
that keeping you from seeing the plants in
the first place, taking a picture of the plant,
and dealing with marking down your results
on a piece of paper, and maybe holding the
plant close to yourself so that you can identify
which plant it is, you can only get this close,
you can't this close, and that's--it's a big
impact. And then there's the bulkiness of
the suit and the backpack and all that keeps
you from moving from around and getting down
and getting up again was all--it was, like
I said, it was like picking cotton on Mars
and so, it was a big, big hit. If we were
doing it for real, we would probably have
something better than holding six of Ziplock
bags in one hand while doing all that other
stuff with the other hand. If we were doing
it for real, we would probably have a specialized
holder to hold the six bags open that would,
like, strap to the side of suite or something
like that. But because we did the same thing
in both environments, it was a fair comparison.
But it was a--it was instructive to be sure.
Some other teams, not ours, there's a group
in South Dakota, University of South Dakota
is doing space suit design work, and they
send a couple of teams out a year with new
prototype space suits which they try out on
the desert conditions and those are for real,
I mean, those are much real space suits with
actual oxygen supplies and everything, it's
quite impressive, you got some great pictures.
And you had a second question.
>> Yeah, the second question was what it was
the environment in the greenhouse like? And
was it artificially heated?
>> LEVINE: The greenhouse was not artificially--the
artificial--the environment in the greenhouse
was--it was like any greenhouse that you might
have been in. It was warm and rather moist,
it was not artificially heated. It was--the
outside is that wiggly transparent stuff that
greenhouses are often made of, and there was
enough solar radiation coming in through there
that it was quite comfortable in there, it
was a nice place to be a part from the fact
that it's tank. So, the greenhouse was working
as a greenhouse. In actual Mars conditions,
the fact that you're farther from the sun
is slightly compensated for by the fact that
the atmosphere is so much thinner, which means
that earth plants would probably get along
pretty well in a greenhouse on Mars. All you
have to do was bring the local atmosphere
which is mostly carbon dioxide up to a level
that's comfortable for the plants, which is
only like I think about four or five PSI of
carbon dioxide is enough to keep plants happy.
So that's about one-third of earth atmospheric
pressure. Mars surface pressure is less than
1% of earth's surface pressure. But, you could
enclose the plants in a greenhouse, pressurize
the air a little bit, and they would be able
to grow and they would not be too badly disturbed
by the 24 and a half hour day. So that's a
definitely something that will happen if we
ever do go to Mars for sure as people. Yes.
>> I was going to ask something else but since
you brought it up, what is for a habitat on
Mars, what is the design, I guess, pressurize
environment that you want for the humans?
I mean, you don't have to have one full atmosphere,
right? I mean.
>> LEVINE: No, you don't. I've done some research
on this, I mean, I've been working on some
fiction about Mars obviously. And I've been
studying this and the International Space
Station is kept at ground--at sea level pressure,
15 PSI, not for the sake of the people, but
for the sake of various experiments, because
a lot of the scientific equipment was built
with the assumption of 15 PSI. So it's just
easier on all the equipment if they keep the
space station at 15 PSI. Apollo, was one at
a quite a low pressure of about I think like
3 PSI of pure oxygen. Pure oxygen as you probably
know is what killed the Apollo one astronauts.
So they ran the capsule at a mixture of oxygen
and nitrogen during launch, but once they
were well above of the atmosphere and away
from the danger of fire, they switched over
to a pure oxygen atmosphere and ran them pure
oxygen for the rest of the mission. Pure oxygen
is perfectly breathable for people...
>> At 20%...
>> LEVINE: Yeah, yeah I think, you know, 20%;
our atmosphere is like 20% oxygen. So if you
provide in 20% atmospheric pressure, people
are perfectly happy on that as long as there
is no--as long as there is no combustion,
then it's quite safe. Running at a low pressure,
means that things like space suits are much
easier to work in, and of course, you don't
have to transport all of that nitrogen along
with you. So, I can't tell you what pressure
a Mars habitat would be run at, there are
good reasons to run it at sea level pressures
and there's other good reasons to run it at
a lower pressure. The book that I would recommend
is The Case from Mars by Robert Zubrin. He
talks about all of this--Robert Zubrin is
one of the Mars Society and just about everything
you see here is based on his ideas. So, he
talks about all this stuff in great detail
and you can work it out for yourself. You
have another question?
>> And then the other question. Yeah, so,
if you look at the literature at least movies
and TV series on the technology level of science
fiction, on one hand you have like the Star
Trek where everything is nice and shiny, on
the other end of the spectrum you have sort
of the firefly, right? And you guys were like
some--few levels below that. So, I'm kind
of wondering if that kind of spoils the effect
or do you get like--how do you, like, you're
sitting on folding chairs, yet you're supposed
to be on this Mars facility with at least
some kind of modern technology. So...
>> LEVINE: It was a little busy--a little
bit of disappointment at first when you show
up in your discovery that everything is basically,
you know, everything is made of wood and you
have the folding chairs. They did as much
as they could with the budget that they had
to make it feel like a real space mission.
The--I mean for example, the door on the greenhouse
that you saw had the rounded corners and a
nice plastic waffle pattern with a big handle
in the middle. What you did not see in that
picture is the fact that the big handle says
Fisher Price on the hab, and the back of that
door, you can see where the legs have been
taken off because it was a plastic picnic
table with rounded corners. They're making
very good use of limited budget in order to
make it look as spacey as possible. So, yeah,
it's a little bit, a little bit of a disappointment
when you first get there, but the real environment;
the actual desert outside the port holes and
the space suits and just the knowledge of
how isolated you are makes it feel Marsy even
if it didn't perhaps looks as Marsy as you
might like. Okay, basically, I think we have
time for one last question.
>> It's probably just worth mentioning that
there's the other station at Mars which is
the Arctic and well I think a really, really...
>> LEVINE: Yeah, the Mars Society has two
of these Mars stations so far, there's a Mars
desert research station in Utah and the Flashline
Mars Arctic Research Station FMARS, on Devon
Island in the meteor crater in the Canadian
Arctic. FMARS is a lot more isolated, the
crew and supplies have to be dropped in by
a C130 plane, they do one month rotations
instead of two week rotations, and you have
to do, you have to walk down to the stream
to carry your water rather having it delivered
by a tanker truck. So, we had it easy by comparison
with them, and I do know some people who've
been to FMARS and it's hardcore. I had originally
thought that I wanted to go there but having
been to the Utah one, I think that's about
as far as I want to go. So, thank you very
much. I'll be hanging around if you have any
more questions.
