Russian Mock Mars Mission 333
sdriver writes "CNN reports that Russia is attempting a 500-day mock Mars mission. The article goes on to say, "six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water." Also, "Experiment participation is not solely reserved for Russian volunteers, institute officials added."
Other deprivations? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, you'd want to make the communication link have a realistic bandwidth. Whatever is the state of the art at "launch" is what they're stuck with for the duration of the trip.
Now, if this were an episode of "Survivor: Mars", you'd throw in a monkey wrench... maybe a Galileo-style communications system error, where their phat pipe gets cut down to 300 baud, and the men fight over which supermodel pr0n picture to download each week.
Why is it men only? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Human survival (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently, it does not make any difference because your body releases certain chemicals under those stressful situations that helps you adapt, and there is no way you can artificially force your body to release those. He also mentioned that while you may try living on a colder condition to prepare for an Arctic exploration or try living in hot weather to prepare yourself for a desert situation, your body's physical needs (water, food, etc) cannot really be altered that much.
Those are largely dependent on food habits you were raised on, your body mass and a lot of other things. Can't seem to find the article online, though.
Re:Human survival (Score:3, Interesting)
Ahhh.. that's actually possible, just send those volunteers in for a couple of days, then violently shake the facility, maybe some sparks and whatno, and inform them that the entrance's jammed tight, and "we are working on it" for the next 500 days
new members (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why is it men only? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have the foggiest whether women or men would work better in this, personally, but I'd like to make the point that better individual psychological reactions to confined quarters don't strongly imply better homogeneous group reactions to confined quarters.
RD
Re:Other deprivations? (Score:3, Interesting)
And don't forget uncertainity like telling them halfway through the experiment that the government must cut the space budget and decided to start with the sallaries for the 500 days project.
Random change in mission plans and procedures are also classics.
Fun for the people planning the exercise though..
Memories... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was about, oooh 14 years old or so, I went to a "Space and Science Camp" one summer. We did all sorts of crazy stuff related to space. My favorite was trying to design "crash modules" to protect an egg from a two story drop (that was hella fun).
Anyways, one of the special activities we did was a mock Moon base mission. Basically we spent one day cutting black garbage bags open and duct taping them together into a series of domes and tunnels for our "base". It had two openings: one was a sealable flap (our "airlock") and the other was an open hole that they put a big fan in to inflate the entire structure (worked really well too). Oh and some small ventillation holes in each room. Anyways, the next day we went on our "mission", which was basically a dozen or more of us stuck inside this inflated garbage bag, in the middle of a gymnasium with the lights turned off. We were divided up into teams and everyone given certain tasks. I was a communications officer, which basically ment I got to sit there and communicate with "earth" (our supervisors) on an old macintosh. We were also responsible for general coordination of the base. Another team was our Medical branch. They had some generic tests/experiments to try while we were 'on the moon', in addition to being responsible for the health of the entire staff. Theirs was actually the only 'serious' mission, because they had to test everyone regularly for signs of CO2 poisioning while we were effectively trapped inside a plastic bag for six hours straight. We also had an exploration team that got to do "moonwalks", which was basically tying a rope around one guy, blindfolding him, and shoving him out into the gymnasium to see what he could find. They came in very important (more later). The only other team I remember was our "Engineering" team, who was responsible for maintaining the base's structure, armed with nothing but some spare garbage bags, some knives, and enough duct tape to wrap an army. They even got around to making a couple of small additions to the base. Those guys had lots of fun.
The cool thing about our "mission" was, in addition to trying to complete the tasks given to us by Earth base, our supervisors fucked with us at every possible opportunity. They did shit like "solar activity disrupting communications" (disconnected our Mac from the LAN) so we were on our own for an hour. They walked around with knives and poked holes in the bags to keep the engineering team busy... VERY busy. When we were done, our base looked like someone had taken a piece of swiss cheese and put tape over all the holes. They were cruel. About 20 minutes after our engineering team completed a tunnel connecting medical to communications, I hear this slicing sound and feel air rushing past my face. I turn around, and the bastards had cut a three foot gap in the new tunnel! Engineering runs over and starts trying to tape it up, but its not gonna be airtight... so the creative bastards rip off their paper medical jumpsuits (we even had mission stickers, names, rank, etc on them) and use them to seal off the tunnel. Heh that was cool. Even cooler though, was when the "alien" got into our base through the same gap. One of the engineering guys opened up the tunnel to see about further repairs, and he finds the supervisors have slashed it (AGAIN!) and dumped a plastic turtle in the gap as an "alien". The whole base erupts in panic. Engineering shows up in force as they're the only ones with knives. Medical runs in and tries to start bossing people around because "this is a biological matter". It was hillarious. We eventually figured out (with Earth's help) that the alien was dead, and medical got the goahead to start an autopsy on it. Very cool.
By far the most exciting event in the mission was our "catastrophic power failure". Everyone's working allong happilly... computers chirping, people talking, fans humming... and then no humming. People kind of looked around at eachother real slowly like "Uhh, wa
Methods for doing this; Russia good as any place (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems likely that a significant fraction of a prolonged Mars mission would be spent inside a habitat building. That building would be functionally isolated from the outside. Also, simulating the trip there and back would also be valuable.
