Dear Atila,
This is our journal from today. We hope all you enjoy it.
Thanks
Crew 201 Journalist Report – 17DEC2018
The Martian Chronicles
[SOL 3] – Response time
Interplanetary communications are extremely complex and need large earth stations; the hardest part to cope with is the delay to receive the information. We can see this phenomena happening on Earth when a remote station communicates with a satellite and its teleport, delay can be frustrating when compared to a terrestrial network. This happened too with our commander and our jokes (terrible jokes).
MDRS Crew 201 – MEx-1
This rotation was special for all because we had a birthday boy. On Earth, Chilpo would be turning 27 today, but in Mars, we still have another 300 days to get ready for his Quinceañera. How do you celebrate a birthday on Mars? Well, you dress as an astronaut, you check life support systems, work with actuators, cables, and computers without any OS. A few surprises for him though, we had a par of Wrappizas (a delicatessen unique to Mars) which we named Phobos and Deimos.Cake? We got that covered. It is a little hard to do with the limited combustion on our hab (and an oven we didn’t know how to use). Our chef, as per usual, had a plan b to make it all work. Juan Carlos was the support MARSter chef of the night and dinner was on point.
Meanwhile, at the Repair and Assembly Module (MRE in Spanish) crew members were working on the installation of a 3d printer that will allow our VSAT and rovers to be ready. Mars needs specific sets of tools and the ones provided from Earth are big, heavy and we really don’t have a place to spare. We print our tools here as earthlings would do in very remote locations where people cannot get them easily.
Astronauts have to keep sane during their missions and our psychology team has been a pro at making us activities to know that we are still ok. The crew worked with a few activities to get to know each other better, this in fact help us to act as a unit and perform as best as possible. As per our mission doctor, we are keeping data of our water consumption and we verify that the crew is having nutritious meals. A healthy crew is an efficient crew. A mentally sane crew has good humor and is prepared to help the commander to enjoy our horrible jokes even with her satellite delay.
Happy birthday Chilpo! You are now amongst the stars you love.
MEx-1 continuará informando.