NASA's Simulated Mars Mission, and the Unflattering Version of Me on McKinley

This episode looks at NASA's CHAPEA mission — four people living inside a 3D-printed habitat in Houston for 378 days, simulating life on Mars, with delayed communications, assigned work, and no stepping outside.

It draws an unexpected parallel to a memory from years ago: climbing Denali as part of a team, where one person's limits could stop everyone, and sitting honestly with how that situation was handled at the time.

There's a quiet contrast between the parts of Mars that tend to capture the imagination — the rocket, the landscape, the arrival — and the part that might actually be harder: the second morning, the third, a month in, with the same people and nowhere else to go.

It also touches on a question the CHAPEA mission quietly raises: whether the skills that get someone to Mars are the same ones needed to live there — and whether things like patience with teammates, or sitting with a plan that's fallen apart, are worth starting to practice now.

A small reflection on how preparing for something extraordinary might turn out to require something much more ordinary.