I would like to suggest a mineshaft. Several parallel shafts could be used to monitor the progress of the team and provide emergency egress (exits).
If the shaft were dug in a suitably solid rock, it could be sprayed with concrete, then some kind of waterproofing plastic compound. This would seal it and allow good simulation of water and air consumption. Other options, like "sealed" metal containers, might be more expensive to construct, but it's another option.
Food, other consumables, oxygen, water, yes, these are valid simulations. I'd also like to see what the options are for running a hydroponics lab to oxygenate the air and cleanse sewer waste, though not to eat necessarily since this would involve a fair amount of work.
Just some ideas. Biodome was obviously a learning process from the "sealed in" perspective and from the biodiversity perspective as well. I just wonder if there's a lower tech method for doing this experiment, and if so, I have confidence that the "plucky" Russian improvisational character stereotype is up to the challenge.
Re:Human survival (Score:2, Interesting)
Then tie a different incentive to the project.
"You will be given honor, $1 million American dollars, and your family will be able to live in this nice house, and they will be fed and cared for by the government till the end of their days -- if you last all 500 days in the capsule.
If you are kicked off or have to leave before the 500 days are up for any reason whatsoever (sickness, family crisis, national disaster), you will get no pay at all, you will be publicly shamed, your family will be evicted from the house, and you will be expected to pay the back rent."
If you should happen to die while in the capsule, your comrades may elect to eject your body out the airlock. If this happens, your family will receive the same benefits as if you had lasted all 500 days.
Carrots and sticks -- there's always incentive.
FAT ASTRONAUTS!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes this does appear to sound quite funny, but I think that this is very doable, without much of a health risk at all to the astronauts.
Air, Water, and Food. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd thought about the air and water recycling problem when running a different thought experiment (was planning what amounted to a single-person spacecraft with a 1-2 week nominal mission duration capacity).
It turns out that if you're only going out for a couple of weeks, or if you have a significant mass budget, recycling isn't important at all. The mass of food consumed is surprisingly low, and we have plenty of experience keeping it light and compact (think "MRE"s; the military has a vested interest in food that keeps and is easy to transport). Oxygen consumed will at most be enough to burn that food - the part of that food that's not already oxidized (water-based). Water consumption is relatively low - a couple of litres per day for a comfortable allocation. So you have a few pounds of supplies used per day, and can easily store a year or more's supplies without the supplies outweighing the rest of your expedition's equipment.
For recycling, air and water are the most important. Water because you go through a significant amount of it, but it's still fairly easy to recycle, and air because you go through a _lot_ of it (2-3 times the dry weight of your food). Both of these turn out to be easy to do if you have _power_. Brute force chemical processes and (for water) techniques like distillation come to the rescue. While 100% recycling of water is hard to do, even 80-90% would have a huge impact on your supply mass, and air recycling is very nearly perfect.
A biologically based recycler has the advantage of being able to turn solid waste into food, but that's about its only advantage. System efficiency vs. energy in (light) is actually pretty poor, and it takes a lot of space and a lot of mass, even if you use something like algae that's near the bottom of the food chain and has low infrastructure requirements.
Biological recyclers are useful when you can afford a large facility mass, and when you have a lot of people to feed. These are true on a large space station (think "colony") or planetary base (again think "colony"), but not for most spacecraft.
Still very interesting to think through the options for.
Re:Where's the robot? (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's the scenario. I'm I'm totally ripping off Larry Niven Here.
Assuming that we can find an asteroid with the desired consistancy and orbit we'd need the following operations to be performed:
Make big curved mirror: Blow up balloon. Spray foam over it. Puff a little vaporized silver inside it. Cut it in half.
So you got big big heater/cutters now.
Drill the asteroid.
Throw in a chunk of ice (gotten off a neighboring asteroid, sealed within a big prefab exploding can).
seal the hole.
Melt the asteroid into a big molten ball
explode the can.
Let bubble cool.
Drill hole.
Slap in prefab airlock..
throw in more ice.
Heat it up to 72 degrees or whatever.
Electralysize some of the water for atmosphere.
grind up some of the rock for soil.
Innoculate the soil...
ok, maybe it is kind of involved.
How about just a power station ( temperature-differential generators? ) and a pile of refined minerals. It'd be a nice step. You'd melt the ball (no exploding can)and spin it. When it cools you got refined strata.
So now the robot's gotta:
Fling out a sheet of electricity-making fabric/grid/whatever.
Blow up a balloon, spray foam over it (maybe the balloon could handle this itsellf), squirt the silver.
Cut it (again, maybe the balloon. Maybe the mirrors could make themselves).
Spin the asteroid (ion rocket-pack?).
Aim the mirrors.
(Could the robot process molten metal into thousands of miles of wires for the generator? Controlled-splash it? Vaporize it and spin it on magnetic fields?)
Would this power-station / resource-dump be feasable?