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Volunteer to Simulate a Mars Mission for the ESA

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the 17-months-seems-fair-to-me dept.

number6x writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking for volunteers for a simulated trip to Mars. The simulation will put a crew of six in isolation for 17 months. The crew will be made up of 4 Russians and 2 Europeans. In all the ESA will need 12 volunteers for back up purposes. Seventeen months was chosen to simulate the time needed for the journey to Mars and back, as well as a 30 day period spent doing experiments on the red planet."

4 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Will they be allowed to have sex? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Simple question. Will they be allowed to have sex?

    1. Re:Will they be allowed to have sex? by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Interesting

      From a bit of quiet gossip, both Russia and America has conducted experiments of sex in space (mir and ISS). In addition, EU and Russian are nowhere near as prudish as America is (they are LONG past the neo-con stage). I would be surprised if either groups (EU|russia) is going to object to sex.

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  2. Re:Simulating the wrong mission by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The hard part will be getting there and back; they need to know the levels of cabin fever that are going to occur and they need to be able to test that in a simulated environment.

    Locking people in a tank for 17 months and watching how they deal with each other is a valuable experiment. Spending 2 years running around the desert in a spacesuit to simulate martian experiments...Now that would be worthless.

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  3. Been there, done that... by dargaud · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously ! I spent a year with 12 other people in the middle of Antarctica in 2005 and we were being followed by shrinks of the ESA. There's a big difference between a winterover and the proposed experiment: the first has a purpose while the second has not. I mean the only purpose here is to stay in a can. At least when you go to Mars or to Antarctica you have a job to perform and important things to do (science and ensuring your survival because there's no way out). Here you'll have people crack down after a few weeks from a sense of uselessness. I would sign up for another winterover or a Mars mission no questions asked. I wouldn't get canned like this for a heap of gold and an all you can download porn access.

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