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Volunteers Simulate Mission To Mars
Hugh Pickens writes "Six volunteers have climbed into a small metal capsule in Moscow as part of a three-month experiment meant to simulate a voyage to Mars. The crew — a German engineer, a French airline pilot, and four Russians — will spend the next 105 days living in a minimally furnished facility erected in a hangar on the outskirts of the Russian capital. The German said, 'I think we are going to learn a lot about each other.' A cosmonaut-in-training who will lead the mission was quoted: 'On the inside, we will have a lack of incoming information, so it's the science of sensory deprivation.' A similar experiment in Moscow virtually collapsed when a multinational team of men and women were allowed to drink alcohol on the eve of the millennium, and simmering tensions between Russian and non-Russian volunteers exploded in a fight for the affections of a female Canadian scientist. Only men are involved this time, and no alcohol. Scientists will keep a constant vigil on the team via cameras erected in each of the facility's three modules. Those who survive more than 100 days will earn a $20,000 reward. The current project is a warm-up for a much more ambitious experiment, scheduled for December, which will see another group of volunteers spending over 500 days in the same conditions. With current technology it is estimated that a return trip to Mars will take at least 18 months." The amazing thing is that 5,600 people applied to be part of the experiment.
So... $20,000/100 Days = $200 dollars, day. $200/24 hours = $8.33/hour. Some people really need to do the math before going "OMG THATS A GREAT REWARD" >> Kudos to those running the experiment. Cheap labor is great.
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
Such comfort is a far cry from experiments staged in Russia during the Soviet era. During one project in the 1970s, a group of volunteers was strapped to gurneys, tilted at an angle so their heads were 45 degrees below their feet, for six months, as part of a study on the impact of weightlessness on the human body. The volunteers were fed through tubes placed near their mouths.
Well, that's one experiment I sure as hell wouldn't volunteer for.
I wonder if the Soviet "volunteers" were voluntold. Or if they were only told that they were volunteering for a space exploration experiment, not the details. Heh.
They earn more per day than an ordinary minimum waged Russian do for a month. And in my country where I could consider myself a middle class person (still single), they earn more in 100 days than I could possibly earn in a year.
A Russian, a German, and a Frenchman in an enclosed space for 3 months. Sure. I'd watch that. You'll know they've run out of ideas after someone invades Poland, though.
"The crew...will spend the next 105 days living in a minimally furnished facility erected in a hanger..."
Does that remind anyone else of their first semester in college?
Have you looked at unemployment numbers lately? Having a guaranteed steady job for over 3 months, making $8.33 per hour even while you're sleeping... Not so bad.
Or they make $73,000 a year. Not amazing money in some places, but a fortune in others. Also it is in a lump sum after no expenses.
The amazing thing is that 5,600 people applied to be part of the experiment.
I know it's not much to work with, but people won't apply if they don't know about it. They could have gotten an easy 1K more just by posting here.
A $20,000 reward for anyone who can handle over 100 days of cramped conditions with other humans, no sex or booze, and lack if information from the rest of the world?
And they only give released prisoners a mere $200.
Given what passes for news lately, the "lack of information" is actually part of the compensation package.
I'm quite certain they didn't forget about it so much as they were wanting to examine the social aspects for cheaper than actually putting them in space.
"will spend the next 105 days living in a minimally furnished facility erected in a hanger on the outskirts of the Russian capital"
I'm wondering if this is the British spelling or did the Telegraph make a mistake?
"Working in such conditions requires that a person be able to check himself, evaluate his condition in relation to the crew and in relation to mission control and be able to correct himself," said Boris V. Marukov, the experiment's director and a former crew member on the International Space Station."
Translating Ice Cube lyrics from Russian is terribly complicated.
I think Russia's sexism is showing.
In the battle between Russia's alcoholism and Russia's sexism, Canada loses.
Yeah, but you're missing something here.
After I'm done, I can add 'NASA Mars Expedition Lab-Rat/Test-Monkey' to my resume!
Now that's cool!
Plus, I get $20,000 USD to move out of Mom's basement for three months...maybe she will get some of my laundry done while I'm gone!
On the other hand, she will expect me to get a job when I get back. :-(
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Why is this effort treated as being difficult? Pack three indie game developers in a capsule for 100 days. They'll hardly talk with each other, and by the end of the trip, they'll complain to mission control they only just got their compilers working for their games' scripting languages!
Sleep is not work whether you are lying in a king size bed or in a hypermarketed king size coffin.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
They should be able to have communications -- just with ever-increasing latency simulating speed-of-light propagation delays on an actual voyage. At some point, bandwidth may fall off, and there will be the occasional bit of "space weather" to liven things up. It's not like a trip to Mars means instant cutoff from the world, but realtime communications would become problematic fairly quickly, and impractical not long after. Their communications should start looking more and more like e-mail every day.
In an actual Mars mission, their communications will degrade in a fairly predictable manner (aside from space weather). Why not factor that into the experiment?
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
With a summary like that, who needs to RTFA?
You should see what submariners get paid. Sounds about the same lifestyle-wise, aside from the addition of little things like knowing you're cruising around the under the ocean with nuclear ballistic missiles.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
To run this story without a photo of the "female Canadian scientist". An outrage, indeed.
Google is my next stop...
