Crew 191 Journalism Reports

APRIL 6, 2018 Journalist Report – April 06th チームAsiaの可能性に触れた日々

6th, April 2018 MDRS time

河村信(クルージャーナリスト) Makoto Kawamura – crew journalist

本日Sol 13の昼下がり、その時はやってきました。 ヘルメットを外すと視界に飛び込んできた、曇りのない視界。 その瞬間・「終わった」というよりも「戻って来た」と感じたこの２週間。 ここまでの解放感に包まれたのは、何とも不思議なものです。 重力が３分の１だった訳ではありません。 全ての食事が宇宙食だった訳でもありません。 それでも「火星」という空間が砂漠の真ん中に突如として出現したのは、 Crew191が、どこまでも真剣に「火星」に取り組んでいたからではないでしょうか。 生身の体で外に出てしまえば、水や食料や電気を普段のように使えば、 火星の「魔法」はたちどころに解けてしまいます。でもそれが２週間・解けなかった。 恐らく誰一人として、「でもここ地球だよね」と思う暇もなく、時間は過ぎていきました。 思い返せば、密度の濃い２週間だったと思います。 誤解を恐れずに言えば、MDRSでの時間は、火星という空間を目指す「練習」です。 しかし、スポーツに例えれば、「練習」に真剣に取り組み、結果を出せないチームが 「試合」で結果を出すことはあり得ません。 今回Crew191・チームアジアは、「試合」すなわち本当の火星でも結果を出すポテンシャルを秘めたチームだったのではないかと思うのです。 Sol8の夜、それは起こりました。 エンジニアチェックで発覚した、タンクの水の「汚れ」。 この問題を解決しなければ前に進めない状況に、私たちは陥りました。 汚れを承知でSIMを続けるか、安全を優先して一旦SIMを打ち切るか。 ここを火星だとするならば、地球の支援を長くは受けられないのだから、水質にこだわらずにSIMを続けようというクルーもいました。安全を最優先して、SIMを打ち切ろうというクルーもいました。どちらの意見も、正解だったと思います。そして、最終的には、SIMを続けながら水を綺麗にするという、もうひとつの正解をCrew全員で思案し、捻り出しました。これは、タンクの水の入れ替え時に気付いた僅かな変化を見逃さなかったことが、解決につながりました。 アジア人は、細かな部分に気付き、こだわり、突き詰め、そして解決します。 その一方で、相手への相互理解などでは、寛容さも持ち合わせます。 「みんな違ってみんないい」という言葉に代表されるように、 仲間への気遣いや手助けにおいては多様性を認め合いながらチームを作ることが出来ます。気が付けば、Crew191は自然にそれぞれの役割を持ったチームになっていました。 そしてシミュレーションに本気だったからこそ、真剣に話し合い、解決を導き出すというプロセスを踏むことが出来たのだと思います。今回示した、シミュレーションに妥協なく取り組める姿勢は、「本番」であっても力を発揮できるということだと思います。 このCrewの一員で良かった。 今回・Crew191が織りなすSIMを描くために沢山のカメラを用意しました。 ２週間という期間中、その現場と格闘し、気が付くと写真や映像は膨大なものになっていました。地球に、日本に帰り、その記録ひとつひとつに向き合いながら、ジャーナリストが火星で果たす役割を探していきたいと思います。

POSTED ON APRIL 5, 2018 Journalist Report – Mar 29th 29th March 2018 Journalist Report

Makoto Kawamura

Three days since door has been closed. This means that it has been three days since I could see the outside world directly. In the habitat base, it is through the window and the view is from the helmet if I wear the EVA (extra-vehicular activity) suit. Mars is not an environment which allows the human body to feel its atmosphere directly. When I go to EVA, I am unable to do everything I could do. First of all, I cannot touch my face. I cannot blow my nose while in EVA as well. Even if I have seen this graceful view of the scene, I do not have the full-option to explain about my feeling. I cannot see the display on the camera and I feel it is difficult to manipulate my camera. Before coming here, I tried to carefully select my instruments. However, the freedom of the real world is far away from what I thought. Important life material such as electricity, water, garbage, communication, even some daily material can turn our life to be deadly such as passing to the tunnel to the dark world step by step. This time that I cannot see the outside of the world is enough to feel that I am living in the different world right now. This is, at the same time, that our team, Crew191, is trying to simulate being on Mars right now. From waking up in the morning to going to bed, we are attempting to spend a day on Mars honestly. That is why we have actively discussed the mission with each other and sometimes we have impoliteness while in the discussion. Even myself, I am surprised that I am changed by only closing door and this environment in the center of a desert. When humans reach Mars, the situation faced by us is going to be happening and I am sure that there is a someone who would like to report life on Mars in the next several years or decades, could be several centuries later. When a journalist gets to Mars, what is going to be asked? And what should record? Although it is about a week to be a crew 191 member as well as life at the MDRS, I think that I should get back to regular life which is not inside of a box as much as I can. Winds with sand are hitting our white dome when I see the outside through the window. I think that the view of red desert and rocks through the window is the space that reminded me the opinion as well.

