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Six Men Endure 105-Day Mars Flight Simulator

Posted by Soulskill on from the riding-the-boredom-machine dept.

drunken_boxer777 writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars. They had no television or Internet and their only link to the outside world was communications with the experiment's controllers — who also monitored them via TV cameras — and an internal e-mail system. Communications with the outside world had 20-minute delays to imitate a real space flight."

5 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Wow. by XPeter · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah yeah Mars...anyone can do that. 105 days with no TV or internet?

    I, for one, welcome our godlike astronaut overlords.

    --
    "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
    1. Re:Wow. by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Funny

      I would go crazy--

      Astronaut 1: Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
      Astronaut 2: I shouldn't have eaten all of those beans... (gurgle)
      Astronaut 3: I hope you like country music as much as I do.

  2. Obligatory Robot Chicken reference by Drakkenmensch · · Score: 5, Funny
    Mission to Mars: Day 336

    "STOP. FARTING."

  3. The building blocks of a conspiracy theory... by Zakabog · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow, I get to see this in my lifetime. The building blocks of a conspiracy theory.

    If they ever do manage to land on Mars the conspiracy theorists will now point to this and say "see they SAY they built it as a simulator but REALLY that's where they faked the entire Mars landing! Why else would they need to build such a simulator!" Very much like the lunar surface simulator they built out in the desert, or the landing simulator MIT built for the moon landings. Oh well...

  4. Re:Physchology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So, what we should do is put people in a "mock spacecraft" for a "test" and launch them towards Mars. At the end of the 105 days they open the hatch and... surprise!