Aboard The Mars Desert Research Station, Utah - It's amazing how quickly the mundane things of life can suddenly take center stage, just by being scarce.

Take chairs, for instance.

Six chairs for six people doesn't seem so bad. Plus one extra. (A second chair collapsed the other day, so it's now in the trash.)

So we have six chairs arranged around our second-floor kitchen table for meals, plus one spare.

We have more chairs than we need, really.

Except that Dr. Nancy B. Wood, our biologist, needs one for her laboratory downstairs, so we don't really have a spare chair anymore.

Except that three of us now want a chair to help us when we don our spacesuits next to the air lock downstairs, so we really lack three chairs.

Except that we need another chair for the person working at the main computer terminal. And another three for people who like to use their personal computers in their rooms while they work on their reports.

Really, we need another seven chairs.

Plus maybe an eighth for whenever you want to look outside the main porthole to the outside world, whichever one that is - Mars or Earth, depending on your mindset. The round window stands about 5 feet above the floor, while directly underneath stands a 3-foot-wide table for computers and supplies that keeps anyone from getting too close to the window.

So a person's view starts about a football field away from the Habitat. It would be nice to stand on a chair and look almost straight down. That's where the red-green-blue stripes of the Mars Society flag flies, and where the ATVs are parked, and where people begin their cross-country missions. It's a particularly fine photo-op spot for a Kodak moment, even from the Hab window.

So, definitely eight more chairs are needed.

Plus, there are lots of shelves that are too high to reach without chairs. At 5-foot-3, Andrea Fori needs a chair to reach the water glasses, which are stored on the top shelf of the 6 ½-foot-tall cupboard. Then she needs a reach of another two or three feet, so she can stretch over the drainboard that juts out from the wall and prevents her from reaching the glasses in the cabinet.

So, it is obvious that nine chairs are essential for the proper operation of the Hab.

Then there's all the storage space downstairs on the main floor. Those shelves must be almost 7 ½ feet tall, just below the ceiling. So another chair would be optimal.

That's 10 chairs that we have on our most-wanted list. Let's throw in two more as replacements for those that might break.

So we're all agreed that another dozen chairs is the minimum amount to operate this Hab safely and efficiently.

But wait. How ridiculous to pine away for a dozen chairs that will never appear anyway, since we are supposedly in the cold, remote reaches of space.

We will just move chairs around to fit our needs.

How simple and elegant a solution. We ourselves control our fate, not the stars.

But it's time for lunch, and there are no chairs around the kitchen table. This is a problem that surely cannot stand - or else we will be forced to. Come out, chairs, wherever you are!

There are only a handful of chairs upstairs. Where are the others? Ah, on the first floor.

Race downstairs - well, not really race. The stairway is of minimalist design, even by forgiving stair standards.

There are 10 steps, plus another step down to the main Hab floor. It's not even a proper stairway - more like a wooden ladder bolted between two floors at a dizzyingly steep angle.

There is enough room on each step to put your heel down and not much else. It's possible to feel much safer by sliding the back of the ankle and calf down the higher step to the lower one, thereby gaining a surer footing, but at the expense of shaving off a layer or two of skin from the back of your leg. That's a fair trade - these stairs look imposing enough to break two necks in one tumble, if one had that many necks.

Downstairs, there are two chairs easily spotted, which are painstakingly transported upstairs, step by step, hanging daintily off the right shoulder while the left hand is hanging onto the railing for dear life.

Grab a chair from the main computer terminal, and two more from the desk underneath the porthole. So we now have five chairs for a crew of six. Five? Where is the missing chair? Probably downstairs near the air lock.

Should we go back down to have a look? Having survived the trip once, it's probably best not to push one's luck.

It's got to be upstairs somewhere. In the commander's room? No. In Vladimir Pletser's room? No, again. Someone has leaned a ladder against the door of my room to reach the water tank on the ceiling of the staterooms. It's easy to move the ladder and strap it down out of the way.

Now I should check my room, but someone asks me where the sixth chair is.

Maybe it's in your room, I respond. Check. Check now.

No? Hmm. Where could it be. No need to check my room, anyway. There's no way it could be there. I would remember if it were.

Now all the others are looking for the missing chair. It's holding up lunch, and everyone is hungry. People shout at others to look in their rooms. Nothing. I deny that the chair is in my room. We are at an impasse. And no one wants to seem to go back downstairs for another look.

Finally, enough accusing stares prompt me to look in my room.

Ah, well. There it is.

See, I didn't sleep well last night. Got up too early. Been working longer hours than one should.

And, as previously mentioned, at least another dozen chairs are needed for the safe and efficient operation of the Hab.

Minimum.