So... $20,000/100 Days = $200 dollars, day. $200/24 hours = $8.33/hour. Some people really need to do the math before going "OMG THATS A GREAT REWARD" >> Kudos to those running the experiment. Cheap labor is great.
Pft, as a broke college student, I'd do it. It would sure beat flipping burgers for a summer job.
Especially if you take a laptop as hand luggage and sign up for wireless broadband... $20k plus 100 days straight to play WoW, hell I'd sign up!
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
What is this, some kind of joke?
Perl, n. A language spoken by Eskimos.
Sexual harassment, rather than a soap opera.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6955149/page/3/
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
The problem I see with this experiment is that, at least in my opinion, the greatest psychological stress that might come from a journey to Mars is not necessarily the confinement or the lack of gravity, but just the knowledge of the absolutely mind-bending number of kilometers between you and all the other humans in existence, and by extension any hope of aid if anything should go wrong. Even when things went to shit on Apollo 13, they could take some comfort that they were still within a day or two of Earth and could see its familiar disc outside their window. What would it feel like being 2 months out on a trip to Mars, with Earth just a bright dot? The only way I could imagine coming close on Earth would be in some kind of habitat miles underwater, but I doubt even that would do the sensation justice.
Here's a radical idea, why not do three experiments: men only, mixed and women only. Find out which group handles the isolation best. My guess is that it would be the women only group followed by the men only group.
I think the women only group would handle it best because women are generally less aggressive and better communicators. Handling that sort of isolation will require people that can talk to each other for extended periods of time.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I was thinking that this experiment would be a breeze, if you just filled the capsule with a small team of coders .. and gave them 100 days straight of peace and quiet to actually work on the completely unrealistic specifications and deadlines that they may have on their plate at the moment.
It would be most productive.
But I am sure some management types would interfere in devious ways, and install a telephone in the capsule, so the coders would constantly field calls like these :
- Hey guys, its me from accounts again. I know you are all 'busy' (suppressed chuckle), but could could just drop whatever you are doing, and have a look at my computer for a minute, I think I might have a virus .. just like I had last week. If its not too much effort, do you mind fixing it for me so I can get some 'real' work done. Thanks - oh, and make sure its fixed by lunchtime, because I have a dinner engagement tonight and have to leave at 5 on the dot.
- Hey guys, its me from sales again. We promised a customer several weeks ago that we would provide them with this 'feature' that doesn't exist, and its now overdue. I know this is the first time we have bothered to tell you guys about this, but hey, its really important, so please get on it to immediately. It has to be ready by first thing tomorrow morning .. OK.
- Hey guys, its me from customer support again. I know I have been doing this job for about 5 years now, but I still have no clue how the system operates. I have a customer on the phone you wants to know how they can change their account balance - but I cant find a field on the screen that lets them do that. They are getting irate !! Can you take the call for me please .. I am really busy with other stuff. Putting them through now, thanks.
- Hey guys, its the company director. I have some VIPs here at the moment for a meeting, and I need the boardroom setup so the projector is connected to the internets. And have a look at my laptop whilst you are at it - it still pops up all those windows with that porn stuff. I thought you fixed that for good last week ? I need it fixed properly this time ! And by the way - why weren't you in the office at 8am this morning ? We had so many phone calls to answer, and you guys were nowhere to be seen. My patience is really wearing thin, we have to act as a team here !
- Hey guys, its the company director's teenage son. Im playing CS at home and Im getting my ass handed to me by these n00bs. I reckon its because my gRaPhIcs card doesn't have enough memory. Can you guys pop down the computer shop and organise a decent upgrade part for me, ta. Dad said he would reimburse you next week, no probs. I need it ASAP, thanks guys.
100 days of this crap, and I would be surprised if a team of coders, even in the relative peace, quiet and isolation of a soviet space capsule, would make a significant dent in the growing pile of work on their plates. Werll, at least during 'office hours' that is.
I see why there are no Australians in the group...
Don't submariners do that all the time?
Your research is a bit lacking; perhaps I should have fed it to you after all. The VMPC provides the emotional input to decision-making and reason. Do you honestly think emotions have any place in ethical reasoning? It's been demonstrated that people such as I described are able to make more ethical decisions than neurotypical people. It's not "empathy" period that is lacking, but more specifically interpersonal bonding. It doesn't mean such people don't feel emotions, but it does mean emotions don't, or are less likely, to affect their decision-making.
Let me translate that for you: a disaster befalls our Martian explorers, one that threatens the entire crew; only one cosmonaut is in a position to take action, but he cannot save the entire crew: he can either save one crew member with whom he has a deep emotional bond, or he can save the rest of the crew. Since that crew member is neurotypical, he's is likely to forsake the rest of the crew and try to save that other cherished crew member first, and possibly to the exclusion of the rest of the crew. He may allow his emotional bond with another to influence his choice of who to save. The correct ethical choice would be to save as many of the crew as possible, not the one that matters most to him personally.
That would be a poor ethical and irrational decision, of the sort that has tragic consequences. We need cosmonauts who can employ cold hard logic, not ones prone to such emotional irrationality. I dare say selecting for the latter and excluding the former is already a deliberate part of the cosmonaut training and selection process; I was suggesting we select for it a bit more explicitly by getting to the neurological root of the problem.