David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

Awoke bright and early for breakfast with the crew. Bianca Nowak, the final crew member to arrive, did not have an easy trip from Belgium, culminating in the failure of her luggage to arrive with her. The airline promises that it will be here later today and they will deliver it to the hab’s mail drop at the Hollow Mountain convenience store in Hanksville, about 3 miles from the hab. (Hollow Mountain is, in fact, carved into a mountain; some of the walls inside are raw rock. Fascinating!)

We checked out of the hotel and drove out to the hab, stopping at Wal-Mart on the way for some supplies. (Yes, Wal-Mart. Not much in the way of alternatives here.) The drive from Grand Junction to Hanksville took about three hours and treated us to some spectacular views. The terrain was mostly snow-covered but as we approached the hab it became more and more Mars-like, especially after we passed Hanksville. We did get slightly lost in that last stretch — we were following a vague and extremely sketchy map drawn on the back of a cash register receipt by the clerk at the Hollow Mountain — but we were only half an hour behind schedule when the white cylinder of the hab, familiar to all of us from photographs even though we’d never been here before, peeked out from behind a rust-colored rock formation. Excitement! Our new home and a new adventure begins!

The current crew (MDRS-87) greeted us warmly and gave us a whirlwind tour of the hab, complete with safety instructions, an EVA suiting demo, a short hike to a nearby fossil bed, and instructions on dealing with the temperamental ATVs (every one different from the others). Because we are not yet “in sim” we were able to bring our bags in and do other necessary chores without having to put on our space suits. Also, by happy coincidence, we were just in time to help install the new generator, which we hope will solve the power problems that have been bedeviling the last few crews. (Most of the work on that was done by DG, a local resident who is instrumental in keeping the hab running.) The shower, however, is definitely dead for the duration, as is the telescope. Alas.

The departing crew clearly had mixed feelings about leaving. Although they were doing a little happy dance at the thought of big greasy hamburgers in Hanksville and hot showers in Grand Junction, they seemed a little misty-eyed as they piled into the van and headed back to Earth.

We all looked at each other. “We’re on Mars! Now what?”

Well, “now what” consisted of hauling our massive load of Stuff up to the residential level, eating the surprisingly tasty meal of freeze-dried chicken and corn the outgoing crew had prepared for us, and discussing our plans for the next day and the next two weeks. Steve and Bianca then drove into town (using “V’ger”, our Plymouth Voyager “pressurized rover”) to pick up Bianca’s baggage and all the food we will be eating for the next two weeks, while Laksen and Paul performed an engineering walk-through and inspection of all the hab’s systems and I got set up with Twitter (@MDRSupdates) and fixed up the web cams (http://www.freemars.org/mdrscam/). When Steve and Bianca returned, we all helped load in the groceries. The sun had set, and I got my first view of the vast and magestic desert sky. Oh wow.

We don’t plan to begin sim until Monday. Tomorrow (Sunday) we will do a lot of necessary prep and setup that will be much easier without space suits, including running the control for a study to determine how much EVA suits impact our efficiency.

We aren’t really on Mars yet. But we’re definitely a long way from home.

I’m not quite all the way to Mars yet. This is as planned. Currently I am safely ensconced at the charming Best Western Sandman Motel (which Diego, from Colombia, calls “a road motel like in the movies”) in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Kate dropped my Monster Bag and I off at the airport at 5:45 this morning, where the MB weighed in at 50.2 pounds — a hair over the limit but the agent let it slide. If I want to bring home any Mars rocks I’m going to have to leave something behind.

After an extremely uneventful security and flight experience I had a decent lunch at the airport in Denver, where I spotted fellow Marsonaut Diego Urbina by the many space-related patches on his laptop and backpack. He was not scheduled to be on my flight, but he’d missed his connection in Houston yesterday and then his flight from Denver to Grand Junction was canceled, so he was on standby for my flight. Fortunately he got on, as did his luggage, and we shared a shuttle to the hotel.

We both took a nap after that (I’m running on about three hours’ sleep here) and then met up with Paul McCall and Laksen Sirimanne for dinner, over which we had a humorous, round-robin discussion of the early days of the mission. They’re all great guys, very talented, very interesting. Diego is serious about becoming an ESA astronaut and I think he has a shot at it. Laksen is committed, brilliant, and humble. Paul is quiet and sincere — a real All-American type. After dinner we met Stephen Wheeler, just arrived, and talked over plans for tomorrow and the following week. The final member of our crew, Bianca Nowak, was to arrive later (she’s probably here by now but I haven’t met her yet).

