October 28th, 2018

Roger’s Blog

by Bill Holbrook

GETTING DEFENSIVE
As I mentioned last week, we didn’t anticipate encountering a hostile force on Mars so we really have few options for protecting ourselves. Samantha is having everyone sleep in shifts, but that doesn’t exactly help repel anything that we’re awake for. Better than being caught totally unawares, I guess.
Up here in the orbiter there’s nothing we can do except stay hidden behind Phobos. At least the ground crew can give us a head’s up when a projectile is coming since they’re monitoring the seismic activity that precedes it.
As I mentioned on March 25, it was Leonardo who actually took a proactive step when he painted a scary face on one of the retractable solar panels. It made for a nice Halloween decoration, but odds are very low of it actually scaring away something.
Then again…