FMARS Sponsors	Dispatch from FMARS Robert Zubrin - Thursday, July 11, 2002 EVA 1 Report We decided this morning that we were ready to go into sim, so we spent the before noon hours preparing for our first EVA. As part of the mission simulation, all crewmembers wear simulated space suits whenever conducting activities outside the station. The suits, developed by the Rocky Mountain Mars Society chapter are not real spacesuits, or even engineering prototypes, but they are still rather complex sets of apparatus that duplicate much of the effect on its wearer of a real spacesuit in terms of loss of mobility, agility, dexterity, and situational awareness. When you are wearing one of these suits you cannot hear anything more than a few feet away, you cannot smell anything outside the suit, you cannot touch anything except through thick ski gloves. Communication over any distance must be done by suit radio, and the wearers are so enclosed that an electrical fan system is required to supply the user with air. It generally takes an experienced user about half an hour to put one on; first time users take much longer. Veteran crew member Nell Beedle instructing the EVA team in how to don their spacesuits. We had left six suits in the station since last summer, and it was questionable how well their backpack electrical systems would survive the winter. It turned out that three suit backpacks were still fully functional, one was partially functional, and two were defunct. So K. Mark and I spent the morning rebuilding the three defective suits, not to their original specification, but to the improved design we have since implemented at the Mars Desert Research Station. Then we had lunch, and around 1 PM started suiting up the EVA team for their first sortie. The EVA was a four person pedestrian excursion on Haynes Ridge, consisting of Frank, Markus, Shannon and Emily, with Frank commanding and K. Mark following out of sim with a gun and a camera to guard against bears and document the trip. (I should add at this point that this typical of K. Mark's specialized role on this expedition. He will operate out of sim as required to take care of various tasks that must be done out of sim, thereby allowing the other six crew members to experience without interruption or relief the sense of confinement that would go along with an actual Mars mission.) Since Nell is a veteran of the Desert Station and I have served before in both the Desert and Arctic stations, this EVA would also have the benefit of providing spacesuit training to almost the entire crew. The team began to suit up and we had the usual follies of first timers, resulting in an hour and a half preparation period being required before they made it into the airlock. That's actually quite good: many first time EVAs on previous crews have taken twice as long. Anyway, at 2:35 PM they were out the lock and on their way. They spent two hours patrolling up and down the ridge, walking about 2 kilometers. During this time they observed a variety a different limestone weathering patterns, periglacial features, and fossil and contemporary life forms in association with the limestone. Several samples of rock with lichen were also taken back to the hab for analysis. The crew also traveled a bit down the slope into the crater, where they noted significant amounts of water seepage not unlike the crater water seepage patterns observed on Mars. FMARS EVA-1 team exploring Haynes Ridge about 200 m from Flashline Station. The team returned to the station around 4:30 PM, after which there was a debriefing in which the team's observations of both of the ridge and the EVA process were collected. Overall, our situation now is excellent. The plumbing in the hab has been fixed by Markus, at least for now. So starting tomorrow we will get the running water system operating. The hab is running fine on one 5.5 kWe generator. Diesel fuel usage is about 12 gallons a day. Crew water use is about 23 gallons a day. This latter figure is of some interest to Mars mission planners. NASA estimates for crew water use on long duration planetary missions are about 8 gallons per day per crewmember. Our consumption is less than half of that. Since even with 90% recycling, water use comprises by far the largest of the consumable masses required on a human mission (other than propellant), cutting water use to a minimum is key to achieving a low mass, low cost mission. The weather is cold and windy, but we have plenty of surface visibility. So we are planning an aggressive series of survey expeditions, to give the crew, and especially the geologists (Nell and Frank), the big picture necessary to identify potential targets for more detailed study. So tomorrow we will undertake our first long distance EVA. We will go across the Von Braun Planitia, the large plain to the north of the Lowell Canal to explore the canyons and ridges beyond. The EVA will be led by me and include Nell, Frank, and Shannon. It's going to be a blast.
FMARS-7 | FMARS Index | About | News | Multimedia Copyright © 2002 The Mars Society. All rights reserved.