Six Men Endure 105-Day Mars Flight Simulator

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."

Comments

Submarine Patrol 105 Days

[kurtb149]

When I was on a US Navy, FBM submarine, we typically spent 105 days submerged, with no contact from the outside world. It was not fun, but it was not that hard either.

Re:Submarine Patrol 105 Days

[tjstork]

I was just going to post that, if NASA needs people that can spend months in space, they can go Navy... like, when they got Alan Shepard.

Re:Trip to Mars takes 9 months

[CrimsonAvenger]

Nice test, but of course a Hohmann trajectory to Mars takes nine months-- 275 days, not 105.

True enough. However, the most likely trajectory will be an Earth-return trajectory, so that they'll come back here if something goes wrong along the way. Which is only 180 days long.

So they made it MORE than halfway before they exited the spacecraft, not less than halfway...

Note, by the way, that some of the crews of Mir spent six months on Mir, which is smaller than a Mars craft is likely to be.