Author: Sweet Tea, Science

One Small Step Closer

Got the email this morning! Early this morning. A bit too early. I’m grateful for my attentive mother who saw the post on the Hi-SEAS Facebook page and called me repeatedly until my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ringtone awakened me. 

Dear HI-SEAS Applicant,Thank you for your interest in the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. As you may know, we received almost 700 applications for this mission, for only six crew positions…. At this point, you are one of the candidates for a potential
education/journalism/outreach/art/social-media position on the crew…. We expect to be able to notify the ~30 crew semi-finalists by mid-April. 

I am very excited and very honored to be considered for such a position and must in return thank every single person who has come to check out my blog, shared it with friends, commented, and provided support. There’s not much for me to do at this point other than continue to post and work on getting more readers and commenters! I would appreciate if everyone could keep it up and perhaps tell a friend or two about the blog and keep up with the commenting. Comments make my day!

No News is Good News?

Announcements are set for this week, but still no word from those in charge. I’m assuming that since today is Good Friday, and campuses are closed, then it’s very unlikely that they’d be contacting people. Perhaps the weekend? Monday? Another whole week??! All I know is that every time my devices make an email/tweet/ringer/random bleep or blip I tense up in excitement and anticipation.

Fellow applicant, Timothy Judd, has not been especially helpful.

Since I had hoped to use today’s blog to share the news of my excitement/disappointment and that will have to wait for another day….here are some little tidbits to keep you going.

The first contains another interview by Kim Binsted, skip to 17:29 for her part.

http://hawaiiconversation.org/audio/TC_012612.mp3

And then this is just a completely stellar TED-Ed talk by a fish!

Top 20 Things I’ll Miss When I’m on Mars

I was going to wait to write this post until after the applicant advancement announcement, but I’m just so excited that just maybe news will arrive today instead of tomorrow (or worse, Saturday).

Four months spent ‘on Mars’ is a quick trip compared to the complete 2-year journey that would be required of astronauts heading to the Red Planet. However, I’m sure that the 6 selected participants will feel the strain of such a lifestyle every so often. Before deciding to apply, I asked myself if there was anything I absolutely could not live without for four months that should keep me from submitting my application. While I couldn’t think of anything of that magnitude, I was able to come up with some items that I’d certainly miss (but, ultimately can live without IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE).

My Top 20 Things I’ll Miss:

  1. Family
  2. Friends
  3. Freedom to Travel
  4. Vegetarianism
  5. Sunshine on my skin
  6. Long, hot showers
  7. Animals
  8. Crock Pot? If the Mars kitchen isn’t equipped with a slow cooker I will be quite sad. 
  9. Forests
  10. Hiking
  11. Mountains
  12. The Ocean (and it’ll be so close, yet so far!)
  13. Having my own room
  14. Fresh fruit and vegetables
  15. Direct contact with people (5-20  min delay on all communications)
  16. My own kitchen, stocked with what I want to eat/snack upon
  17. Streams
  18. A fully equipped lab and greenhouse
  19. Food choice
  20. A private life, outside of work
A lot of the things that make this list, I already miss. Graduate school in the desert certainly has many, many perks, but I’m finding myself missing going for a hike in the woods and stumbling upon a stream. I can’t think of anything more delightful to do once I graduate. I’ll take a nap in the sun and then turn over rocks to observe critters.

If selected, I’ll be very eager to see how this list of predictions holds up to what I actually end up yearning for the most.

*       *      *
As an EXTRA ADDED BONUS, I found this short talk by Kim Binsted! Dr Binsted is one of the co-PIs for the Hi-SEAS project. Last week, she tweeted a link to this talk that was recorded at The Green House Innovation Hub in Honolulu, HI. Be sure to check out the other presentations, but if you grow impatient, the Hi-SEAS talk starts about 30 minutes into the clip. My favorite part is when she says that they’d only expected 50 applications (remember, there were 700)! I also would LOVE to have a better view of the slide with the guinea pig that outlines some of the other aspects they’ll be monitoring. I see sleep! 
Questions of The Day:
What would you miss if you traveled to Mars?
What did you think of Kim Binsted’s talk? Was her summary of the project what you expected?