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NASA's Spirit Rover Crew Are 'Slaves To Mars'
Quirk writes "The Telegraph has a bit on the challenge faced by the 280 team members who have had to leave Earth time behind and attune their circadian clock to the Mars solar day or 'sol'. '...the team's wake-up times and meal times two weeks after the landing will have shifted by nine hours.'"
That explains things. I think I've been attuned to Mars time for a while now.
After all, it's not like my caffeine addiction could be affecting me.
One thing a lot of people don't realize is that the communication lag between mars and earth is over 30 minutes. Imagine trying to play quake with that kind of lag.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Well yeah, strictly speaking it's off topic but I think it's also insightful. I believe scientific pursuit has to address whatever it feels interesting and is, in perspective, useful for the advancement of technic and pure knowledge. On the other hand, obtuse media coverage that is to scientific information like a circus show compared to a naturalistic report betrays profound callousness. I don't think anyone would be as excited driving through a desert road yet overnight everyone has become an eso-geologist... I'd prefer mass media to cover without pietism how the global community is/should fight to grab Africa out of the middle ages (and leave the Mars Explorations to good scientific journals, Nature, SciAm or Nat Geo for the beautiful imagery)... Now mod me down to -1
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
1 AU / c = 8.31675359 minutes.
Yours is a common argument amongst us westerners... it also has some logic within but our own success as a society debunks it. You see, here in Italy higher education and research are kept in very low consideration; many young people prefer to drop out of school to work in the "Made in Italy" industry. Apparently they seem to have a good deal with the wages earned they can afford uber cell phones, ridiculously aftermarketed cars, D. Beckham sportswear and sat TV football and disco club... They are being screwed and after a decade or so this logic is showing it's shortsightedness as the patrimony erodes. Today, our economy is more or less at a developing country's mercy, competing with underpaid (compared to our standards) labour, basically producing low tech gadgetry with little intrinsic value. We don't cultivate a competitive advantage, the whole world is catching up and will sooner or later leave us in the cold. What point am I trying to make? Well, while we are more or less conciously forfeigting our chances to keep the pace these kids sweating their lives in ratholes aren't getting their fair chance. There's no chance a country will improve if it coerces it's human resources into poor margin jobs; we are the living proof. So while those illiterate kids are pretty happy not to starve (but then wouldn't they be much happier if they had a school to attend or a childhood to play) they also suffer because their condition will likely never change in their lifetime and won't have enough income to bootstrap their descendancy's emancipation. For all practical purpouses they are medieval serfs... that's not nice and is cruel on our part to benefit from it.
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
That "Barsoom" you peasant!
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Julie Townsend copes by wearing two watches: one on her left wrist set to Earth time, a second, specially modified, on her right running on Mars time.
:: Watches lineup! I want a Mars Watch!
"There are some things I only know in Mars time," said Townsend, a mission avionics engineer.
Time to write another note to the folks at ThinkGeek: please add the Mars Watch to your Gadgets
And please, be sure to have it modelled by Ms. Townsend. For me, she's a great role model for my daughters. For the rest of Slashdot: she's a girl geek! Cool!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
have had to leave Earth time behind and attune their circadian clock to the Mars solar day or 'sol'
Now why in gods name did they name the martian day AND the Sun the same damn thing?
Further, I can't be "hungry," "tired," "sad," or "lonely"... think of the famine victims, the sufferes of sleep-deprivation torture, the survivors of the Iran earthquake, and the bubble-boys of the world. I can't be "tall," or "strong, or "smart," because of Shaq, Mister Universe and Stephen Hawking (also sometimes known as Mister Universe).
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It seems to me that the last thing we should be doing is erasing the other meanings of a word like slave... look how your post has illustrated the difference between metaphorical slavery and real slavery, thus bringing attention to slavery that might otherwise have been missed. In a sense, The Telegraph and you have conspired in community service. Bully for you. Without metaphorical slaves, it could never have happened.
I worked as a shiftworker for the last 11 months. These were 12 hour shifts, 7am-7pm or 7pm-7am, 2 days followed by two nights followed by 4 days off. To work my sleep best I'd sleep 7 times every 8 days or effectively increase my days by about 3.5 hours per day. I got out of that job recently but have found that my circadian rhythm hasn't returned to normal yet (It's 3am here atm)
Last I checked, there was no Local 427 of the Allied Brotherhood of Rocket Scientists and Affiliated Pointy-Heads at CalTech.
I suppose the folks doing this are doing it because they want to, of course... it's very likely that they view this as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. 90 days of messed up sleep is nothing if you're doing what you love.