I'll give you a hand, anton. But, I cannot deal with vomit.

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Great, I can use the help. It's weightless up front, but not spinning. If you start feeling queasy, head back to the rotating habitat.

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I'm over here in the habitation unit, assembling my clarinet for a round of Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Oh! And, I also (:snigger brougt up GG's clarinet w/ me...she doesn't know.

Good to have you aboard. If you're planning to play ASZ, it might sound a little disappointing. There was no Timpani or french horns in the manifest. If you want my krumhorn, you'll have to wait till the concentrator is deployed.

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No prob. Anyone up for a round of jazz?

It's kinda bumpy in here. Well, I've had worse...I'll relax again once we get outta this atmosphere... B)

Come on guys stop jerking Starlab around. Let him look out the window. We're travelling almost 10 km/sec, and we're 170,000 km from Earth. We've been out of the atmosphere for two days. You left it in the elevator to platform C.

Rigel and I have some work to do.

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As soon as we are in the correct trajectory for Mars I'll get my mini-greenhouse set up. I hope the seedlings I germinated before leaving home are all right & haven´t suffered from too much from this trip so far or I´m afraid we will have to do with out fresh veg. (& just have to hope the air-conditioning units don´t breakdown). :P

I managed to get some great shots of the Earth as we began to pull away - I´ll post a couple here as so as we get back home safely! (if Fraser would be so kind as to include an upload window on this page - otherwise I´ll just have to post them on some other thread & post a link to them from here)

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You can start that at about 03:00UT. We'll have a slight shift in the apparent 'down' direction in the habitat a little before then when the engines kick in. At that time we will already be further from Earth than any human has ever been.

Pictures will be great! Good Idea.

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We are underway! We have deployed the 8000 meter diameter solar concentrator, and it is working! The Argon Ion engines are getting mucho Watts, and this 330 ton craft is on its way to Mars. On December 14th, we will have a brief period of manuevering as we turn the engines to face the opposite way. I'll be deploying a deep space probe at that time.

But aside from that, we have two weeks of mostly uneventful flight. We'll need to keep an eye on the solar weather, but this is a quiet time for the sun, so luck may be on our side.

Where's my krumhorn... Oh there it is. Maybe I can use it instead of the French horns in ASZ. Nah, this feels more like a "Blue Danube" moment.

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Blue Danube? YESSSS!!! B)

So THAT's where my clarinet went :angry:...grrr. Now what am I supposed to use when I go to band camp??? Since you have my clarinet you might as well play some good jazz and send clips back to us on Earth. BTW, how come I wasn't invited?

Read one of Anton's earlier posts about the invitations:
Anyways, this is a volunteer-if-you-have-time thing (w/ the exception of Tom2Mars). BTW, we're all thinking of you! B)

OTOH, you can be our down-on-earth corresspondante .

Oh... I must have missed that post

Sounds good to me.

I wish I could have joined you all but now I'm on a mission to find a clarinet (thanks a lot Starlab <_< ). Take lots of pictures and remember to bring me back a souvenir.

Have fun!

Gee, fellas, what kinda souvenir should we bring back for GG?

Perhaps, a rock on Mars (with infectious life)?

A slab of Martian polar ice cap?

Anton's (homemade) Martian Dust Pie?

A piece of spaceship damaged by solar radiation?

A piece of Dame's beard exposed to weightlessness?

Maybe we'll leave GG's clarinet on Mars so the martians have something to remember us by. Hmm...

ah well....

I was being quiet as instructed a while ago...and it appears I have missed the boat (not on Anton's recent list - I know a couple will be very happy about that :angry

oh well, enjoy the monopoly and hope the seismometer gives interesting results :unsure:

have fun :mellow:

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Yeah, but I bet you didn't notice yet that the beard-dwelling Quasimodo is missing...yes we stashed him onboard ("hey Quasi wanna come here to the window and wave down at Dame?" :P ). We also made sure to take a few strands of beard, so we can reimplant them on you and you can feel the effects of weeks in space.

thats alright, I'll go back to doing what i am good at, whatever the heck that is.....

