July 25, 2001
As the Twin Otter turned up and away from Haughton-Mars Base Camp, I felt a wave of homesickness, not for the home where I was going, but for the people and life of the HMP. We are a close community, averaging 40 people, secluded from the complexity and confusion of 21st century Earth, but benefiting from all of its technology. We live and work as an interwoven group, aware of role and place, charged with obligations to the whole, and free to come and go at most times and to do what we wish. Yet the day is held in place by morning 830 briefings (to allocate ATVs and announce flights), a warm lunch (often soup, supplemented by many with PB and jelly), and a regular substantial dinner at 6pm. After dinner we gather for another briefing, usually followed by a technical talk about some project or institution (thus we heard of the Canadian Space Agency, use of robots for geophysics, and the history of Mars exploration).
Although others on this planet are blessed with such a close-knit, village life, we are distinguished by our objective and intellect. We are highly trained, specialized scientists, banded together with the goal of colonizing the red planet. Few if any of us will go to Mars, and that understanding alone provides us with historical perspective and wisdom. We know that the great waves of human advance over this planet changed the mind of man, as well as humanity's aspirations, vision, and capabilities. For many, that is why we go to Mars. We also know that great accomplishments begin with small, well-directed steps. And we know that as people, our ancestors will advance sooner and more surely, if only we now begin the movement.
I was at Devon Island this year for just 14 days-two weeks of action and adventure, learning, challenges, and realizations. I lived in the Mars hab for a week, took two "EVAs" in a space suit costume (including the notorious mud adventure), documented hab life, created some fine time lapse videos, took hundreds of photos, and then spent a week in base camp. There I traversed with Charlie on a delightfully warm day to Trinity and Three Sisters (using GPS to find our way), and was briefly stuck in the mud again. That same day Kelly and I were extras for Discovery, enjoying real acting in our space suits, expressing concern, attention, excitement. Looking about through my helmet, I surveyed the broad Haughton Crater from Haynes Ridge, extending twelve miles below. I pretended I was on Mars seeing all this for the same time, and felt the wonder. At Haughton, our imaginations are easily primed, and my expression was genuine.
Yesterday I flew to Resolute alone. Ross and Mike piloted the twin-engine craft. Behind me were crates of the CMU Hyperion Robot, a "sun-seeking" machine, with one huge solar panel and spidery chassis. She planned her routes through a topographically mapped terrain, making loops from 5 to 10 KM over 24 hours, thus simulating a real circumpolar exploration of the moon, Mars, or an asteroid. Aside from my own luggage and four empty gas drums, I had the plane to myself.
The day began ominously, with dismal gray skies and stiff south winds. Without the sun it truly felt in the 40s, and I bundled up in my down jacket for the first time in two weeks. On a hunch, I carried my goretex jacket to the work tent area (with my usual gear bag of pee bottles, water bottle, wash rag, and small towel). I also brought Zubrin's novel, First Landing, which I had completed the night before.
Later in the morning, the mist closed in on the camp, and our newly connected weather station recorded rainfall. The previous day I had run a Category 5 cable from the airstrip to the work tent, about 1000 feet. I wired the connections inside the station, routing the white cable through the existing plastic stays along one leg, through a tight opening, and then to connectors I installed on the back panel-a 6361 "spark gap" protector against lightning (unlikely to be necessary here), then an SRM-5A modem, then the 932 DCE interface, which was attached to the SC12 blue ribbon bus to the Campbell Scientific datalogger I/O port. With John Schutt's help, I placed and buried the cable between the ATV tracks and the storage tent near the runway. This involved using a forest ranger style axe (I tend not to remember names; I have the image and its purposes etched in my mind). I was pleased to do most of the hard digging after John got it started. Indeed, the entire exercise expressed my desire to contribute something to the camp, to leave something permanent behind, to be more than an observer and consumer of the camp's services. When the rain and wind picked up yesterday morning, it was exciting to see John looking repeatedly at the laptop's display and calling out wind speed and direction to Colleen in Resolute. He's a weather buff, too, and I know he will be pleased to have this information ready at hand.
((As a sidebar, as the journalists like to say, I must mention Kelly's role in completing the weather station connection. The previous night I passed up a second helicopter ride, intent to complete my project before leaving. Alas, after making the final connection, it didn't work. I was a bit despondent, the only time I felt that way in camp this year, as I walked back from the airstrip under the leaden evening sky. I had double-checked all the connections. Everything looked right. Perhaps the 932's jumpers were not wired in the factory as advertised, but to check that I'd have to take out the module, which was now wedged behind the bundle of wires. I hoped that the next day I would feel fresher and with Kelly's eyes might find a flaw.