POSTED ONAPRIL 5, 2018 Journalist Report – April 05th WATER = AIR = MIZU

WATER AND (HUMAN) BODY Mayday… Mayday… Water contaminated… Water contaminated… (Copy from MDRS Radio Conversation on SOL#08)

Water is essential for cells to function properly, means it enters into the composition of the cells. Water as a main constituent of blood contributes to the transport of nutrients to the cells. In deed the nutrients are transported by the blood. Water also is just as important to our bodies as it is to life on earth. In our SIM at MDRS right now, we only can take shower once per 3 or 4 days. Not like on Earth (in reality) where we can actively – do a properly – wash our body as much as we want. Anyway, talking about “water”, since we were born to this planet, water accounted for nearly 80 percent of our body weight and accounts for as much as 70 percent as our adult body. Similarly, nearly three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered by water. Unlike the earth, our “human body” can easily lose large percentages of its water content whereas all the water that existed on the earth millions of years ago is still present today.

NEW BUSSINESS ON MARS ; Can i have IceCream please… Memory, Water, and Brain… Which one you will choose if the only have one option to taking care the most… Hmm, NONE i guess ; and yup! those three option stay in one line direction in our body system. For example, our brain uses 20 percent of the total oxygen in your body. If your brain loses blood for 8 to 10 seconds, you will lose consciousness. And when we were born, our brain was almost the same size as an adult brain and contained most of the brain cells for your whole life. What do you think? Related with the memory, every time we recall a memory or have a new thought, we are creating a new connection in your brain. And you know exactly “water” is the most we need on this body system. And how about if we can put “our tent” on MARS and enjoy our entire life over there? And where i can buy ice-cream? 🙂 …Lately we heard that some scientist found clean water ice just below MARS surface, so then the next question is : Can we do mining there…or can we use water as much as we want to support our life in Red Planet?

Problem is, properties of that ice, how pure it is, how deep it goes, what shape it takes and also how big is that, are still a mystery. We didn,t know exactly until nowdays, but we are sure that there is “ice” under. But they also said, some trouble how to explore is, dirt, rocks, and other surface-level contaminants make it hard to study the stuff. MARS landers can dig or drill into some meters from the surface. Its possible to do in the coming years. “On Mars, when you see something bright, it usually means ice,” says Richard Zurek, chief scientist for the MARS Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who was unaffiliated with the study. Frozen water also lies beneath the surface. Scientists discovered a slab of ice as large as California and Texas combined in the region between the equator and north pole of the Red Planet. And the European Space Agency’s MARS Express spacecraft captured images of sheets of ice in the cooler, shadowed bottoms of craters, which suggests that liquid water can pool under appropriate conditions. INTERESTED TO HAVE A NEW ICE CREAM BUSSINESS IN THE FUTURE HUMAN COLONY UP THERE?

Seriously, its possible to make your DIY ice-cream on MARS mission. 🙂 (…like we did once during our SIM right now in MDRS…)

POSTED ONAPRIL 4, 2018 Journalist Report – April 4th Hi CapCom,

this is the Journalist Report on sol 11.

Best, Miho XO crew191

—

OUR (BODY) MISSION TO MARS (O.B.M.T.M)

Diplomacy or Expansion of Humanity? There is no doubt that MARS will be challenging. Highly level of the research about MARS said that ; recent workshops and studies have also shown that missions to MARS are both achievable and affordable. Its true, no one say that those statement are wrong, but why we need to jump into Red Planet where had not enough support life for human? Sending a manned mission to MARS is a fantastic adventure…, many scientists said, BUT is that true? Look at on the data, when we start to go for space travel, means that we are agree that : Living for any period of time in low gravity causes the human body to fall apart. The usual processes that keep bones strong and healthy do not function without gravity and the ability to apply a load. In deep space there is no gravity and so it becomes hard to load bones in the right way. Muscles can also waste away while cardiovascular fitness has also been seen to deteriorate. And to stay and to create a colony in MARS, we also have to think about there has also been some evidence that gravity can affect the way the brain works. Then from all of this could make the astronaut’s mission once they arrive on MARS automatically become much harder.

