There comes a time in an unusual environment like this when what you are doing starts to feel normal and become routine. After only a week at MDRS I can feel that this is already starting to be that case. It is now the lives of the people back 'on Earth' which seem strange, with hours of free time every day, the limitless supply of water and consequent ability to wash whenever you like, the myriad forms of entertainment, or even the ability to use money to satisfy any need.

Here on Mars the routine continues. We crew emerged from their state rooms at 8:00am after a late night the night before. After a breakfast of grapefruit, cereal and cinnamon bread (we make our own bread here on Mars) we all launched into our duties. For me, that meant studying maps with members of my EVA crew and compiling our navigational data for the days exploration. After an early Sunday lunch of ramen we descended into the EVA prep room and prepared our equipment and suited up. Then it was into the airlock for twenty minutes of pre-breathing, and then emerging onto the Martian surface to mount our ATVs and head off through the spectacular ridge pass to the mid ridge planitia that we were exploring.

While we did this, the rest of the crew continues with the GreenHab experiments, the engineering maintenance, or mounting a vigil on the radio waiting for our reports.

We arrived back at the hab just after 17:00. Once again we were running out of time and had to postpone several activities which I had planned for today. There was just time to secure our vehicles, recompress, get out of our suits and have dinner before getting down to our evening reporting duties.

At MDRS, as it would be on Mars, there is always work to do. Some of it is fun, and some very mundane. The luxuries are few, but nobody complains because we share a common ideal which transcends personal comfort. Indeed, we all feel incredibly privileged to be, of all the people in the world, the ones chosen to be taking part in this project at this time. We have been discussing recently the question of how boredom would effect a crew during an actual mission to Mars. All I can say is that I brought a lot of books which I haven't opened since I arrived here. I imagine it is the same for the crew of the International Space Station. On those rare occasions when you don't have work to do, it is enough to sit and look through the window and contemplate what you are doing. Boredom really isn't a problem.