kai

The Red Hen team has returned to SAM, and this time they brought more than a set rescued from a Hollywood landfill. Co-founder Danica Vallone and manager Demian Vallone arrived with sculptors Steve, Kat, and Robert. This first of three crews will be on-site for one week, followed by the crew that will shoot concrete over the sculpted foam, and then the painters who apply the final look and feel of the Mars geology.

SAM team members Luna Powell, Matthias Beach, Sean Gellenbeck, and Kai Staats are on site, working in shifts to provide support and clean-up for the Red Hen team. This is following a month in specific preparation, each day crossing off items on the long list of TODOs, including the purchase of tools and products to support the foam carving, shipping a specific blend of concrete from the Arizona/California border, hanging 200 linear feet of plastic tarps from the roof structure to contain the foam bits and eventual concrete, and a system for containing the foam for eventual recycling or integration into “styrocrete” such that nearly none of the product ends up in the landfill.

In 2023 Kai invited Dr. Jim Bell to visit SAM. Dr. Bell is a world renowned planetary geologist at Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, and designer of the ‘Mastcam’ cameras for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. They reviewed the then small Mars yard “sand box” filled with crushed basalt, and discussed the ultimate expansion to a 2600 sq-ft facility complete with 10-12 foot high crater walls.

They considered three possibilities:

a) Take a single volcanic or impact crater on Mars and shrink it down to something that would fit within 2600 sq-ft. The challenge would be that we’d lose the detail of the features by the very function of miniaturization; or

b) Take a life-size feature such as a cliff band or gully bottom on Mars and recreate it, centimeter for centimeter in adjacent to SAM. While this would give visiting crew members a very realistic experience while on their EVAs, the shelf-life for our Mars yard would be limited to the relatively narrow set of geologic features in a few hundred square meters; or

c) Build an amalgamation of features taken from various sites on Mars. This final approach results is a bit of a Frankenstein monster but it is far more interesting, has a greater shelf-life, and can be modified in the future without geologic ramification.

We moved with the later and Jim agreed this could be safely referred to as a “Mars yard and terrain park” so as to not upset any geologists who would certainly point to the fact that feature A would never be found adjacent to feature B, and so on.

Day 2 starts at 7 am tomorrow and runs again until 8 pm, and so on for nearly three weeks. Hollywood never sleeps!

The following is the weekly update written by Kai Staats to his team, as completed each week for the past three years.

SAM Working Group,

Matthias, Trent, Bindhu, and Kai (that’s me) found each other in Texas for the eclipse and an ad hoc post-viewing lunch. On the way back to Arizona Trent and Matthias visited the Midland human-rated vacuum chamber with intent to expand the CHaSE offerings for pressure suit and related equipment testing. I worked all day Friday on the drive out and back again Tuesday with phone calls and support of Luna’s research, coordination with Red Hens, and more.

As we are all aware, following the highly successful Imagination I crew at SAM and our well deserved week off, we’ve been focused almost entirely on preparation for the final major construction effort at SAM—the Mars yard crater by Hollywood’s Red Hens. Here at SAM Luna, Matthias, and I have slipped into a modified work program—no longer pushing against an impossible list of TODOs at a breakneck velocity; rather we are moving day to day, hour to hour, focused on a sequential list of projects that need to be done in preparation for the Mars yard crater. Our list of TODOs is maintained more on the black board than in digital form, which is ok given that we are just one month from completion of this major build session and the Analog Astronaut Conference.

Luna has applied her expertise in research (and shopping) to a running list of key elements needed for SAM in the coming month. In particular, she has found the elusive Polybond cement mix required for shotcrete applied to the foam sculpt of the Mars yard crater, and after more a week of research and phone calls secured the required 76 bags, scattered as they are across the state.

Matthias has a solid list of TODOs, from Ops to the Mars yard to electrical work in the lung. Today Matthias and Kai made a Home Depot run to secure another trailer of primary supplies required for the Mars yard construction effort that begins next week. Matthias, Kai, and Luna will tomorrow (Thr) complete primary construction of the synthetic lava tube from rebar and a new, wood super-frame to provide greater stability before the spray foam and cement are applied.

Ezio and Franco made good progress on the new SIMOC Live stand-alone unit, a single Raspberry Pi Zero with sensors that serves both as a data collection point and web server for local or remote web visualization. It’s an impressive, compact unit that could easily be packaged in a case smaller than a deck of cards. First prototypes will be shipped to test agents and the Lunares habitat analog for extensive testing prior to the World’s Biggest Analog, in which each analog will receive a similar stand-alone or (more likely) an ad hoc mesh array (as was in SAM for Imagination I).

Jason has completed a revised and highly accurate 3D model of SAM (see top) following his visit in February. Bryan will tomorrow (Thr) deliver his updated Mars yard 3D model for use by Red Hens for visualization. I am working with Tasha (ASU) to obtain a set of hi-res images, again to guide the Red Hen team.

Bindhu is working on an updated set of procedures for preparing SAM for team arrival, an updated Cuff List, design of the Med Bay, continued effort for the SAM photo book, an umbrella IRB, and more as these efforts carry into the summer between her adventures to Nebraska and Namibia.

Chris continues to support Ezio as they try to determine why the Raspberry Pi at SAM is going down every hour after a power outage (even with the UPS). Very frustration and confusing.

Sean is working with Dr. James Knox (formerly at NASA) for the CO2 scrubber design, preparing to host a 3 days workshop on algae here at B2 and SAM, and arriving to SAM in a week to assist Matthias with replacing the Mars yard poly panels in the midst of the chaos of the Mars yard crater construction.

Sadly, Ezio departs a week from Friday. He has been instrumental in the success of our SIMOC Live air quality monitoring and data collection program at SAM, and diligent in maintaining an organized approach to a highly complex project with many avenues to explore.

Cheers!
kai

Two full truckloads of foam arrived, the blocks being 4’x4’x8′, 2’x4’x’8, and 2’x2’x8′ per our carefully planned order and design. They will be placed in their intended position for the Red Hen sculpting team, carved, then glued in place before being covered in sprayed concrete (“shotcrete”) and painted.

The process of carving the foam generates a heavy amount of waste, a form of plastic that is not readily recyclable. The SAM team researched ways in which the waste can be used and learned about “styrocrete”, a kind of concrete mix that blends styrofoam with sand, aggregate, and cement to form structural blocks. It is the intent of the SAM crew to capture and store every bit of the foam during the carving process, and then deliver the remnants to a concrete manufacturing facility.