Walden5

Milo and I built a quick and dirty composting bin for our kitchen waste. Living in Brooklyn, NY it is difficult to compost kitchen scraps. This kills me because kitchen waste accounts for so much of our overall waste stream. Even though we encounter have cockroaches from time to time, there are ways to do urban composting indoors or in small outdoor spaces. I honestly (and guiltily) just haven’t found the energy.

Anyway, we’re lucky enough to be living in a small house in rural Connecticut for the next few months and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to build a compost bin. Just trying to incrementally find ways to live more intelligently.

Steps for building an easy composting bin:

1. Dig a hole. The hole should be about half as deep as your bin (15-20 inches in our case). Ideally you’ll want to site your hole in an area with good drainage, close enough to your house for easy access and in an area with good sunlight. If done correctly, the compost bin shouldn’t smell, but you may want to choose a site a little ways from your home in case it attracts animals.

1. Drill some holes. I drilled 3/8 inch holes all over the bottom and lower third of a galvanized metal can which I purchased from a local farming collective for about $30. In total about 20 holes on the bottom and 20 more holes on sides.

(Optional, test out the percussive qualities of your bin)

1. Plant your bin. Next we stuck the can in our hole and pushed the soil back in around the sides. We even transplanted a couple of small ground coverings to make it look nicer.

(If desired, re-test the percussive qualities of the bin)

1. Start composting. I put down a layer of “browns” (brown leaves, shredded paper/cardboard) to get things going. I also tossed in a couple of worms that we had dug up. This step isn’t necessary as worms will find their way in through the holes. We collect our kitchen scraps in a container and about once a day we add this material to the food digester. Don’t forget to secure the lid tightly to keep animals out.

Composting recipe

The general rule of thumb is to alternate layers of browns (carbon rich) and greens (nitrogen rich). There is some debate about the exact proportions of browns to greens. Chopping up larger pieces of material helps to speed up the process. Mixing the bin every couple of weeks introduces air which builds heat in the bin and increases the rate of decomposition. The pile should be moist, but not wet (think brownies). The rate of compost depends on a lot of factors but should take between 6-12 months depending on the temperature of your pile and how quickly you add material.

Compostable materials

Browns (carbon rich)

• brown leaves
• straw
• shredded paper, paper towels, napkins
• shredded cardboad, egg cartons
• small twigs
• grass clippings, weeds
• hair and lint

Greens (nitrogen rich)

• vegetable scraps
• fruit, peels, rinds
• coffee grounds, filters, tea bags
• grains, pastas, and breads
• eggshells

Do not composte!

These materials will create odors and attract rodents

• meat, fish, poultry
• cheese and dairy products
• oily foods, cooking oil
• butter
• any animal products
• pet/human waste

Also, try to avoid items that might introduce toxins into your compost like treated woods or other materials with strong preservatives.

I visited this place on June 17, 2008.
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After driving off the highway for sometime along a sequence of roads that became decreasingly trafficked and gradually less paved my GPS finally chirped, “You have reached your final destination!”. I had? I was on a dirt road, next to a driveway that winded away behind some tall trees in the middle of farmland. No signs or indications of an artist community or of any life at all for that matter. Then, up the driveway a bit, I caught sight of what appeared to be a sculpture of a chicken. Emboldened, I turned my car into the driveway.

After wandering around for awhile, I happened upon a guy (or maybe he happened upon me) and he called for Ed.

Ed is the director of Art Farm Nebraska and he was gracious enough to spend some time telling me about the residency program he’s building and to show me around the farm.

I asked my first question:

Q: What is Art Farm?
A: Paradise :)

He said this with a grin. When I asked him to embellish he said that Art Farm Nebraska is his contribution to “alternative agriculture”. He also said this with a grin and seemed to be making reference to the eco-sustainable-green-organic-alternative frenzy that has hit this country. But in all truth, Art Farm Nebraska and some ways in which Ed leads his own life add an interesting layer to the notion of sustainability and how the art world might intersect with ideas of the local and the global.

The Art Farm lies on 60 acres of land, half of which is still farmed (by Ed’s nephew) for corn and beans to provide revenue for the artist residency program. The other half of the land houses a variety of studios, housing and installation/performance spaces as well as a large sculpture garden. Ed grew up on this land.