If we thought that this mission will be the huge expansion of humanity, then we need to start to think about our (realistic) imagination : to be sure, when we dream of the far future, we can easily envision beings that combine today’s human bodies with advanced technology to produce a human-machine hybrid far more capable of long journeys and survival in strange situations than individuals are today. A bit opposite with the fact that when human go faraway for space travel also means no way to escape ; and potentially highly stressful situations to deal with, the crew (for example crew in MDRS) would need to also need to be exceptionally good at working as a team. Like now we took a SIM here in MDRS, do we feel we are isolated? What we are now? Human (as a machine) and Machine (it self); which one stronger? WE are a human ! Anyone who read this are human ! We have a (body) human. Yes, human body is very complicated, very difficult machine or we can say that it is a biological autonomous system which depend to million numbers of parameters (we even never know how big all those data from our each body human). Our body is fully controlled machine which consist of many sub systems like input system (senses) , output system, processor (brain), memory, energy production system (digestion system + respiratory system), hardware system (musculoskeletal system), signal transmission system (central nerves system ) , and also of course a system for reproduction. And the scary one is fact that, human become a machine rather than machine become a human, right? The extent to which human beings are willing to be duped by computers is already very large. One doesn’t have to write a very sophisticated program to get people to treat it as if it were a living thing. You don’t have to build a very sophisticated robot to get people to treat it as if it were an animal. If it’s fluffy and it’s smiles or it woofs, or something like that, people are very ready and willing to smudge over the difference in their own minds between a computer and a human being. So, what the near future for human civilization right now? MARS mission, or become a machine? OR the human as a machine mission to MARS? OR to generate a human machine in MARS? One of the critical question was People think that MARS mission is a part of entertainment, and human as an ACTOR to keep going on producing an image about the Red Planet. Maybe this is a paradox for our life right now and in the same time could be a very good question for the next generation on Earth. So, which one stronger then? However, the body is not a machine. Machines are products of design, bodies are products of natural selection, and that makes them different in fundamental ways. The organic complexity of bodily mechanisms is qualitatively different from the mechanical complexities of machines. And we are the human or the machine? Human (Natalie Neo 2014) As we grow, we learn that it’s critical to be logical, and it’s only logical to be critical.

As we learn, we strive to Detach from what we were attached to, only being more Attached to what we were trying to detach from.

As we strive, we realize that Many things aren’t real and real things aren’t many.

As we realize, we understand why Humans hope, love and dream, as hope, love and dreams make us –

Human.

POSTED ONMARCH 30, 2018 Journalist Report – March 30th Hi CapCom,

this is our Journalist Report on sol 6.

Best,

Miho XO crew191

—

MARS is a harsh, (and) cold world.

MDRS is a harsh, (but) cool time tunnel 🙂

Journalist Report

The First Shower and The First Coolness

MARS atmosphere is about more than 100 times thinner than Earth’s. And without a “thermal layer”, MARS can not retain any heat energy. On average, the temperature on MARS is about minus 80 degree Fahrenheit (equal : minus 60 degrees Celsius). And the next question is, why we “able” to feel cold?

Two thing that make me interested to find the answer of this question, first we feel cold because of Iron Level in our body, means that Iron is a critical part of the blood. It helps red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body, ensuring each cell can function properly. Equally, iron deficiency can impact this process, and it is believed that this can lead to feeling cold all the time. A scientific study aimed to identify the relationship between iron levels and body temperature. Other reason is Heat Transfer. , and remember that there are three ways that heat can transfer: conduction, convection and radiation.

And…

How we can know that we have a feeling about things HOT or COLD then?

“Hot” and “cold” are relative terms that we can use to compare how things feel when they have more or less of a certain kind of energy we call heat.

