July 28, 2000
JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News
HAUGHTON CRATER, Devon Island — Mucking around in the mud, peeing out in the open through a funnel stuck into a barrel, watching computer equipment clog with dust, and spending days in unheated, and occasionally unsanitary conditions may not be your idea of Mars.
Some — mainly Inuit and imported Qallunaat construction workers at the Mars Society Project by the Haughton Crater — have nicknamed it "Devil’s Island."
But others, star-struck by the idea of interplanetary travel, view the camp site by the edge of the Haughton Crater as the perfect place to test out the technology that space pioneers will wil need to visit the Red Planet.
The site is jointly occupied by the Mars Society and the more scientific Haughton-Mars Project
The ancient metorite crater on Devon Island, the Haughton Crater, is remarkably similar to those found on Mars. Located in a polar desert at Nunavut’s frontier, it’s also reasonably accessible from Resolute Bay and not covered up by ice, as are many other similar sites at the poles.
For university student Samson Ootoovak from Pond Inlet, who’s studying mechanical engineering at St. Mary’s College in Halifax, a summer job at the site is a chance to live out his fantasy of becoming an astronaut, even if his on-site responsibilites included building a rudimentary shower tent and stuffing refuse into an incinerator.
Often these space enthusiasts quoted words spoken by the late U.S. president John F. Kennedy after the first successful manned space flight. Kennedy said exploration and manned travel of space had to be done "not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Despite the less than ideal conditions on Devon Island, many of the scientists and consultants associated with the U.S. space agency, NASA, brought sophisticated technology to test out on its rocky slopes.
Telemedicine experiment
A flight surgeon with NASA and an engineer were testing out a "doc in a box" telemedicine system.
This portable "doctor bag," about the size of a briefcase, was equipped with a computer screen and variety of diagnostic tools to check ears, nose, eyes, throat, blood pressure, heart rate, and other vital signs.
It’s precisely the kind of equipment astronauts could bring along to Mars, and use to send images and recorded comments back to Earth for medical consultation.
"A physician or non-physician could be trained to use it," said Doug Butler from Wyle Laboratories, the company that put together the kit, a $45,000 US prototype.
The two medical researchers also had electronic "dog tags" capable of storing a person’s entire medical history on a computer chip.
Using the tags as well as the compact telemedicine equipment, they performed mock physical exams and practiced sending the information on to NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.
They said these nifty telemedical devices are just the beginning of new advances that will filter down to general public use within a few years, and they predicted that hologram "doctors" similar to the electronic medical officer on board Star Trek’s Voyager spaceship could be feasible within years.
An immediate challenge to all interplanetary communication is the lag of seven to 20 minutes required for telecommunications to travel from Mars to Earth, as well as the lack of any Internet capability in outer space.
A long way from earth
A NASA misson controller was attempting to simulate what impact these constraints could have on the success of a Mars mission, when, for instance, the response to an emergency could take more than one hour.
Mission control, explained NASA’s Tony Griffith (who labours in an unheated "office" over his computer in a coat and hat), usually guides every second of astronauts’ schedule in space, but such tight communication won’t be possible between Earth and Mars.
Developing an efficient and compatible communications system was also on the mind of a team who designed an ATV rigged with an interactive communication network. A more complex version of a ja ed-up ATV could be someday used for exploring Mars.
"To have the credibility that we can do this on Mars, we have to prove we can do this in a hostile environment," said NASA scientist Brian Green.
But plagued by dust or rain, which doesn’t even exist on Mars, Devon Island didn’t always seem to be the ideal place to test any electronic equipment.
In fact, many things weren’t unfolding this season at the site as planned, especially for the habitat construction organized by the Mars Society, a group devoted to promoting the manned exploration of Mars.
Habitat mishaps
The Mars Society intended to put up an ambitious six-man dwelling as a test home for wannabe astronauts. Resembling a large can of tuna, the white fibreglass habitat, optimistically called the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station, was supposed to be erected by July 21, just after the 32nd anniversary of the first moon walk.
But the loss of habitat’s key components in an airlift mishap (which included the crane that was to pull up the walls as well as the floors which were to hold them together) created hard times for the Mars Society’s president and founder, Robert Zubrin, and his construction team.
Most of the original contruction workers defected when they concluded that it was dangerous to erect the habitat, while Zubrin and a couple of other devotees, struggled with inadequate equipment, missing components, and unskilled workers for assistance in getting the habitat up.
There was pressure to get the habitat up because Zubrin had pre-sold the rights to film the habitat’s construction to the Discovery channel in the States for $200,000 U.S. When nothing worked out, no one, least of all the film crew, was happy.
Zubrin is the author of "The Case for Mars: the plan to settle the Red Planet and Why We Must."
In this book Zubrin makes the case that manned expeditions are possible and desirable. His message is that mankind thrives on adversity and that the exploration of Mars will start a new, positive era of human development.
Zubrin suggests explorers should adopt the "dog team" approach used by successful Arctic explorers. "Travel light and live off the land," Zubrin proposes, a motto that he may have thought of as he looked at the disassembled pieces of habitat lying by the crater’s edge and wondered how to put it back together.
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