It is FREAKING COLD here. Currently 0° F with a bit of wind and some snow and ice on the ground. Even wearing long underwear, jeans, a flannel shirt, wool socks, a nice wool sweater, a down jacket, and my Tilley hat with the ear flaps I was still shivering when I was outside. Tomorrow I’m switching to heavier long undies and the ugly but warm WWII-surplus wool pants. Could be worse, though — it’s way warmer here than the real Mars (not to mention having way more air).

The news from the current MDRS crew is mixed. They all had colds but they’re feeling better today. The main generator is still down but the backup and batteries are holding out. The frozen pipes got thawed out but it looks like the shower is out of commission for the rest of the season, so it’ll be nothing but sponge baths for us. And the telescope isn’t going to be fixed any time soon so we will try to get the half-assembled radio telescope up and running instead. Doing this in space suits will be an interesting challenge. It’s Man vs. Machine and Man + Machine vs. Mars! (Apologies for sexist language, but it was necessary for the alliteration.)

Tomorrow we drive out to the hab and our adventure begins in earnest!

P.S. Check out the MDRS Webcams at http://www.freemars.org/mdrscam/.

Well, here’s my to-do list for the day before my departure for Mars:

• Deal with all mail (not done)
• Do dishes
• Get money
• Buy wool pants, sweater
• Call hotel for airport shuttle
• Read The Real Mars, return to library
• Turn on international roaming for Kate’s phone (not done)
• Yoga (skipped class)
• Resubmit latest rejected story (not done)
• Make appointment for furnace tune-up
• Clear camera memory card (not done)
• See China Design exhibit at art museum (museum closed by power outage)
• Fold laundry
• Pick up comics from Excalibur (not done)

Kate and I also had a nice Indian dinner and watched Shaun of the Dead. And now to bed… early early flight tomorrow.

OMG I’M GOING TO MARS!!

Well, that’s just about everything I’m taking with me. It all made it into the bag, just barely, and the bag is just barely under the airline’s size and weight limits (assuming I can trust my yardstick and bathroom scale). I still need to buy a few things — I wore my wool tux pants the last time I did cold-weather travel but for Mars I think I want someting a little less formal — and the computer and other tech gear aren’t packed yet, but basically I’m set for my early-Friday departure.

I got some good news and some bad news from Mars today. The good news is that I will be allowed to post using Twitter from MDRS, both as myself (@daviddlevine) and as @MDRSupdates. The bad news is that the hab’s telescope has broken and most likely won’t be fixed until after our rotation. This is a disappointment — though it’s definitely in keeping with the history of Mars exploration, which includes as many failed as successful robot probes — and we’re trying to find out if there’s any other equipment we can use in its place.

One more day!

Anxious and busy preparing for an early Friday departure. The radio station in my head keeps playing “Rocket Man,” “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” and the theme from “Das Boot.” Here’s a random collection of the stuff that’s been rattling around in my head.

Yes, I’m anxious, even though I know I don’t really have anything to be worried about — apart from lost luggage, bitter cold (tonight’s forecast low: 8° F), and the possibility of rolling over my ATV and dying of a fractured skull in the Utah desert. (I had to sign a disclaimer which said, among other things, that I acknowledge that riding on an ATV in the desert wearing a pretend space suit is stupid dangerous.) They’ve had 87 of these two-week rotations so far and I’m sure nothing serious will go wrong. Right? (But I’m not packing any red shirts.)

I’ve been reading The Real Mars by Michael Hanlon and it’s fascinating. If you’ve been wondering “why go to Mars anyway?” you might want to gnaw on this: satellite observations of Mars show surface features which seem to indicate that in the past the planet had substantial quantities of surface water. (There are other theories to explain these features, but this is a commonly-accepted one.) But Mars is now far too cold and airless for liquid water to exist on the surface. If Mars was, indeed, once warm and wet enough for rivers and lakes, what caused its climate to change? The answer to this question could help us to understand, and possibly reverse, our own global climate change. And despite the sophisticated robots we’ve sent, we need close-up hands-on observations by human beings — with their nimble fingers, excellent senses, and ability to change plans on the fly — to really understand the early history of Mars.

For some reason, Mars was weirdly omnimpresent in my life even weeks before I knew I’d be going. My favorite ride at Disney World? Mission: Space, a simulated flight to Mars. The last book I read before getting the email? Mars Crossing by Geoff Landis. The last Dr. Who episode I watched? Waters of Mars. And I’d been thinking for quite a while that our upcoming trip to Australia feels a little like a visit to a recently-colonized Mars.

