Will Living On Mars Drive Us Crazy? 150
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "When astronauts first began flying in space, NASA worried about 'space madness,' a mental malady they thought might arise from humans experiencing microgravity and claustrophobic isolation inside of a cramped spacecraft high above the Earth. Now Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic that NASA is hoping to find out what life on Mars does to the human emotional state by putting three men and three women in a 1,000-square-foot habitat shaped like a dome for four months. The volunteers in the second HI-SEAS mission — a purposely tiny group selected out of a group of 700 applicants — include, among others, a neuropsychologist, an aerospace engineer, and an Air Force veteran who is studying human factors in aviation. 'We're going to stress them,' says Kim Binsted, the project's principal investigator. 'That's the nature of the study.' That test involves isolating the crew in the same way they'd be isolated on Mars. The only communication they'll be allowed with the outside world—that is to say, with their family and friends—will be conducted through email. (And that will be given an artificial delay of 20 minutes to simulate the lag involved in Mars-to-Earth communications.)
If that doesn't seem too stressful, here's another source of stress: Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week. The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits. In the Hawaiian heat. Throughout the mission, researchers will be testing the subjects' moods and the changes they exhibit in their relationships with each other. They'll also be examining the crew members' cognitive skills, seeing whether—and how—they change as the experiment wears on. Binsted says the mission has gotten the attention of the TV world but don't expect to see much inside-the-dome footage. 'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
If that doesn't seem too stressful, here's another source of stress: Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week. The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits. In the Hawaiian heat. Throughout the mission, researchers will be testing the subjects' moods and the changes they exhibit in their relationships with each other. They'll also be examining the crew members' cognitive skills, seeing whether—and how—they change as the experiment wears on. Binsted says the mission has gotten the attention of the TV world but don't expect to see much inside-the-dome footage. 'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
No (Score:4, Funny)
But it will turn us into thrrrrice-breasted mutants.
Get yoo ass to Mahs.
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But it will turn us into thrrrrice-breasted mutants.
So... we're gonna need a bigger motorboat?
Dude, what happened to your face?
Nipple based dermabrasion!
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They won't last two weeks.
Two Weeks
See you at the pahty, Rictuh!
Why not? Living on Earth does (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not? Living on Earth does (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see how that would be different from living here.
On Earth, you coworkers don't shower by choice. In there, they don't shower by law.
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Do you need more than 8 min/week of shower for cleanliness? I'd guess 10 second is enough to spray water on the whole body, and 20 seconds suffice to remove soap. The suggested length doesn't sound too harsh.
Re:Why not? Living on Earth does (Score:4, Insightful)
Speaking for myself showering isn't as much as cleanliness but as a form of relaxing. Getting clean is a positive side effect.
So 8 Minutes a week would add stress to my life, just because I would need to sacrifice one of my activities that makes me feel better.
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Depends what your lifestyle and climate are like. If you're a hunter-gatherer living next to a waterfall in Hawaii, you might take a rinse every few days just for fun, but you would seldom "need" a shower. If you're living in a "tuna can" with three other people, taking daily outdoor excursions wearing a "moon suit" in Hawaii, things are going to start getting ripe pretty rapidly.
I imagine they will combat this tendency with daily sponge baths, etc.. One has to wonder how effective this would be. OTOH, they
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Microgravity has an odd side effect of causing astronauts to temporarily lose their sense of smell.
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"Do you need more than 8 min/week of shower for cleanliness? I'd guess 10 second is enough to spray water on the whole body, and 20 seconds suffice to remove soap. The suggested length doesn't sound too harsh."
You know there' a thing called female astronauts?
Problem solved! (Score:2)
Re:Why not? Living on Earth does (Score:5, Interesting)
On Earth, you coworkers don't shower by choice. In there, they don't shower by law.
I have spent months on navy ships where fresh water use was extremely restricted. We would go weeks without a shower. Every few days we would rinse our armpits, face and groin. When we were finally allowed to shower, it was for less than one minute, not an eight minute Hollywood shower [wikipedia.org]. The toilets use salt water, which they won't have on Mars. We had a LOT less than 1000 sqft for every six people. We had some crazy people, but they were already crazy when we boarded, and the close quarters confinement didn't seem to make them worse.
This study seems silly to me. There are plenty of people (submariners, sailors, prisoners, etc.) that live in much more restricted conditions. So they could just look at them rather than recreating the conditions.