Residents are provided free accommodations and studio space in exchange for 12 hours of work each week (3 hours x 4 days). The program attracts artists internationally for 2-3 month residencies.

Art Farm Nebraska embodies several interesting aspects of local and global trends. Many of the structures on the property have been “rescued” from the surrounding environs - often purchased for a few hundred dollars and then relocated by flatbed truck. As such, the grounds act as a kind of archive of local architecture. Although, the archive is living and breathing as the structures are slowly renovated at the aesthetic whim of the artist work force. The main building itself is an architectural mashup of sorts incorporating parts of 4 different barns into the original farmhouse. Local building materials and equipment are also rescued and recycled - both into the renovation work and as raw materials used by the artists in their projects.

Ed recounted a funny anecdote to me about a time that he was at the Brooklyn Art Museum and struck up a conversation with a few women in one of the galleries. When they found out that he was from Nebraska one of them immediately asked him if he knew about this place called “Art Farm Nebraska”. Ironically, Ed pointed out that most people in Nebraska don’t know that the Art Farm even exists. Despite this, the residency program brings together artists from around the globe.

Like many farms in the US, Ed’s crop choice (corns and beans) is driven by government subsidies, available equipment and other effects of Economies of scale. Despite a relatively small acreage, his farming decisions are made largely at the whim of farm equipment manufacturers and the global food economy.

Ed also spoke humorously about the irony and unfortunate relationship between the language he has chosen to describe this project - residency, work, farm - and the current culture of fear that we live in. He regularly has to coach foreign artists on using the right language when speaking with immigration and homeland security officials to avoid setting off red flags and visa problems. With all of the controversy over our immigration policy these days, “residency” has become a bad word.

The Art Farm is a perpetual work in progress. At the time of my visit (June 18, 2008) there were no heated buildings yet, so residencies occur between June and November. A writer’s house is currently being renovated and will eventually provide support for 4 winter writing residencies. The main building offers a dark room and wood shop and plans to support metal working and printmaking are underway.

Ed and his Art Farm are situated at an interesting conflux of global and local issues. Ed himself leads an interesting life. In the winter months, when it is too cold for art production on the farm, he often does work exchanges in Brooklyn New York. He’ll trade his carpentry skills by doing custom furniture design and building renovations in exchange for room and board. He strikes me as some kind of migrant art laborer - a product of the global art market. I appreciate how he does not cast off global as bad and local as good - but rather integrates the two into a pleasant balancing act that seems to approach the challenge of sustainability in a meaningful and pragmatic manner.

I visited this place on June 18, 2008.
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The MDRS Hab has 6 rooms. Each room has its idiosyncrasies and no room can really claim to be the best. Some rooms are too cold, some too hot, some are smelly, some are visited by mice, some have tall bunks, some are noisy, etc. etc.

The door to each room is “tagged” by its past inhabitants. Each crew member leaves behind a patch or badge of sorts which is taped to the door containing their name, crew number and perhaps a graphic or picture or quote etc.

I stayed in room 5.

I thought that I might initiate a new ritual and in this spirit left a binder behind. I hope that it might act as an archive or capsule for thoughts born in this room. In thinking about the future of space travel and possible (inevitable ?) settlement of other planets and moons, I hope that we as individuals and we as a civilized people will look backwards to history as we look forwards to the future. In addition to designing new habitats and new EVA suits, we will also have the opportunity to rethink and design new laws, advance human rights and implement better ways of governing.

What do you think Martian society should look like? What can we learn from history?

To kick things off I included in the binder the story of Biosphere 2 (a cautionary tale - watch those CO2 levels), the UN Declaration of Human Rights, some NY Times crossword puzzles and bar of chocolate.

I hope that you will continue to add to this binder (and comment on this website) in any way that you like: jokes, thoughts, stories, data, pictures, artifacts, recipes, etc. are all welcome.

On to Mars!!!

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Well, yesterday was our last day alone at the MDRS Hab. We broke Sim last night and are expecting Crew 66 to arrive sometime this evening. The time has really flown by - definitely a result of being very busy and around interesting people.

After a few heavenly days of consistent electrical power and running water, we’ve hit another power glitch. “Wendy”, our primary diesel generator, won’t start again and so we’ve been on a severe power and internet ration. I’ve got quite a backlog of images and thoughts to post once I get back to earth and have a reliable internet connection.

