Commander's Report

March 19, 2008

Emily Colvin



Commander's Report
19 March 2008

Emily Colvin

Aahh, the life of the Hab Mother. Sometimes it's like a game of
"Mother, May I" with this crew. There's so much everyone wants to do
and I have to rein them in sometimes. Today was nice, since almost
everyone got out of the Hab and up to Skyline Rim (which is always a
treat - what a view). And then I let them get in a bit of pre-Sim
ATVing, which is still very new to most of the crew. It does make me
feel like somebody's mom, though, having to tell them to stay close to
the Hab as it gets closer to evening, and to be in by dark. But they're
a good bunch, and restrain their enthusiasm when necessary.

I'm looking forward to Sim. For the first time, I actually have a
research project that requires me to go out on EVA and do things! It's
crazy! And I can let everyone go exploring to their hearts' content to
test the range of the repeater. Having seen the amount of improvement
we got from the ill-fated balloon repeater on Crew 47, I can't wait to
see what we get with the repeater on Skyline Rim.

And, of course, today has been an adventure with engineering, as
always. Things start and stop working with no rhyme or reason. The
water heater's being very finicky and special, and the generator had a
momentary spaz attack before stabilizing and giving us usable power.
And, of course, someone had changed a valve on an ATV to restrict fuel
flow...I have no idea what the reasoning behind that was, but the
upside is that we found it and now we have 3 working ATVs! So that, at
least, is ready to go for Sim. And everything else will gradually get
fixed over the next week and a half, I'm sure. I can't imagine leaving
without fixing as many things as we can.