The Social Life of Utahnauts

I've often thought communism is the right way to live on the smallest of scales -- within families and inner-circle friendships. Really it's just logical: share and share alike, and why own five extra "beater" vehicles when you can all share one or two? As long as everyone's cool, you really do get that "from each according to his ability" thing going. The problem, generally, is that any group larger than 10 people will contain at least one person who isn't cool. And that sucks, because suddenly everyone has to work ten or twenty percent harder just to stay in place. This is why communism fails on the large scale: because except in a few funky places like Sweden, people get really ticked off about freeloaders, and lose their incentive to work hard. Why contribute if it just gets Uncle Ernie drunk?

Fortunately, on Crew 27 everyone is cool. When we see people working, we offer to help or we go find something else useful to do. We don't need a cooking or cleaning schedule, because the least-busy person always seems to pick up the slack (and no, it's not always the same person). It's nice. There's also no hoarding here, at least that I'm aware of. We all brought our little stashes of private goodies, but we've been hauling them out every few days like Christmas presents. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had a chance to live this way, if only for two weeks?

Multiculturalism is also a big plus. Crew 26 had assured me that having an international crew really enriched the experience, and after experiencing it myself I have to agree. Julie and Peter are from Britain, and although we speak (mostly) the same language and watch (mostly) the same TV and movies and hear (mostly) the same music, we're all constantly amused by little differences in culture and diet, mannerisms and speech. Peter gets a real kick out of American materialism ("You own three cars? One-point-five per adult? No wonder you need a larger house, chum, it's to hold all your stuff!"), and I get a real kick out of his dry humor, and Julie's funny school slang. Alex was born in Peru, and while two decades in L.A. have Americanized him significantly, he still brings a unique point of view to the table. He's worked first-hand with astronauts, but he's also lived in a country wracked by terrorism, and been a foreigner in his own adopted country.

We've been out here for long enough to develop an embryonic culture of our own, and it's neither British nor American nor Peruvian, but some tough, tech-savvy, funny-talking hybrid of the three. And that's a really good thing; exposure to the socialist lifestyle and British/Peruvian frugality have given me a new perspective on my own, comparatively lavish way of life. I can already picture myself walking into my own home like a poor country stranger. Do they really need all that space, all these things, all the kilowatt-hours and kiloliters of water they consume in a week?

Refilling the diesel generator three times a day is a good reminder that energy is not free, not magic, not disconnected from the physical world. It's more than just numbers on a monthly statement; when we run the toaster oven, we can HEAR the generator revving up, and we know its tank will run dry just that much faster, and come rain or wind or gloom of night, we'll have to go out there (through the imaginary "pressurized tunnel") and refill it. Here on "Mars", even flipping on a light switch is a consequential act.

The water situation is even more educational. The hygiene standards here are very different from American norms; we don't flush the toilet for "number one," and we don't flush paper, and we don't take daily showers. We can't; we simply haven't got the water for it. It's also cold here most of the time, and you have to run about two gallons of cold water before the warm starts to flow, and anyway the water heater only holds five gallons, which we have to share between us and at least a gallon of which has to go for dishes every night. This discourages regular bathing, so most days we end up using a moistened washcloth, and take "navy showers" once or twice a week. That's where you spend a minute getting wet, then turn the water off and soap up, then spend another minute or two rinsing off. This takes about three gallons altogether, so you end up stepping out of the shower just as it's finally getting hot.

At home I've been known to stand under the full shower blast for twenty minutes, using up forty gallons of water and 40,000 BTUs of heating energy, equivalent to about a third of a gallon of generator fuel. If I ever do that again -- and realistically I'm sure I will, sooner rather than later -- I'll at least have a firm grasp of the resources I'm squandering. But I've learned something else as well: we humans have a natural scent, a natural coating of oils and bacteria adapted specifically for the purpose of protecting our skin. After four or five days it stops being gross and starts feeling sort of, well, natural. It's not at all like the stench of a gym bag; I suppose the good bacteria eventually crowd out the stinky ones, and the only real problem is the buildup of crystallized (or crustallized) sweat. And socks. Unlaundered socks really do get to stinking after a few days. But it does make me wonder why "civilized" people spend so much time and effort to scrape off this protective film, only to replace it with scented lotions and pomades which don't do nearly as good a job. Are we nuts? Probably.

But I should tell you what happened today, because it was another good one, in a laid-back sort of way. Our morning was rained in again, but this time, instead of cabin fever, it gave us a chance to linger over breakfast, to catch up on paperwork, to read our email while good music and bad movies played in the background. Truthfully, it was a relief not to be rushing outside again. Outside is nice, but it's also a hassle, and today was definitely NOT a day for long journeys or multiple cycles through the airlock. We were all too tired for that. It was also nice to chitchat and eat snack foods, to take a few hours to consolidate our group culture. There's a lot we don't know about each other outside the context of the hab, and what somebody's like here is only one facet of what they're like generally, so it's nice to meet the full person every now and again.

But we'd been wanting to hike up Phobos Peak -- visible all day through the hab's largest window -- and when the weather partially cleared after lunch, we decided to make it happen. But we were also full of gung-ho team spirit, so in a breach of protocol we decided we should all go out together, leaving no Habcom behind. We don't have six working space helmets, though, so Peter opted to make the journey out of sim, with a scientific eye toward measuring speed and difficulty differences between suited and unsuited people. (It turns out the suited people were slower.)

We also breached protocol in a more serious way, by neglecting to bring along the EVA first aid kit. We became acutely aware of this when Bill "Mountain Goat" Foltyn climbed atop the peak's highest boulder, which is the size and shape of a house and definitely not something you'd want to climb up in a space suit. Fortunately, though, he found his way back down again without incident. We were actually a bit more worried about Julie, for whom mountains are an alien concept, but though she was trailing and tired and dropped into her bunk the moment we got back inside, she completed the same hike as the rest of us. Bravo for the British.

Meanwhile, while Julie and Alex and I were cycling through the airlocks, Bill and Jim headed out on the ATVs and, almost by accident, found a meteorite up on Radio Ridge. Meteorites can be found anywhere on earth, but on a flat bench of pale-colored rock, they really stand out, so meteor hunting up there had been one of our mission's science goals all along. After the Remote Radio problems, it does feel good to chalk up a win.