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Mars Desert Research Station Simulates Mars Base
An anonymous reader writes "Placing humans on Mars will be an extraordinary feat in itself, not to mention even living in such a harsh environment. To help train future astronauts to sustain life on Mars, the Mars Society has created the Mars Desert Research Station. The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) is one of four planned simulated Mars habitats (or Mars Analogue Research Station Programme) maintained by the Mars Society. Crews sign up for two week shifts during the winter months (it's too hot in the summer for pleasant simulation). Crews are not paid during their time at the station, but do get valuable experience."
In the process of being evicted from their Pennsylvania Avenue home in D.C., presently, I believe.
as opposed to Bush who was a pure mercenate of pure science?
> we won't be seeing a mission to put a man on Mars anytime in the next 4 years.
We wouldn't be anyway. I'm not a big Obama fan, but the idea of sending humans to Mars within eight years, let alone four, is not realistic at this point. We have a ways to go before we're ready for that.
Among other things, a desert simulation doesn't really do a good job of simulating the lack of any significant amount of atmosphere on Mars. That's a pretty big deal. An orbiting space station is a much better simulation, despite the lack of much gravity.
But the real kicker is the whole "You're pretty much on your own for at least two years, longer if the next mission gets canned" thing. The closest we come to that now is the south pole base which is *difficult* (not impossible) to get supplies to in the winter. In a pinch we make overflights and drop packages in. It takes a couple of weeks to make it happen, due to the weather issues, but a couple of weeks is *not* the same thing as a couple of years.
And the south pole base takes advantage of the fact that it's *very* accessible in the summer, by building up supplies over the course of many trips over several months, to get enough stuff brought in to be prepared for the winter. A mars mission won't have that option. The team would only have what they bring with them.
These are not unsolvable problems, but they are problems that will require significant work to solve, and that can't be done overnight. Frankly, twenty years would be an optimistic timeframe. Four years is right out, even if funding were no problem at all.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I just wasted about 15 minutes of my life looking over this thread and I have to say I'm fascinated.
> Moderately funny comment
>> Strange non sequitur attempt at political humor
>>> Openly racist, long-winded slur
>>>> Stupid attempt at humor after making said slur
>>>>> Masturbatory over-analysis of thread
This analysis was made after looking through the racist poster's previous comments to see that he isn't a perennial troll, but has made several Insightful and Informative posts recently.
What does it all mean? Why did I bother posting this? Shouldn't I get some work done?
Oh the humanity!
The biggest problem to me is: how are they going to get off the rock?
In order to get them off they will need to ship a man rated rocket, and its launch facilities, down to the planets surface, assemble it, pray one slight flaw from operating in a completely alien environment without prior testing doesn't blow it up. As I recall, rocket science on earth isn't without it's mistakes, even with back up parts, high tech facilities, and maintenance crews. And they are going to do that on the martian surface?