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Russian Mock Mars Mission
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."
Well, if the US mocked the moon landing, I suppose it's time for the russians for their share of airtime!!!
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
This is the true story of six volunteers, picked to live inside a capsule and have their lives taped to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start being real. The Real Mars.
Will this be a true test of human survial though?
Since volunteers is allowed to quit the experiment if they develop a severe ailment or psychological stress, most likely they won't try hard enough to survive the journey.
However in real life-and-death situation, people tend to do amazing things just to stay alive.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
I read this as "Russian mocks Mars mission" and pictured Alexander Putin dancing around a table making fun a NASA scientist.
"Oh yes, we land on Mars, yes, aren't we clever? I'm so clever with my MIT degree, I'm a clever little scientist. Those Americans think they're so smart with their advanced rocketry. It makes me so mad. Get me a vodka, Yuri."
In addition to the limited supplies of food, air, and water, I would think the experiment would want to mimic the other deprivations the crew might experience on the way to and from Mars. Most notably, I'd think, they'd want to emulate the lengthening communications lag between Mission Control and the "ship". Start with the sort of glitch experienced in orbit, and drag it out to the full 6-10 minutes.
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.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
make it 3 tons of Vodka and I'll go.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
In related news, an all female crew with the sole addition of one male counter part resulted in the highest rated moral ever encountered by the Armed Forces. I, for one, welcome our all female crew ovarylords.
Ah man, this story brings back good memories for me.
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
Just wait until the womens' cycles synch up, they all have PMS at once, and the poor guy has nowhere to run...