Our Commander, Yusuke Murakami : took the first shower in the 2nd day of the mission, with “out of service heater” 🙂 Cold as hell he said,

Like a… “Mars ain’t no kind of place to raise your kids; in fact it’s cold as hell” sang the legend Elton John : “Rocket Man”!, and although the song was released in 1972 — four years before our robotic machine from earth was the first successful landing on MARS Planet. Once Again, MARS was our long period of the imagination on science fiction history before crazy scientist create a rocket. And MARS Isn’t as Earthlike as it might look.

MDRS is on Desert,

And Fact that ; In that way MARS is like an Earthly desert; even after a blisteringly hot day the temperatures can plummet at night, leaving an ill-prepared camper shivering beneath the cold glow of starlight. Except on MARS, where the Sun is only 50% as bright as on Earth and the atmosphere only 1% as dense, the nighttime lows dip to Arctic depths. Our experience here on MDRS took us into one journey of other side of imagination about MARS look like, and perhaps one project from Wataru Okamoto ; DIY machine called PM2.5 – a measurement instrument as for : Environmental Monitoring System will make complete. And in this mission, he can tell us about Calculation of Mass Concentration in the air and develop from Stand Alone instrument into wider range type of measurement tools that we can explore more to be aware about our environment.

“Deserts on Earth have very extreme temperature ranges,” says Mars Science Laboratory Deputy Project Scientist, Ashwin Vasavada. “So if you take a desert on Earth and put it in a very thin atmosphere 50% farther from the Sun, you’d have something like what we’re seeing at Gale Crater.”

Then we are here ! 🙂

So, how cold is space? That’s a nonsense question. It’s only when you put a thing in space, like a Space Ship, rock, MDRS space suit, or an astronaut, that you can measure temperature.

To the next our curiosity ; Are we ready for the COLD WORLD up there? MDRS is one of the option to test and to learn how to stay and focus on the rules and practicing MARS space protocol. Lots of impression and keep us warmer with those chaotic and activities. Like we sucked up into an alternate Time Tunnel 🙂

POSTED ONMARCH 29, 2018 Journalist Report (Japanese) March 29th ガラス越しの風景がくれたもの

29th, March 2018 MDRS time

河村信(クルージャーナリスト)

扉が閉まってから3日が経ちました。

それは、外の景色を自分の目でダイレクトに見ることが出来なくなって３日経ったということです。基地の中では窓ガラス越し、宇宙服を着れば、ヘルメット越しの景色です。

火星は、人間の生身の体が大気に触れることを許してくれない空間です。

EVA（船外活動）に出てみれば、いつも当たり前に出来ることが何ひとつとして出来ません。まず、顔を触れない。鼻水が出ても、かむことさえ出来ません。雄大なMDRSの景色に心打たれても、その表現手段は限られてしまいます。カメラのファインダーが全く見えませんし、操作もままなりません。ここに来る前に、様々な状況を自分なりにシミュレーションして機材を選んできたつもりでしたが、現実は私の想像を凌ぐ不自由さです。

電気・水・ゴミ・通信・或いは日常の細かい所作ひとつひとつが、命に係わるという状況（を作り出すこと）が、私たちが当たり前に感じている日常が日常でなくなっていくトンネルをくぐりぬけているような気持ちにします。自分の目で外を見れない3日という時間は、いま私たちは別世界に来ていると感じるに充分な時間でした。

それは同時に、私たちCrew191が、いまどこまでも無骨に、ここは火星だというシミュレーションに挑んでいることに他ならないと思います。誰ひとりとしてここを地球だと思っていません。朝起きてから夜寝るまで、皆が「本気」で「火星」の日常に挑んでいます。

だからこそ、お互いにミッションに対して活発な議論が生まれ、時には強い口調で意見を言い合います。扉が閉まっただけでこんな空間が砂漠の真ん中に出来上がるなんて、その空間の変化に自分でも驚いてしまいます。

何年後・十何年後・何十年後・人類が火星を目指し、その土地に降り立った時、いま私たちが直面している状況は必ず起こるであろうし、その現場を撮影する人は必ずいる筈です。

ジャーナリストが火星に行くとき、何が求められるのか、何を撮るのか。Crew191のメンバーとのＭＤＲＳでの生活はあと１週間余りですが、その問いに全力で向き合って、何かの答えを見つけてから、ガラス越しではない世界に戻りたいと思うようになりました。

今も窓の外を見れば、砂嵐が白いドームに吹き付けています。

少し曇ったガラスの先に見える赤い砂漠と岩山とは、私にそんな気付きを与えてくれる空間でもあったのだと思います。

source