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slashdot is stupid, I can't upvote because you're an AC....
umm... yes you can. I got mod points I'm not wasting you either of you. Sorry.
Re:Why not? Living on Earth does (Score:4, Funny)
And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.
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I rarely waste a mod point on an AC post. Just sayin'.
prescribe them Marijuana (Score:2)
nature has provided us with a cheap, non-addictive treatment for this kind of thing...
it's called Marijuana
let's work it into the mission plan....
for fans of sci-fi, you'll remember the Mars colonists in K.S. Robinson's Mars Trilogy drank a Kava/hash drink that had the same effect
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Space reefer madness!
comparative (Score:2)
your whole post can be disregarded completely
you did not, in any way, offer any comparison to ****OTHER FORMS OF RELIEVING DEPRESSION****
every criticism you list, when applied to any other option, shows those options to be worse, often by an order of magnitude
also, no one believes your bullshit annecdote about seeing marijuana smokers "desperate to get their fix"
you're probably a surgeon who operates under the influence of Prozac...where's the research on how big pharma "anti-depressants" affect performance
In the heat... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't mars be frostbitingly COLD though?
Re:In the heat... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't mars be frostbitingly COLD though?
Depends. Mar's nominal temperature ranges from 'cold' to 'really cold, some of the ice is frozen carbon dioxide, some of it might be water'; but it also has a pretty tenuous(maximum is something like 1% of earth's, lower as you go higher) atmosphere, so heat transfer by direct conduction and convection would be weaker than you'd expect for earth(though greater than in orbit, where those basically aren't factors at all, and where you don't have the option of using the ground as a heatsink).
It wouldn't be as bad as orbit(where the nominal temperature is also damn low; but where being cooked alive because you've got nothing but black-body radiation to shed heat from your metabolic processes and suit hardware is the bigger potential danger); but the nominally freezing atmosphere would still cool you much less well than experience on earth would lead you to expect. I don't know exactly what sort of in-suit climate control the people who actually know this stuff properly estimate you'd need, and how much of the time it would be warming you, and how much active-cooling you.
Barring nontrivial advances, though, it would probably still be more suit than you really want to wear in a gravity well(even a fairly weak one), and the need to be gas-tight would presumably make it even more obnoxious than just the weight.
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Another reason not to count on atmosphere convection to cool you is because Mars's atmosphere varies a lot in pressure dependent on season and elevation. You only get 1% pressure at the lowest and warmest locations (in other words, the best conditions) on Mars.
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Actually, being on Mar's surface is worse than being on orbit. On orbit, you can use evaporation to carry away heat (radiation is a minor component). On the surface, the atmosphere is *just* thick enough to screw up evaporation cooling but not thick enough to enable pure convective/conductive cooling.
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They've been using water as a sacrificial coolant for decades, the problem on the Martian surface (as opposed to on orbit) is the evaporation rate (and thus the heat carried away) is slowed just enough to require increasing the surface area of the evaporator to inconvenient dimensions. The physical effort expended in working in a space suit produces a lot of heat - and the suits are very well ins
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So it sounds like what we'd need is some kind of closed loop inside the suit that can plug into a massive buried system that uses the ground as a heatsink, letting personnel dump waste heat into the ground.
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That's not much help when your rover is 10km from base.
Seriously, there's so much that's damn difficult about Martian exploration that we *know* we don't know.... that I can't help but laugh when people like Elon Musk or Mars One proposes doing it on the cheap and on a short timeline.
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Probably the best test is to try and build a bigass low pressure container and fill it with the closest thing we can make to martian soil.
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Why do you have to drag that shit up? I'm so sick of the climate change flame wars and there you go starting it up in a story that has nothing to do with it. STFU!
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It's not as if we're lacking a daily opportunity here to comment on the genuine article.
The irony of ethics. (Score:3, Insightful)
'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
Might want to pull back the macroscopic lens there chief before you drown in the irony of the fact that you're conducting this very experiment in order for us to send people on a one-way trip to Mars.
I think we've already established the fact that ethics in this discussion is questionable at best, and should be of little concern. How about you ask those you're torturing if they'd like to have a million-dollar payday in a few months from said producers. You might just be surprised that the answers are not as ethical as you thought.
