12 Février 2017

SOL 0 – Crew 175 : The preparation

Journalist report, 02/12/17.

After having spent our first night in the crowded hab, had our first Martian breakfast and said good bye to the previous crew, we started the day by a long briefing with Shannon, the station director. At the end of it we decided to delay the beginning of the simulation by one day for two main reasons: the first one was that one of our suitcase containing the seismometer and its acquisition system (the same one that was lost by the airline company) had been taken by error by the previous crew so that we would have to wait till the evening to get it back, the second being that we wanted to build the ending of the fence that connects the hab to the other modules, in order to stay enclosed while changing of module.

After having organised and listed the food stocks, we had our first meal from rehydrated food, that surprisingly tasted pretty good. To be honest, I was not very confident in the taste of those poor broccolis, I had seen completely dried few minutes ago, but after all, it might not be that horrible to survive here! The afternoon started by an ATV initiation with Shannon, then soon, we started the construction of the fence to end the tunnel, while Louis Maller and Mouadh went to town to buy the plastic to cover our new fence. Standing beyond it, we had to take that picture illustrating the well-known sentence: “We need to build a wall, and the Martians will pay for it”.

Besides, we start to feel at home in the hab: we now have our rooms -except for Xavier, sleeping on the loft, near his water tank as a good crew engineer-, we are accustomed to the water pump, regularly activating and shaking the whole floor at the same time, and are starting to know our roles. Everybody is very excited at the moment, ready for the simulation to officially begin tomorrow evening.

Louis MANGIN, crew journalist MDRS 175