Commander's Report

February 15, 2010

Nancy Vermeulen



Commanders report CREW90 Monday, February, 15th 2010 Nancy Vermeulen


Crew physical status: Physical good, but psychological stress.

This morning the pump of the toilet was not functioning. Nicky started
working on it.
Pierre-Emmanuel helped with the electric pumping.
Nicky replaced the hand pump.

We got some generator troubles, which Nicky and I resolved during the
day. The inverter light came on and we thought there was a generator
problem. After checking, the generator was ok and the problem was
solved by moving the cursor in the inverter menu back at the right
place. DG refilled the oil of the main generator, maybe this was the
cause of the problem.
The water quantity is back under control.

I started this morning by sending the French written journalist report
of Pierre-Emmanuel by the engineering report system, as PE is still not
able to work with the system.

Then Nicky and I send the pictures of yesterday by the standard
system.

EVA 11 : 11.00-12.30: Arjan, Nicky, Nora and Pierre-Emmanuel went out
to explore the composition of the ground around the Hab as preparation
for the Florida experiment about Martian soil fertility. It is a bit
more complicated then expected, so it will have to be continued by the
next crew.

I had a nice Skype contact with an astronomical society in Gent with a
room full of enthusiastic children and I needed this positive energy
today as after the lunch, the bomb exploded.

The growing frustration that after 9 days PE, Nora and Margaux are
still not able to manage the Hab systems/ standard engineering
reporting system (and even don’t consider this as a problem!), exploded
during the lunch.

The lack of dedication to the mission of some people overloads the
others and it had to be spoken out. The problem was already there from
the first day, when it came out that some people didn’t prepare
anything for the mission, didn’t look at the manuals, which were send
to them months ago and didn’t even prepare the tasks for their own
role.
The accusation into my direction that I didn’t brief enough about the
systems was too much. Nicky almost exploded.
Arjan reacted double: At one hand he couldn’t stop criticising the
incompetence of some others during last week, but during the discussion
he acted as if he was from Barcelona (don’t know anything). He has his
own mission and own world.

Conclusions and actions: For this kind of mission you need people with
a good problem solving capability. Scientific background is an asset
of course but motivation and dedication to the mission are the most
important.
Nicky will be my right hand and executive officer from now. I will
involve Arjan and Nicky as much as possible to help guiding the other
three team members.

After the clash, Arjan, PE and Margaux went on EVA12: 15.00-16.00 to
White Rock Canyon to test the VRP.

I solved the generator problem together with Nicky and worked a bit
further on my RMI-experiment.
We had visit from two people from the local area. I showed them the
hab and explained about the MDRS project, very nice to see their
respect for the work we do here :-)


Nancy Vermeulen
Commander MDRS90