Today I woke up early and got ready to test out our equipment. We had to test our equipment because Mark and I were going to take a boat to shore, and we were going do a connection from the land to the ship. We were using a wireless router, which can connect to another location such as a ship 20 miles away. Using this we could connect to the Internet by using our portable satellite. In the end one of the power supplies for the wireless bridge blew out and it was very important to get another one. So we canceled the live connection and decided to go to the city to get the needed power supply. Mark thought of many backup plans for all of the equipment so that if something failed we always had a backup system or plan to get things to work. If worse came too worse we could use two batteries to get the needed amount of power for the wireless bridge. Mark and I took off on the LV (landing vehicle) that is one of the two boats that are on the Polar Star. It is pretty fun to ride in one of these little boats. They were designed for carrying troops in WW 2. When we reached the Point Barrow shore we got off and took a taxi to the town. It is one of the Northern most cities in Alaska and to me has a fairly small population.

The reason for the Polar Star going to Barrow was so that the helicopters could make a quick drop off of some the SHEBA people, and to pick up some more people, who are going to be onboard for the next couple of weeks. Some of the people who came aboard the ship were some more NASA guys who will be working with us on the TROV project. They will be sending out a robot under water with some divers from the Coast Guard and Navy team, to record video of the sunken ship and some other projects that will be happening.

Mark and I couldn't find any place that was open that had a power supply. It was late Sunday night and almost nothing was open. We had about thirty minutes left before having to be back at the shore, so Mark and I decided to get something to eat in the town. We went to this place called "Northern Lights" and I must say it was some pretty bad food especially for the cost of everything. I didn't see that there was that much in the town of Barrow and thought that it was very similar to Nome. The town had very little greenery or life around it. It seemed to me that there were just a lot of somewhat old shack houses. The people were very nice though and when we first arrived there were many people in their trucks parked by the shore watching us while we were arriving.

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This Quest Project Web page
was last updated on July 29, 1998.