After breakfast, we sat down together at the laptop. I showed Kelly the modem at the PC end and the wiring diagram. I explained what I had done. She immediately said, "Wait, shouldn't these be reversed?" What? There were four wires in two pairs: Blue, white-blue, orange, white-orange. They were called A, B, C, D. The diagram showed A connected to +RCV, B to RCV, C to +XMT, D to XMT of the modem at the weather station end. Because the wires were to be connected "straight through" (I had read that somewhere), I had connected them the same way to the identical modem on the PC end. Kelly saw that this was backwards; the wires on the PC end should be reversed with A connected to +XMT, B to XMT, etc. How? Why? What? I looked again at the diagram. She was right! I was so excited. Within a few minutes we saw the datalogger's clock registered on the PC's interface, and soon we had real-time charts of the temperature, wind speed, direction, barometric pressure, soil moisture, etc.
But how did Kelly know about the wiring? I was mystified why a cable would be labeled +XMT when you stood at the weather station and the same cable would be called +RCV in the work tent! She said that she had practice from wiring her stereos-output jacks from one component were connected to input jacks on another. Sure, I knew that. But wasn't the red jack still a red jack on both ends? Didn't you connect the white plug to the white cable end on both ends? I determined that the mirror-image symmetry of the diagram was deceptive. Indeed, looking closer, I found that the modems were not mirror images at all, but flopped around, so +XMT was at the top of the right modem and at the bottom of the left one.
My interest in my flub is not defensive, but scientific-the design of diagrams must relate to mental images and conceptions. Despite my careful, repeated study, this diagram lulled me into a false understanding, failing to make salient what a novice needed to know. The stereo example cited by the expert Kelly was precisely the example I was using. Yes, analogies are important, but they are sometimes only mnemonics for what you already believe, rather than sources of insight.))
Flying out of Base Camp yesterday afternoon, I was especially reflective because I was alone, but also because I was leaving the camp behind for the first time. In my previous three expeditions, I departed when camp was dismantled for the season, not on the last flight, but always within a day or a few hours of the end. Yesterday I left over three weeks before the end of the season, and there was much more I could have done. With telemetry now in the work tent, I could learn how to collect the streaming data, and begin to handle the archiving and analysis issues. Sharing the data with CMU, with John, with Resolute raised research issues of interest to me. And there was still the satellite transmitter to program correctly and much maintenance on the station itself (the rain gauge needs baby oil). With the data in the PC labeled by the station's memory location, I was finally grasping the details of the computer program that writes the data to an internal memory. I could within a day or so learn to modify its program. Thus all of the threads I had struggled to understand meaningfully over the past year were becoming coherent. But all field science is incremental, and next year will be another field season.
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Pascal will be going into the hab with Charlie and others soon. I provided some advice for documenting what occurs. Over and over we are struggling with the distinction between research, a simulation, and operations. Most of us are researchers, but the folks who do operations at JSC understand that preparation for the field season must be managed like a real mission, with planning, designed tools, written procedures, and training. To do research on operations in a simulation, you must run the hab as a real operation. Academics might be inclined to run the hab as a simulated research operation (emphasizing the promotional appearance of being on Mars) or as a standard research operation (perhaps discarding the suits when they are an encumbrance). Nevertheless, the mission perspective is not enough; the very purpose of the hab is to do research. Operations specialists at JSC require our help to set up controlled experiments (rather than defining "the right way" in advance), just as we need their help to treat the hab as a real workplace (e.g., keeping a maintenance log on generator failures and repairs). Together we must learn how to run the hab as a research project involving authentic explorations of the geology, biology, and meteorology of Devon Island, with alternative designs for the habitat, systems, procedures, and tools embodying constraints that simulate conditions on Mars.
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The HMP camp was far more sophisticated than any of us could have imagined three years ago. Compare the group of twelve at the Haughton River in 1998 to those at camp this past week:
Discovery Channel: Bob, Andy,
Rick, Rich, Drew, Dave
CMU Roboticists: Paul, Dave, Jim, Bernadette, Mike, Ben
Charlie Cockell (UK)
John Schutt and AC
Mark Webb (our cook)
Kelly Snook (Ames)
Inuit assistants: Joannie, Joe, Jeffrey, Matthew, April
Two aeromag guys and helicopter pilot
Brian Glass (Ames)
Alain Berinstain (CSA)
Peter Smith (ASU)
Marco Lee, MD (Pascal's brother)
Leaving this group in mid-season, I experienced for the first time the poignancy of departing a small village.
I was touched at how people lined up in a semicircle to see me off-Peter, Kelly, Charlie, Jeffrey, Pascal, and John. It felt like the Wizard of Oz; the odd thought raced through my mind- who is the tin man, who the scare crow? I actually tipped my heels together and for a moment thought I might be whisked back to the golden fields of California.
Instead, I thanked them all, and standing on a metal strut, jumped up through the pilot's door and made my way to the first and only seat in the plane. Ross and Mike introduced themselves and began the checklist. With engines fully gunned, they released the brakes and we raced quickly towards the south. Below I saw my friends waving goodbye.