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 Arrival of Twin Otter |
The Otter also carried something else, two pizzas for the crew, care of Aziz Kheraj and South Camp Inn. They were great. Markus in particular appeared transported by the experience, so Nell asked him if it was the best pizza he had ever had. Markus replied no, just the second best. Nell enquired, what was the best? Markus replied that the best was one that he ate off the stomach of a beautiful woman, many years ago. Well I guess some things are hard to beat.
So then it was noon and we had our EVA, which today constituted of Markus and I, with the Russian film team following us. We went to Marine Rock where Markus collected the final two samples needed for the Carnegie Institute MASSE life detection instrument. Markus's field technique is absolutely meticulous. He measures everything, accepts only samples that have not contacted anything, and photographs and dictates notes as and after each sample is taken. So it took almost three hours to collect three samples by two different techniques. Coming back from the expedition, I commented in jest to Markus that maybe he should have gotten a robot to do the job. Markus had to laugh, as just developing a robot capable of climbing Marine Rock is a daunting enough task, let alone being able, after reaching the top, to select the best spot and then acquire pristine samples using a combination of techniques involving the use of geologist's hammers, chisels, and sledgehammer, securing the samples in sterile containers without letting them touch anything, and documenting the whole activity all the while.
Nell and Frank spent the day working and geology reports, and Shannon worked in the lab, where she is getting very good results culturing the endolithic bacteria we found inside of an anomalous rock three days ago.
The Russian journalists are Irina and Dmitri, from Russian National Television, or NTV. Their English is imperfect, and I find myself using my fragmentary memory of Russian to fill in the gaps. It is quite remarkable the things you remember after many years of not using a language; scraps of children's poetry, a few lines of Pushkin, and a very odd assortment of words, phrases, and grammatical constructions. Still, they're enough to help.
The Russian brought some great gifts, including chocolate, music, and of course vodka. Irina also presented to me for signature a copy of my book, "The Case for Mars," translated into Russian under the title "V Zashchitu Marsa" ("In Defense of Mars") by Gennady Gusev, the head of the Russian chapter of the Mars Society. He printed 500 copies and they have all sold out, and is now looking for a major Russian publisher to publish a larger run. This was the first time anyone had ever asked me to sign a Russian copy of my book. I signed it in both English and Russian.
In other good news, the MSAT data cable finally arrived. But the bad news is that it is a cable with 25 pin connectors and each end, while all of our laptops have 9 pin connection terminals. We have a two ended 9 pin connector from the non-operational Inmarsat unit, and so as Markus and K. Mark took on the job of splicing the two. This was a bit complex, because the two different types of cables use different color wires to mean the same thing, and the same color wires to mean different things. But as I write this, Markus has just shouted in triumph that he has gotten the thing to work. If you get this message, you'll know that he did, and Flashline Station is back on line at 2400 bps, courtesy of our MSAT satellite telephone.
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Copyright © 2002 The Mars Society. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2002 The Mars Society. All rights reserved.