Walden5

“The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory …”
- Jean Baudrillard from “Simulacra and Simulations”

It goes without saying that the idea of simulation occupies a fair amount of our attention and conversation here on analog Mars. Every day you can hear snippets of conversation like, “Well that would break Sim” or jokes about pressure breaches and enactments of faked asphyxiation (as visualized in the movie Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger). The Mars Desert Research Station is in fact designed to simulate or model the conditions a human crew would have to contend with during an extended stay on Mars.

Total Recall asphyxiation

A number of elements contribute to making this analog experience quite convincing. The remoteness of the location (a few hours drive into the desert south of Salt Lake City) and the geology of the landscape are perhaps the most compelling features of the simulation. The surrounding soil is quite red and strewn with odd rocks and land formations. The area is also extremely dry and dusty. The Hab is our primary structure and houses our living quarters, bathroom, kitchen and lab facilities. It is cylindrical in shape which reflects the form factor of the rocket that would in theory transport us to Mars. While cleverly designed, space and privacy are limited in the Hab as is water and electricity. I think the bathroom is the only place other than our personal rooms that one can go to be alone - and that is not a place you would like to be in for very long. Our “state rooms” are narrow and cramped (11x4 feet). We have no cellphone or telephone service. Our internet access is via satellite and is frequently down or irritatingly slow. Leaving the Hab requires a space suit simulator. This contraption is sufficiently heavy and unwieldy to make even the most basic tasks time consuming and challenging. All of these factors contribute to the realness of the simulated experience.

Analog Mars landscape

However, the simulation cracks in many locations. Though rare, from time to time we see/hear aircraft overhead. We have an engineering area, observatory and GreenHab (greenhouse and waster water system) all external to the Hab that we can walk to without space suit simulators. How can this be? We access these facilities via imaginary pressurized tunnels - many of which are demarcated by two parallel line of stones. The Hab itself is not even remotely sealed tight - there are cracks everywhere that in an actual Martian environment would lead to the immediate and fatal de-pressurization of our living environment. Many of the materials in the Hab (drywall, plywood, etc) are blatantly unrealistic, heavy and impractical given the expense of lifting objects in to space. We’ve also had repeated mouse sightings.

Fake pressurized tunnel: note the parallel lines of stones

And yet despite these cracks in the surface, the simulated experience is, for me at least, increasingly irresistible. Suspension of disbelief is one of the magic ingredients in this enterprise. Its the glue that holds the adventure together. At night, when its dark and all you can see are stars in every direction and the 6 of us are sitting around the dinner table chatting, its easy to imagine that we are hurtling around the Sun on a distant planet far away from our homes. I’ve realized lately how much this transportation involves reacquainting myself with notions of play.

My friend Larry writes, “I took a quick look at your mission. Fun! I never graduated past the couch cushions and laundry basket setup, so kudos to you!!”

For many of us I imagine, living on an analog Mars as a child didn’t require flying across the country to a well-funded simulated space habitat. Couch cushions and sheets and a heavy dose of imagination were all that was necessary.

Pillow fort

The makeup of the crew and each individual’s disposition towards suspension of disbelief are also important factors. Today the entire crew went outside on an EVA to help Chris with his Slope Estimation research project. For a variety of reasons, some crew members opted to break Sim and leave the Hab without their space suit helmets intact. I found myself irritated by this. It was 8 am (early for me) and snowing. I was cold, hungry and my faceplate was fogged over. What in previous days had felt like an interesting challenge quickly degraded into impatience and aggravation. The line between a meaningful simulated experience and 6 goof balls walking around the middle of nowhere with fake spacesuits on is THIN. What makes this project challenging at times is that MDRS is a consensual hallucination, as coined by William Gibson - group dynamics come into play.

In earlier times representation followed reality. Images were clearly counterfeits of the real. Maps were drawn after exploring a region. Baudrillard has pointed out to us that the real world no longer precedes or engenders maps and models. Rather representation precedes and determines the real. We build models and develop simulations before fabricating actual products. We have detailed maps of places before we arrive there. Reality imitates the model. For Baudriallard, the point is not that culture is artificial or life is fake. Instead, he argues that we can no longer detect a distinction between nature (the real) and artifice. This is our new reality.

At MDRS this desensitization feels ironically heightened.

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