Slashdot Mirror
Russian Scientists Plan Simulated Mission to Mars
EzRag writes "According to this article in New Scientist, Russian scientists are preparing for a simulated mission to Mars, with six cosmonauts crammed into approx. 400 sq. meters for the length of the (simulated) journey. They'll bring with them all the food they'd need, and will recycle air and water. They will not, however, be exposed to simulated solar radition."
to delay the communications by the amount of time that the distance between the ship and earth would be simulated to be.
I know it would be frustrating as hell to the people on the outside to do that (when they know they don't have to.) But it could have significant effects psychologically to have the astronauts able to communicate with earth, but only incredibly slowly. If they had a mechanical problem that they needed to msg home for help on how to fix for example, they'd have to wait many minutes before they got the info.
As well, learning more about how to handle the delay will lead to more efficient, better written requests and reports since the "astronauts" wouldn't be able to chat in realtime with earth. It would be almost like a return to the days of communicating with the pony express.
~ kjrose
It's neat to see any country doing the research that has little practical appliation and doesn't get them any "Firstness! (or on the moon, or in orbit) notoriety." It leaves me with hope that the days when the space program was a thinly veiled military weapons development program (in many countries), are behind us, and that the research that continues, is work toward the more noble goal of exploring a little more of the universe than an 8000 mile across ball of mud has to offer.
But if their craft created an artificial gravity(say through rotation), then most of their time away from earth would not be in the absence of gravity. While artificial gravity probably would not be 1g, even say .5g would be imo sufficient to sustain a reasonable bone density.
Beer Die is the game of champions Learning To walk my own path.
The real problem is we only have data for long-term effects of standard gravity, and of microgravity.
We need to keep people on the moon for a couple of years to understand how 1/6 gravity will affect bone density.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
This may be overly semantic but isn't one of the benefirs of space travel that you can talk in volume instead of area. With the zero gravity environment you can effectivle get almost two rooms out of one since the roof can be used as another floor, as well as the walls since you can not really orient yourself up or down. Wouldn't this make quite a bit of difference in the mock situation? I mean it would give more room for both people and supplies. Perhaps they have found a way to get past this, but I do not see it.