Journalist Report 25 May 2017

 

Prepared by Juan Jose Garcia

 

Images courtesy of Janet and Juan

 

Sol 12

 

The morning started with fully functional pancakes. Charlie and Janet discovered the recipe to solid pancakes was to use real butter from Earth instead of dehydrated butter dust. The pancakes grew large and fluffy with the lower amount of oxygen on this planet.

 

Charlie and Cassie drove to Green Mars Canyon this morning. A spectacular Mars canyon only 15 miles roundtrip on ATV’s.

 

The inside of the HAB is spotted with Earth Balloons from Earth Awareness Day yesterday. In order to maintain awareness of our home world, the living quarters of the HAB was decorated with a projection of scenes from Earth. This included waterfalls, sunsets, flowers waving in the wind, and birds flying. I organized a compilation of greetings from family and friends. The event was followed by a screening of Hidden Figures.

 

Today Charlie had a moment of inspiration. He proposed we use his magnifying loupe and my lasers to explode some balloons left over from Earth Awareness day from yesterday. Of course we would record the experiment in slow motion.

For lunch, Janet was kind enough to prepare mac and cheese and broccoli. Charlie made Chili and bean dip. We played another game of CATAN, to great frustration for too many reasons to describe. Nobody could get clay, and therefore nobody could build roads.

 

I have been practicing air marshalling signals. These are the specific gestures used with air marshalling wands to direct airplanes. I have been learning ones used to direct airplanes, as well as developing gestures to direct rocket ships landing and taking off from a runway I will build. We had planned to install the runway outside in a flat area in the Mars terrain. For our evening EVA, Cassie and I journeyed into the stormy environment outside of the HAB. We had been waiting for the gray clouds to clear. Cassie brought her medium format camera to capture portraits. While setting up the lights for the runway outside, stormy conditions picked up. Cassie called HAB so we could be notified if the noises we heard were rumbling thunder or the wind because they sound the same from inside our space suits. We packed up in a hurry just as the very dark clouds were swallowing the sky. The hills behind us started to glow in every shade of gold. Pockets of sunlight glowed in a spectacular fashion in the last instances of afternoon light before the storm. For our safety, we made it to the HAB as soon as possible.