I do not know beneath what sky nor on what seas shall be thy fate;
I only know it shall be high, I only know it shall be great.
Richard Hovey: Destiny

With the longer martian days the F.L.A.M.E. Crew starts to feel the strain. I have noticed that with our Wake and Sleep Cycle Program for us to try to adapt to life on the Red Planet, some of the Crew Members have either not been getting up when they are suppose to or they go to bed earlier than they need to. With some of the Engineering issues that need to be worked out on a daily basis as well as the normal to everyday cleaning of the Hab, the shine is starting to wear off and now some are tired during the day and have a need to take a short rest and lay down. Even the children have the urge to take naps when at home on Earth they would not even dream of laying down for ten minutes for they would miss their favorite television show or play a game on their GameBoy Advance! I have noticed the greater dependency of the video games unto which the children will be advised to lower the time spent on them in order to do more productive things throughout the day (especially when it deals with them helping out around the Hab).

Our Chief Engineer, Artemis, as usual was up bright and early already checking the GreenHab systems. The children were up late (no school on the weekends) and stayed in bed late after a long night of sending e-mails to family and friends back on Earth, playing music videos and watching the movie "Galaxy Quest". Today, our breakfast became lunch. Dinner came way too fast for each of us but we also realized that we had to put our clocks forward an hour in order to synchronize with Mission Support back at home. Our Executive Officer, Stacy Sklar, worked in the EVA room all day ensuring that our PLSSs were in operational order and mended most of them to be up to spec for EVA. Engineer Waller ran around the Hab ensuring that the HSO cabinet's door was fixed and that we would be able to have fresh water by sieving water from our external tank to our internal tanks. He was successful but it will take a long while for us to reach the desired level of usable water we can use for today and tomorrow until the problem can be fixed. Our Educator got promoted to Chief HSO today. Not only will he be educating our F.L.A.M.E. students but he will ensure the health and safety of all the Crew Members. As for myself, I spent most of the day in the Mars Desert Research Station Laboratory cleaning, packing up previous Crews' experiments and testing out our energy conservation. Upon further investigation, I spent a little over an hour testing our batteries that will be used for any internal instrumentation as well as for our EVA Communication Devices. Out of 359 batteries stored in the MDRS Science Laboratory that were marked "Dead Batteries", 213 AA were in perfect condition, 2 of the 3Volts were operational and there were 12 C batteries in excellent condition as well. Why is this so important? Not only is it cost effective to ensure that you have operational energy sources but one must ensure that all instrumentation is in working order for those Crew Members who go on EVA. We must reduce risk by making sure that all our supplies are operational and organized.

Today we had leftovers for dinner. Most to all of the Crew Members, including myself, skipped lunch due to our schedules being changed. It will be interesting to see how we fair when we return home to Earth. How will we deal with the terrestrial day again? How long will it take us to get use to a normal 24 hours day? We will just have to wait and see. For as William Congreve stated on risk, "Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life."

Finally, we had an emergency fire drill this evening in which everyone evacuated the Hab in 35 seconds. This was not bad but not good either. We will conduct another "emergency" in the near future.

Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto
Commander, MDRS Crew 59