Don’t forget to vote in the What should David take to “Mars” poll. If you read Spanish, MDRS-88 Biologist Diego Urbina asks a similar question over in his blog. The MDRS-88 Executive Officer, Laksen Sirimanne, has posted the research goals for the mission (which I helped write) on his blog. You can see bios of the crew, and read the daily reports from earlier rotations, on the MDRS web site. And you can see a nice collection of photos of MDRS over at PopSci.com.

I think I have all my ducks in a row for blogging and such. I should be able to post here once a day, but I won’t be able to read LJ, Twitter, Facebook, or email. There’s a special email address you can use to contact me if it’s important, which I will be sending out to my email correspondents shortly. (If you don’t get that email in the next day or so and you think you need it, feel free to email me and ask for it.)

Friday’s coming soon. Zero hour nine 7:45 AM. Better get packing.

25 years ago I met a cute redhead at a New Year’s Day brunch. I got her phone number, but did I call her? Not before she called me. We went on a date the next weekend — to the movie 2010 — and didn’t spend a weekend apart for five months. Within the year we’d moved in together. (You can get her perspective on that meeting here (part 1) and here (part 2).)

10 years ago I was a manager at Intel, and miserable. I had an Employee From Hell and I had no one to blame but myself, because I’d hired her; I was under enormous stress which I was transmitting to my employees; and I’d just been turned down for a transfer to a position as an individual contributor in Intel’s Smart Toy Lab, so I felt trapped in a position for which I was manifestly unqualified. I had written a few short stories but not yet sold any, and I was preparing to apply to Clarion. There were other things starting to happen in my life at that time that have since borne strange fruit, but at the time I had no idea how significant they would turn out to be.

The year 2009 for me was Made of Win. Looking backward from here I see a surprise acceptance into the Mars Desert Research Station; a trip to Disney World; winning the Endeavour Award; the Worldcon and subsequent travel in Quebec; joining the Wild Cards consortium; giving a talk at the Library of Congress; many fun conventions, workshops, and fly-ins; and an exceptionally successful year of short story writing, with the most stories written, most stories submitted, most stories sold, and most stories published of any year in my career. I put my butt in the chair and wrote — 250-500 words or an hour of editing or research — every single day this year and it really paid off.

My biggest area of disappointment and frustration this year was my two novels. Remembrance Day was rejected after over a year, and due to an email snafu has not yet been resubmitted (it will go off again in January), while The Dark Behind the Stars languished all year on the desk of an editor who has not, to my knowledge, even looked at it and doesn’t return my agent’s calls or emails. If I don’t hear back on that one soon I’m going to pull it for non-response and send it elsewhere. I really want to be a published novelist, and I’m already working on a third novel, but these absurd (non)response times mean that the effort/reward ratio for short stories is so much higher.

New Year’s Eve was spent with my beloved Kate, the abovementioned cute redhead, preparing and eating one of our favorite festive meals (a garlic-crusted prime rib) and watching… 2010. (We also ushered in 2001 with 2001).

New Year’s Day was a delightful brunch at the new home of the same friends who hosted the New Year’s Day brunch at which we met. It’s so nice of them to throw us an anniversary party every year.

The year 2010 looks busy, with my mission to “Mars” coming up next week (gulp!) and a trip to Australia in August/September, as well as many other fun travel opportunities. My new year’s resolutions tend to be quirky, and this year’s is to read Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin books in order. I have other goals for the year, including a revised pledge to write every day (starting in February), but that’s my resolution.

The next 10 years will no doubt include many surprises. If the last ten years are any indication, currents in my life that are already beginning to flow, if only as a trickle, will become the rivers that course beneath my days ten years from now.

25 years from now, if the fates allow, I will be celebrating my 50th anniversary with my one true snookie. Beyond that I’m not going to even try to predict.

Apart from the Mars thing, I haven’t had a single substantive blog post this month. Sorry about that.

In mid-December we spent five days at Walt Disney World. We had a blast. My favorite part of the trip was the Animal Kingdom, which is basically a world-class zoo with thrill rides and shows; my favorite ride was Mission: Space at Epcot, a simulated trip to Mars (and at the time I had no idea I’d be taking the next step on that trip in January). I’ve posted pictures from the trip over at Flickr.

By going to Disney World halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas we avoided crowds almost completely. Between the lack of crowds, willingness to hit the parks right when they opened, and cunning use of The Unofficial Guide and RideMax software we could basically do whatever we wanted without having to stand in line for more than ten minutes. And unlike 1992, the food was excellent — our dinner at Jiro, in the Animal Kingdom Lodge, was a standout.

This was the first time I’d ever tried one of those package vacations and it worked really well. Southwest Airlines had a special of “buy one airfare, get one free” and “buy one Disney ticket, get one free” which meant that the whole trip cost ony $1800: two people, five days, including airfare, hotel, and car. We stayed on-property at Port Orleans French Quarter and it was lovely and oh so convenient. I’d do it again, for sure.