In the meantime, here are a couple of responses I’ve been waiting to make to things folks have written in:

Jordy writes:
“if you could just stop at a Walmart on your way to space…I’d love a shot of you on Mars with a VHS copy of Total Recall…”

Total Recall DVD

RDS writes:
up in AK. we used to use a simple light bulb covered with a cardboard box which then covered the frozen valve, connection,pipe, etc. to help keep things thawed and moving. The slight heat given off by the bulb generally did the trick! Good luck with the mission!!!!!!!!!!!

Water pipe housing

Lamp heating water pipe

Well, we tried this and initially the little lamp we put inside the housing just didn’t have enough oomph to warm the water pipe. But we replaced it the next day with a small space heater and voilá - running water!!! Thanks!

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Martian soup

Martian water

Martian chair

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“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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Slope estimation research

A recent message from my dear friend Thom:

… … … .

She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour nine a.m.
And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then
I miss the earth so much I miss my wife
It’s lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids
In fact it’s cold as hell
And there’s no one there to raise them if you did
And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…
And I think it’s gonna be a long long time…

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Sorry for the lack of posting - we had a serious network slowdown recently. We connect to the internet via satellite and it seems that we exceeded our allotted bandwidth (AKA Fair Access Policy Threshold, gotta love HughesNet for convoluted terminology). Anyway, after a couple of days of curtailed internet usage we seem to be back online. Most of us here are internet junkies and while the recent outage was exasperating, to a certain degree it did enhance our simulation. Actual communication between Mars and Earth would take up to 40 minutes to transmit a message and reply. Our internet outage along with the rationing of water and the several power outages we experience each day have definitely heightened our awareness and appreciation of the basic utilities humans require to function.

Snow on Mars: photo by Debi-Lee Wilkinson

The other big news is that it snows on Mars! Well at least it snows on analog Mars. Our landscape has taken on a distinctly lunar appearance. There has been some debate amongst the crew, but given the white and rocky terrain, consensus is that that we’ve been beamed from Mars to Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter). It’s quite beautiful outside.

Suiting up for EVA: photo by Mike Smithwick

Backing up a couple of days, Graham and I enjoyed our crew’s first simulated EVA (or extra-vehicular activity). In addition to familiarizing ourselves with the spacesuit simulators, we had a small ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) mission to collect, as our commander Deb-Lee described it, “local material to enhance activity in our compost bin”. This was a enigmatic way of describing cow dung! We had a fun 2 hour ride on the ATVs and collected a whole trash bag full of “local material”.

In-Situ Resource Utilization: Morgan collects cow dung.

ISRU is actually a very compelling and elegant idea. Basically it describes the approach of using indigenous resources found and/or fabricated on the Moon, Mars, etc. to reduce the amount of material that must be brought from earth. ISRU has been popularized by space visionaries like Robert Zubrin as economical ways of buiding human colonies on Mars. But the terms “indigenous” and “colonize” are definitely trigger terms for me and suggest a myriad of philosophical and ethical issues to grapple with. I plan on dedicating some future posts to explore controversies and ethical dilemmas that ISRU and terraforming (ISRU’s logical endpoint) suggest. Astrobiology Magazine has a great series on their website that explore the “Great Terraforming Debate”.

Back to life at the Hab - our focus on engineering tasks during the first few days here has paid off and now that we’ve entered Sim, the crew has fallen into a nice rhythm. We still have a number of daily chores that in theory could be automated but, due to cold weather conditions and broken pumps, require our regular attention. These primarily involve moving water into and out of the Hab. Even with a crew of 6, it takes a remarkable amount of time each day just to keep us all fed, clean and the basic systems running. Someone mentioned the other day that during a period when the space shuttle was grounded and there was only a skeleton crew on the International Space Station, it took two astronauts working around the clock just to keep the thing functioning - never mind conducting any scientific research.

We’ve worked up a daily rotating schedule for cooking, cleaning, generator refueling and water pumping. In between these duties, crew members are beginning to squeeze in work on their own research projects. Yesterday we left the Hab on our first all-crew EVA to work on Chris Oravetz’s Slope Estimation research project. The idea behind his research is to develop an understanding of the psychological and physiological factors that influence an astronaut’s ability to accurately estimate the slope of surrounding terrain. He has a series of experiments for which the rest of the crew will act as test subjects. In addition to collecting some initial data, we played in the snow!!

Slope estimation experiment

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