Re:The irony of ethics. (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I think it'd make a really interesting reality show. In fact, they could fund the Mars trip like that. Sell the entire thing to the Discovery Channel. Survivor with real consequences.
Re:The irony of ethics. (Score:5, Funny)
Great, so there would be people who left earth forever only to get voted off of mars.
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So when you get voted off the island, they airlock you? Hmmm...
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A global hit on the scale of Dr Who would only barely pay the interest and a bit of the principal. You'd need global income on the scale of the Olympics to take a serious bite out of the principal - and you'd need that income for the better part of a decade. Not happening.
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What do you figure a real Mars mission would cost? I figure somewhere from $20-30 billion dollars. Not a lot of money compared to what they spend on some bullshit. You're right though, I don't think a television show could do it by itself.
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Except it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be articulate explanations of their situation, maybe current reserves of food, water, and air, nor of any meaningful footage of construction, exploration, or scientific progress.
What it would be the glorification of one person's feelings being hurt because of another and, since you suggested it, a mouthy, annoying narrator who'll do recap and promos and puns and more recaps and commercial teasers and more puns and re-explaining what the people on the show just fucking said
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Ethics, shmethics this is about getting a large government grant on a tropical island and they don't want the world to know when the scientists sneak off to the tiki bar. /halfjoke
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Actual one way trip to Mars? Given how many people, even one with pretty good options by Earth standards, would line up to volunteer, I'm not sure the ethical problems would keep me awake at night. Everybody dies, a great many of them less pleasantly than even likely Martian failure scenarios, and often after lives rat
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I would consider it very ethical from you if build the ship and teach me piloting it that will bring ME for THE REST OF MY LIFE to mars. I don't see anything unethically there.
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you're conducting this very experiment in order for us to send people on a one-way trip to Mars.
You must be confusing this with the Mars-One project. TFA is a NASA project. There are no "one-way tickets" here.
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As long as they're volunteers (which they almost surely are) and know they're not coming back, I don't see much of an ethical problem.
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I read that article and the comments (was it yesterday or the day before???) and I just don't see sending people to Mars as unethical. Astronauts are sentient beings with free will. They choose to do this just like ancient explorers chose the unknown horizon of the sea. Who knows they may colonize and adapt and will push humankind further. They choose to go, and for the type of personality that would even consider going to Mars, they live for this type of adventure. Now we should debate the economics p
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woops, probably misinterpreted what you said. Rereading, I think you said ethics are of little concern. Anyhoo..... back to work. :-)
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...
Might want to pull back the macroscopic lens there chief before you drown in the irony of the fact that you're conducting this very experiment in order for us to send people on a one-way trip to Mars.
...
No, they aren't. The Hi-SEAS project is sponsored by NASA and NASA is not proposing any (deliberate) one-way missions. If it is infeasible to develop a means to return humans landed on Mars this simply means that NASA won't mount such a mission, period. (A humans-in-Mars-orbit teleoperating robots with no time delay on the surface would still be possible.)
Did you see the item about the NASA deep space mission hazard study posted here a couple of days ago? I read it, and they are talking about missions wher
What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Navy's been doing this for years, I find it difficult to understand why mixing in microgravity will suddenly make people go nuts.
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"Space madness" sounds about as plausible as "female hysteria" to me.
From the summary, it sounds like they're adding very little if anything to simulate Mars *specifically.* Haven't they even been doing these experiments to target space for, like, decades? What's special about this one other than slapping a "MARS!!!1!" buzzword on it?
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Because your service in a submarine is still on this planet and eventually your tour ends and you go back home in a few days?
And that won't be controlled for in this experiment.
I think the best they could do is find some solid scientists from up north (i.e. north pole) or down south (i.e. south pole) and get them to do the experiment. They are much more likely to be psychologically hardened to the conditions described. Then redshift their visors to an an extra possible stressor. Try to get them to live a year or two like that. Doing studies/experiments outside in bulky "mars suits".
But then I think most of us are pretty well
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Because your service in a submarine is still on this planet and eventually your tour ends and you go back home in a few days?
Months. And, after the steak and lobster run out, it is a fair comparison, but steak and lobster rarely run out on the long tour of duty "Boomers."
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about on a sailing ship then? And instead of 3 men and 3 women, make it 35 men. And let's not touch land for three years, as some of the old whalers did. And let's make sure that everyone knows there is a minimum of a 20% mortality starting off. And let's enforce discipline with a rope's end.