Even while we were at Disney the writing has continued. I haven’t missed a single writing day this year, though in December I’ve bumped my words-per-day quota down from 500 to 250. It’s become rather a chore, unfortunately, and so I am going to continue this regime for only one more day (365 days in a row) and then take January 1 off. Having broken the streak I will then be free to try something different in the new year.

I made a sale last week… well, I say “sale” but it was really only that I received the contract for a submission that had been informally accepted some weeks ago. My novella “Second Chance” will be in Alembical II from Paper Golem LLC, appearing some time next year.

Much of this week has been consumed in Mars prep. I bought a bunch of stuff, such as a new sleeping bag and gloves, which will be necessary for the cold dry desert. I’ve been reading a lot; maintenance and operations of the simulated Mars habitat are complicated and tricky. And I’ve already started my work as crew journalist by copy-editing the crew bios which have just been posted. It is an impressive bunch of people and I feel rather as though I’m just along for the ride. I hope that I can pull my weight by assisting in the science and engineering as well as doing my primary job which is to document and publicize the mission.

Life goes on. Chop wood, carry water.

Man, it is so weird when you hear on the radio “David Levine died yesterday”…

(The David Levine who died was the New York Review of Books caricaturist, probably the most famous living person of that name. Now the rest of us move up one step.)

Well, not the actual Mars. But pretty darn close.

As faithful readers will no doubt recall, back on December 7 I posted a blog entry in which I listed my space travel wish list, starting with an actual stay in orbit ($35 million) and ending with a zeppelin ride ($500). #2 on that list was to participate in a simulated Mars mission (cost unknown, time commitment substantial).

See, the Mars Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the exploration and settlement of Mars, maintains a couple of simulated Mars habitats — the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah and the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) in Canada — where volunteers perform real research on geology, astronomy, and medicine in a simulated Mars environment (complete with space suits).

Well, my old college friend Steve Sywak commented on that post that he knew someone in the Mars Society. We exchanged emails about this, the end result of which was that on December 22 I sent an email to one Ed Fisher wondering if there was any possibility of me spending a week or two on “Mars”. He replied on December 23 that he was no longer involved with the Mars Society but “I’m sure they would be interested in your application for a crew position. … The current season is underway, so you would probably need to wait for next season; however, it can’t hurt to apply now, because sometimes there are crew cancellations for various reasons.”

The application process was quite simple but it did call for a resume, and for a variety of reasons I hadn’t updated mine since 2001. However, with the benefit of distance and a “what the hell” attitude, the usual resume-updating angst was absent and I was able to update it (and shorten it from three pages to two) in only about an hour. I sent off my application to the Mars Society on the evening of December 23.

I awoke on December 24 to an email from Artemis Westenberg of the Mars Society. Even the little snippet of the message I could see in my inbox made me go “Guh?!”

I have no idea how flexible in dates you are
but for crew 88 we indeed have an opening (9-23 January 2010)
the lady who was supposed to be part of that crew works at Johnson Space Center in Houston
and her bosses told her very recently that she can not be part of that crew this season
I have read your resume and would like to invite you to be part of that crew

I took a few hours to think about it, but really there was no question. I accepted the invitation at noon on December 24 and bought my plane tickets that night.

So in less than two weeks I will be on my way to “Mars” (actually a stretch of desert near Hanksville, Utah), where I will spend two weeks as a member of MDRS crew 88. The other members are Commander Stephen Wheeler (Professor at DeVry University, Texas); Health Officer Bianca Nowak (High School Teacher, Belgium); Astronomer Paul McCall (Graduate Student at Florida International University, Florida); Biologist Diego Urbina (Electrical Engineer, Bogota, Columbia); and Engineer/XO Laksen Sirimanne (Biomedical Engineer, California). My own crew position is Journalist. I don’t yet know what experiments this crew will be performing or exactly what my duties and responsibilities will be. This has all happened so very fast and I don’t anticipate it’s going to slow down soon. I’ll keep you posted.

You know the character who joins the mission at the last minute? The non-expert — under-trained, ill-prepared, and in over his head — who gives the reader someone to identify with and the author a perfect excuse to info-dump? Well, that’s me.

I am excited, honored, and rather stunned.

For more information on MDRS, please see the MDRS web page, especially the press kit and photos. Laksen has a blog and has posted information on the location of the MDRS.

My mind is strangely bifurcated. On the one hand, I have two weeks to prepare for a two-week camping trip in the desert with five people I’ve never met, and there are lots of practical details to arrange.

On the other hand…

I’M GOING TO MARS!!