March 9th, 2019
Sol 13: Martian Parliament
Life is often made of compromises and debates. It’s important for the development of a society that people listen to the other’s points of view and take things into account to make the best choices. Even more so in a mission like ours, where a little number of people have to live together in a confined environment and take important decisions. It’s essential for everyone to share his/her experiences and opinions to help the community.
The questions of Mars and the exploration of outer space are also an open debated: How to deal with planets’ exploitation? Which laws apply on Mars? What authority will Earth have on a Mars colony? How to define the status of the settlers? There are many unanswered questions that have to be addressed before planning the first manned mission to Mars.
Since the beginning of the mission we have spent more and more time debating, on various subjects and with different and interesting opinions. It’s a very entertaining activity, with an open mind it’s a great opportunity to learn new facts and to take a step back and see a little more of the whole picture. We have covered a wide range of subjects. But one thing we have noticed since the middle of our second week is that our reactions have changed during our debates. All crew members are getting more and more emotionally engaged in the debates, react more strongly to opposition and have more difficulty to overcome differences of opinions or ideology. We are all conscious of the effects confinement and isolation have had on our social interactions, we see that we react differently to things we are very used to, but it is still hard to control our responses. But we have prepared ourselves for that, we managed a wide range of situations before the mission that linked us strongly together, and we have the great tendency of laughing things out, which helps to take a step back.
Today was full of successes: we completed the second full Teleop session (and first in the planned configuration), Norbert observed the first results of his radiations and music on plants experiments, Gaspard managed to debug the EVA tracking app he is working on, I baked two delicious cakes, we realized the first long EVA with our own spacesuit and Cerise’s counting on Aquapad were interesting today. However a disastrous event broke that series of achievements: Gaspard tried to prepare a corn bread, and he is definitely better at engineering than baking…
Authors : Jérémy Auclair, Commander and Benjamin Auzou, Journalist