Humanity has been there and done that.
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And let's not touch land for three years, as some of the old whalers did. And let's make sure that everyone knows there is a minimum of a 20% mortality starting off. And let's enforce discipline with a rope's end.
I don't think so. Pacific whaling voyages from New Bedford might indeed last three (even four) years - but they sure as heck touched land during that period. Whaling vessel visits to Pacific ports were the rule - Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand were common ports of call, with calls at the many Pacific islands also (see how many times Melville trod on land).
Also, on these long-range whaling voyages flogging was rare. These men were generally trained professionals, and they vied for births on out-going voya
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Only some of the time? That is not much consolation.
But you are right to point out these situations as models.
And there is abundant data that these extreme situations have terrible psychological tolls on the survivors, even if they don't go stark raving mad.
See, for example, the Chilean miners trapped in 2010 [theguardian.com].
Didn't the ESA and Russion already do this? (Score:2)
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."
Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?
That quote above is pretty much normal life for 6 months every year in MN...he said, looking out the window at 10" of new snow on April 4.
I'm only 80% joking. I kind of wonder if the people from here (and northward into America's hat) would be just psychologically better prepared for this sort of thing from a lifetime of having great chunks of your year sequestered inside.
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Some individuals would be better suited to the task of off-planet settlement than others, and if the colony is given a proper chance for survival, they will breed and and nature will select for these characteristics.
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You poor devil! How about submariners, who spend months at a time in cramped, crowded conditions?
A strategic ballistic missile sub cruise is 3 months.
A mission to Mars lasts about 3 years.
Big difference.
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"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."
Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?
I think it might be slightly _more_ maddening, being on top of the mountain in the crappy thin air, knowing what's just a jeep ride away, but you're not allowed to go....
The thing that makes it a non-comparison is that you eventually will be allowed to, or just break the rules and, go... in the little tin box with nothing but death on the other side of the door and no possible escape.... that's hard to get an accurate psychological simulation of.
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This same experiment has been tried before in Siberia, Greenland, and other more Martian-like environments. Seriously, I think the scientists just found an excuse to get a four-month paid vacation in Hawaii.
Experiment notes, day 112: Checked on subjects. Nope, not crazy yet. Spending rest of day at beach, will check again tomorrow.
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FWIW I was only about 50 miles south of Tower MN when they hit -60F (-51C) and was outside a fair amount of the time that evening.
Honestly, from the POV of a northern MN resident, there isn't THAT much difference in feeling between -50C and -35C (unless there's wind), and the fact that I can say that authoritatively would already suggest that I'm a giant step more psychologically capable of accepting a martian equatorial climate of +20C down to maybe -20C, than is some mamby-pamby Californian or Floridian.
One factor they are not simulating... (Score:2)
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The people will do better on Mars, synching with earth might be more a problem. After all we are not evolved to a 24h day but to a 26h to 28h day. Hence so many people have sleeping problems.
Stress? (Score:3)
Millions of people live like that now in Tokyo. No big deal.
You can't even let the water run while brushing your teeth.
Good solution (Score:2)
Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time
So? Just pick 6 other people from the mission and shower with them. Viola, 8 minute shower every day.
Plus, you'll always have someone to scrub your back.
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Plus, you'll always have someone to scrub your back.
As long as you pick up the soap.
Submarines? (Score:5, Insightful)
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True enough. Having eight minutes of water for a shower is considered a luxury on one of the boats.
Try "turn water on long enough to get wet. soap up. turn water on long enough to rinse (note that it takes longer than that to get the water to come out hot). Done."
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I always wondered about that bit from Hunt For Red October (the book) about "Hollywood showers" -- a 30-minute extravaganza the skipper would occasionally allow as a reward for excellent performance. Is that common? I only know one guy who served on a sub (he was a nuke), but they didn't do that on his boat.
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Yes, the "Hollywood Shower" was a real thing in the boats.
Though the phrase was more often a disparagement used for people who let the water run long enough to get hot before getting in the shower....