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Damien,
International Baccalaureate Physics teacher
Optics, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Instrumentation Major
Admin: Pacific Science and Art

There was an open invitation to all, which certainly included you. I had guessed that you were just being too busy, or thought it was too silly for you.

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BTW, I can't wait to try Anton's Martian Dust Pie - he took the recipe straight out of Chook's cookbook (who knew Chook had a cookbook?) Well, a new surprise every day...

I'm here, Chook. I'm just trying to tune my Stratocaster (I think Quasimodo was fiddling with it). Seems the magnets on the pickups are being affected by some magnetic field, thus the strings are vibrating at an abnormal rate.
Anyway, what key is this Blue Danube in? I'll improvise!!

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Did I mention that with Dame's black beard pieces on board we could add an extra spice to our music?

Blue Danube is sometimes called "The Space Station Waltz" thanks to its use in 2001 A Space Odessy.
Blue Danube Waltzes Page 1
The above link can take a while to load.

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I thought that was Damo. Well, it doesn't matter too much, most of the food is microwavable individual sized portions, until the mini-greehouses start producing.

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Everything is organised, the luggage are arranged according to the alphabetical order with everyone's name on his/her stuff. That would make things easier on everybody so that if you need to get anything you wouldn't get confused.

I can use my brain for planning, but i don't mind using your laptop to play some games. Do we have internet connection here?

Yes we do, but you won't like it for interactive games. We are currently about 3 million miles from earth which means there is a delay of almost 20 seconds each way. If you're doing some real-time games, you will lose fast.

We have several laptops up here, you could upload games and do interactive gaming with the people up here with us if anyone's interested.

The connection is good for streams of data like emails and videos.

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I'm surprised you feel it as rolling. It should just feel like pressure against the floor, with only coreolis forces being apparent when you throw something up.

If everyone can carefull make sure that there are no open liquids, and all loose objects and powders are stowed away, we can shut down the rotation for a while. I really don't recommend that we leave it off. BTW, who's been shelling and eating sunflower seeds? That's got to get swept up.

So, let's take a vote. If we have eight people who want to shut it down for a while, and are willing to stow stuff, I'll stop it. In the meantime, come on up to the command console and look around. You can see Earth, because it is no longer directly behind us, but it is getting pretty small now. It is almost five million miles away, so it is about a quarter the diameter that a crescent Moon appears on Earth.

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Well, my mini-greenhouse is up & as most of the seedlings seem to have survived the ordeal of getting into space & being the first plants to travel so far from Earth they should soon produce something edible. I was fortunate to be able to persuade several seed merchants to let me try out some of their new varieties of fast growing, maturing plants, thought for eventual cultivation on the ISS (something they may badly need sometime in a not too distant future as they are having to ration their food supplies at present) & if successful, later on the Moon.

While this happens they will be recycling the air in our cabin, removing the CO & replacing it with O2, if nothing else they will be worth their weight in gold just for this function alone!

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I haven't actually had time to look at the greenhouse, can you describe it? I am wondering if it is hydroponic, and if so, is it designed to tolerate periods of microgravity? Chook wants to shut down the rotation of the drum for a non-travel-sickness-inducing look out of the windows.

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Chook, have you watched the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Because if not, I brought it (DVD) on board, with a DVD player and tons of other DVD's (& who'se interested in a football game on my portable TV?).


BTW, who here is keeping track of the martian weather?

And Chook, keep the recipes coming, that last thing you suggested tasted like delicious sh*t supreme rather than the average sh*tty dish. B)

Oh, and I managed to get Steven Brown on board...he's fine, he's still in the luggage compartment (I dunno why he hasn't come out by now) and some of Dame's beard is keeping him warm. (PM him to get his attention)

Sorry I didn't make it clear, Now that there's nothing much to do for the next six days, anyone can come to the command console, [which is NOT rotating], but there is only room for three at a time. When I'm not there, I have it in lock down mode, so there's not much chance of hurting anything... still, if you are feeling queasy, get out before you make a mess.
The weather forcast is for cold and dry.
Is someone watching the solar weather?

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