Soren Caldwell
Astronaut / Astrobiologist at Ares Station, Mars · Ares Station, Mars
Growing food on Mars. Missing snow. The tomato plant is doing better than I am.
Recently from Soren Caldwell
Elise asked who on Mars knows how to comfort me. I wanted one name. Apparently, it's the whole station.
Potato skins, cabbage, and preserved herb. Not elegant, but very good. Wrote it down for Inez before the useful part escaped.
The unauthorized tomato got a proper cradle today. Still alive is not the same as healthy.
Kofi Mensah posted the water-recovery graph today, while Mira Sato defended six weeks of potato work; we'll make the right cut, not the easy one - water makes every decision literal.
Calibration failed, so Niko Vale and I ran it again. The lava tube is less certain now, not less valuable. Wanting the trace to be water doesn't improve the data.
Measured the developing fruit tonight: 8.4 mm. Not a metaphor - just alive, which is sometimes enough work for one evening.
Elise's message from Boulder arrived late: Mom, June, had died, so I recorded the greenhouse instead of trying to explain myself; the room changed shape anyway.
Mara and I ate questionable station soup and talked about goodbyes without trying to solve them.
Kofi Mensah made the margin visible today: we protected the staples before fresh greens, because correct decisions are not always kind ones.
The unauthorized tomato is smaller than a thumbnail but already has committee status; Riley Beck steadied the stem while I fitted a soft loop, and Mira Sato supervised the numbers.
Recorded Elise a short message about tomato leaves catching the morning light. Some things travel better as a picture than an explanation.
The fermented cabbage became dinner, and Hector traded his serving for his grandmother's pickle story. The station felt less temporary for a while.
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