BIODOME! (Score:2)
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Danger (Score:2)
Will their lives be in danger every second, simulating a real hostile world with a the delay to save them taking months to arrive? If that isn't simulated I don't see them being stressed enough to get some kind of madness, living in closed quarters is not enough to make people go crazy
Define "Living" (Score:2)
If we don't wipe ourselves off this planet first, then maybe colonization on Mars is possible but you have to definite what living is on a planet with extremely hostile conditions. Yeah they'll be living in a habitat but without it they won't be able to survive. I guess it would be akin to the research teams at the South Pole working isolation and cut off for months at a time from any chance of resupply or exodus but from time to time at least they can go outside with less life support than if they were i
Catch 22 (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to be crazy to go. If you are crazy, they won't send you.
Already done? (Score:2)
Didn't they do some experiment like that in Russia or something? Locked some people into a confined space for several months, without any real contact with the world outside. Or was it only on the planning stage? I don't remember.
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There was also was the joint Russian-European Mars500 project in 2010/2011 that lasted 520 days.
http://news.discovery.com/space/mars500-crew-experiment-insomnia-health-effects-130116.htm/ [discovery.com]
Yes. (Score:2)
At least until they start opening a few 7/11's up there.
Can you imagine not being able to step out on a Thursday night for a microwave pizza puff, pack of smokes and a 2-liter Orange Crush?
Talk about driving somebody crazy...
Do you want Reavers? (Score:2)
closer to reality of brutal environment needed (Score:1)
Space Madness (Score:2)
Oh my beloved ice-cream bar! How I love to lick thy creamy center!
Earth (Score:2)
Plenty of time (Score:2)
In all seriousness, this isn't a personal hygene snark, I don't see how 8 minutes showering a week could be considered such a massive hardship.
Say you shower every second day, you're not going to be the freshest thing on Mars, but you'll not stink that bad. So that gives you a little over two and a quarter minutes to get a wash. No time to luxuriate. But plenty time to get clean if you get on with it.
They think I'm crazy, but I know better. (Score:2)
It is not I who am crazy... IT IS I WHO AM MAD!
Sounds like "Friends" in hell. (Score:2)
Will there be a Ross and a Rachel on the mission?
Wait... The puffy shirt was on Seinfeld!
Add some reality to the simulation (Score:2)
No, but (Score:2)
Seeing posts by Hugh Pickets will.
Will living on Mars drive us crazy? (Score:2)
Probably not.
Why?
Because living on earth has ALREADY driven us crazy.
So it's a case of "wherever you go, there you are".
Now let us spread our nuts to the universe!
Easy solution -- make habitat like mom's basement (Score:2)
We'll have thousands of potential colonists who can exist in that environment for months.
If only... (Score:2)
If only there were documented cases of people living in confined, isolated conditions in, I dunno, research bases in the Antarctic, prisons, hospitals, tin cans under the sea for weeks at a time, or even tin cans in low Earth orbit... then we could learn all about the effects of isolation and cramped conditions.
Now, I'm full of the Wrong Stuff, and won't be volunteering to go to Mars anytime soon... but if I did, I suspect it would be because, whatever the discomforts and dangers, you got to explore stran
lol (Score:2)
But Fox made a reality game show exactly like this except worse. It's called Solitary.
TV Reality (Score:2)
'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
Isn't it sort of an indictment of our culture that we do something for casual entertainment that we would never allow ourselves to do for the purposes of advancing human scientific knowledge?
Nobody asks the obvious? (Score:2)
Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week.
Hmm.. well, the cave people reproduced..
You're still on Earth (Score:2)
Oculus Rift? (Score:2)
Antarctica (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this different from winter over expeditions in the South Pole, where you have a small group of people, isolated in a dome from the rest of the globe, and only able to leave their dome through puffy bulky suits.
And in fact. winter time expeditions at South Pole station are a better representation of Mars would be: they are effectively isolated, with the potential of any minor equipment malfunction turning into a life-or-death issue in the harsh Antarctic winter, dependent only on their own supplies. I doubt these NASA volunteers staying in a balmy hawaiian island will have to worry much if a medical problem or equipment malfunction occurs.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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The sky on Mars is blue during the daytime. Why wouldn't it be? Same Sun, same Rayleigh scattering, so you get a similar sky during the day, albeit somewhat darker than Earth's because of a thinner, dryer atmosphere. Mid-day martian landscapes look remarkably like barren Earth deserts.
The soil on Mars is reddish, but it's not because the Sun is reddish; it's because of minerals in the soil. If you brought a bunch of paint sample cards from the hardware store to Mars, they'd look exactly the same. On