Just beautiful
Jul. 25th, 2003 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayToday, things clicked. It was productive, a large improvement over the previous two days.
The weather cooperated today -- sunny, clear and warmer (low 40s F). And my equipment was here and the spacesuit was here. Local management at home is being snippy over my shipping procedure, but otherwise the day was great.
This morning, I refreshed Pascal on gravity meter operation, then went off and set up my base station on a flat rock near the runway...
shows it.
After lunch, I spent an hour discussing crater geophysics with visiting scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada and Dalhousie University. Then saw a strange new sight:
One of the folks here this year is Elaine Walker, lead singer of the rock group ZIA (see http://www.chaoscontrolnetwork.com/ZIA/ ) here from NYC to make... a music video. Hence the costume. Although, honestly, that's the closest thing I've seen to a skirt or dress up here (on either gender ;) in six summers. Elaine is sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation and has her journal here.
Then we packed up and went to Site 6, about 2km from camp. It has several parallel subchannels from past ice melts. I found evidence there of past hydrothermal activity, including sulfur odors:
I'll have to check Oz's maps to see if this is a new find or already on the map. We set up the test subject in the suit, gave them a briefing and objectives, and let them wander over the area. An assistant took photos, held tools and samples. I followed them and wrote down the GPS waypoints, times and comments on the activity. The first subject was Adrian, a geophysical intern from the University of Paris. After dinner, we reconvened and ran another set with Jeff Jones, the Space Station's chief flight surgeon. (Given that most small Arctic towns lack MD's, he may be the only physician within 1000 miles or so...) Discovery Channel tagged along and filmed the first part of Jeff's traverse, until our radio batteries ran down and we had to pause to get new ones from base. And I had my obligatory 5 minutes of footage, talking about what we hope to learn from the study (while they put the spacesuit on Jeff in the background).
Finally, after getting the base readings, Pascal took the gravity meter with the group going out in the Humvee on an overnight traverse, so I should be getting gravity stations.
I'm almost halfway through my stay here, and now have a minimum set of both suit-study and gravity measurements. I'm much happier :-). And the weather continues to be lovely...
Note also the cool balanced boulder shown to the right...
The weather cooperated today -- sunny, clear and warmer (low 40s F). And my equipment was here and the spacesuit was here. Local management at home is being snippy over my shipping procedure, but otherwise the day was great.
This morning, I refreshed Pascal on gravity meter operation, then went off and set up my base station on a flat rock near the runway...
shows it.
After lunch, I spent an hour discussing crater geophysics with visiting scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada and Dalhousie University. Then saw a strange new sight:
One of the folks here this year is Elaine Walker, lead singer of the rock group ZIA (see http://www.chaoscontrolnetwork.com/ZIA/ ) here from NYC to make... a music video. Hence the costume. Although, honestly, that's the closest thing I've seen to a skirt or dress up here (on either gender ;) in six summers. Elaine is sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation and has her journal here.
Then we packed up and went to Site 6, about 2km from camp. It has several parallel subchannels from past ice melts. I found evidence there of past hydrothermal activity, including sulfur odors:
I'll have to check Oz's maps to see if this is a new find or already on the map. We set up the test subject in the suit, gave them a briefing and objectives, and let them wander over the area. An assistant took photos, held tools and samples. I followed them and wrote down the GPS waypoints, times and comments on the activity. The first subject was Adrian, a geophysical intern from the University of Paris. After dinner, we reconvened and ran another set with Jeff Jones, the Space Station's chief flight surgeon. (Given that most small Arctic towns lack MD's, he may be the only physician within 1000 miles or so...) Discovery Channel tagged along and filmed the first part of Jeff's traverse, until our radio batteries ran down and we had to pause to get new ones from base. And I had my obligatory 5 minutes of footage, talking about what we hope to learn from the study (while they put the spacesuit on Jeff in the background).
Finally, after getting the base readings, Pascal took the gravity meter with the group going out in the Humvee on an overnight traverse, so I should be getting gravity stations.
I'm almost halfway through my stay here, and now have a minimum set of both suit-study and gravity measurements. I'm much happier :-). And the weather continues to be lovely...
Note also the cool balanced boulder shown to the right...
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-25 11:31 am (UTC)Questions:
What equipment am I seeing that makes up your base station?
What were the objectives for this round of spacesuit testing?
How long is Zia there and did you get a chance to talk to her? What's she like and how'd they come up with the idea to shoot a video there?
Good luck!
Nice talking to you this morning!
no subject
Date: 2003-07-25 02:29 pm (UTC)http://www.mars-frontier.org/7_24_03/7_24_03-Pages/Image6.html
which is from
http://www.mars-frontier.org/7_24_03/