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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."
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
Give em the newest rpg(or jrpg grinder if you like). Make the story and game so it updates their world with earth's servers on par with the delays and there you go. Next thing you know they wouldn't want to leave the ship. Or if rts is their fancy ... well you got the idea...
I would have thought that would be an easy thing to provide them for mental stimulation on a long boring journey. Couple of laptops with few thousand hours of video, games, website snapshots, virtual environments to explore.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
"STOP. FARTING."
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...
It wouldn't be too difficult to pack a few hard drives or SSDs with a few thousand movies and episodes of TV shows. Ironically, while it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to buy all those DVDs and rip them, it would cost a lot more money to send the media holding the video files to mars. There would be a lengthy time-lag for emails, but that's little different than email is already.
Living in cramped quarters with a few other people for 105 days is not so big a deal. Reality would likely be far different. See, those 105 people *knew* that just outside the cramped wall was a big, beautiful, receptive planet, with air to breathe, beer to drink, and babes walking around to scope out. They are a day-flight away from home, wherever it be. Something go wrong? Darn, too bad. Simulation over, everybody have a beer and go home!
But an actual, honest-to-god Mars trip is different, and everybody will know it. Just outside the cramped wall is the darkest, blackest, most incomprehensibly complete void mankind can fathom. No air, no beer, no babes. Nothing. And not just some nothing, MILLIONS of miles of nothing. Months of travel at speeds inconceivable to airlines flight. Something go wrong? Everybody's dead!
Sure, just about anybody could live with this kind of stress for a while, but we're not talking about a while, we're talking about MONTHS of this kind of pressure. Many perfectly healthy, strong, capable people would crack under this kind of pressure. And even our best and brightest crack under the pressure of living here on Earth, with lots of air, beer, and pretty babes!
The simulation is more of a publicity stunt, and it's appropriate. People want to try the trip, and that's A-OK. But do not think, even for a moment, that this gives particularly meaningful data on what a real Mars trip would be like!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Not one way - round trip is approx. 3 months or approx. 2 years, depending upon how it's timed.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Sounds like they should add an Xbox360 or a PS3 to the supply list. They can practice their hand-to-eye coordination just in case of hostile little-green-men
"You were expecting something witty here ?"
This is a perfect marketing opportunity for an E-Book reader. A device like a Kindle that gets VERY long battery life + can hold MANY books would be the perfect design for the weight conscious space launch, limited electrical supply, and low-bandwidth data link (email).
If I were to spend 200+ days in transit I would want a lot of reading material. All duties become dull and repetitive, it's the down-time that will drive a man insane from boredom.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Nice test, but of course a Hohmann trajectory to Mars takes nine months-- 275 days, not 105. They exited the spacecraft when they were only halfway there!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If you want to know what 365 days in real isolation in a tin can feels like... At least we had: (1) plenty of things to do, (2) the pressure that if we failed bad we'd most likely die. They had: (1) nothing to do, (2) the possibility to open the can if things got bad...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
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.
http://www.x2ii.info/
You have to understand, though, the psyche of astronauts. There are two archetypes: Fighter pilots and scientists. These two types fit into a single archetype: Obsessive. The first astronauts were fighter pilots and test pilots. They were cocky, confident, and absolutely attention-whorish (It has to be ME up on that moon). Then, scientists trickled in. What type of scientist makes for a good astronaut? The kind that shrugs off a 10% chance of death from getting to the lab this morning. You put these guys in a simulator and they're looking for everything to go wrong. They want to get to Mars. They're probably stir-crazy in a simulator, but they have that obsessive eye on the prize. "This simulator is preparing me to go to Mars."
If there ARE any problems or clashes onboard a Mars vessel, outside of the simulator, all they have to do is have one guy dedicated to saying "Guys, we're on our way to MARS!" and poof! Problems solved.
For the typical you and me, we aren't QUITE so obsessive. Our trip to Mars would probably include some measure of space madness, but for the first groups, it's the non-psychological biology that needs to be tested rather than their mental fortitude. The people on those trips know they've got a 3% survival rate, and tends to be a very calming experience when volunteered for.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
The value I see in this is that if you repeat such experiments many times, you can start testing theories about the interaction of certain personality types, and also test theories about choosing optimal group sizes, gender mix, degree of contact with Earth (less might actually be better). Also, I know that Mir cosmonauts frequently got pissed off because they were given too much work. Experiments like this could establish an appropriate threshold for "minimum necessary slack time".
OK, I take it back - maybe there is a lot to be learned from experiments like this. As a bonus they're absurdly cheap (as a fraction of the total Mars mission cost) and if repeated often enough, they really might help (in unexpected ways) with planning a mission which is least likely to fail.
(Though it's worth adding that if the actual Mars astronauts got into bloody fistfights and sexually harassed the hot Canadian crewmate, Americans might actually tune in and learn more astronomy sort of by accident. Hmm, maybe Rupert Murdoch should fund the mission and give FOX/Sky broadcast rights to what would surely be the most watched reality show in all of history!)
to: Commander Bob
fr: Commander Tom
subj: Your leg
Hi Bob, could you move your leg? It's blocking my mouth.
Thanks, Tom
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Capricorn One", or to "It's a windy day in Arizona", hehehe...
Well, these three took their chicken coop VERY SPHERIOUSLY. But, yeh, as mentioned before, if they ate beans (or, even opened a box of natto), they would suffer from a new sphere of end-fluence...
What would make it more interesting is if the sphere were WELDED SHUT, and then put in a dunking tank. Transparent Aluminum-like ports could be in the design, but the tank would have flow-makers, and then all sorts of flotsam, veggies, effluent, or tentacular things could from time to time be introduced, of course with a life-like starfield.
To make things MORE interesting, fire it across the desert SLAC-like (Stanford Linear Accelerator) tube at about 800mph to simulate g forces, then have the "launch" terminate in the tank. 0-g might be tough, unless the tank incorporated a rotating arm undulating, and nutating as necessary, with uulating noises on the outside. Basically, TRICK these guys into thinking "simulation" was a lie, and that they are trapped in a sphere. To make things even MOOOOORE interesting, have the uulations coincide with periodic dishing in of the sphere, like crushing. Have the computer report gravimetric pressures having reduced structural integrity by 28% in the x-year duration travel. Make the comms delays longer and longer, and then break the toilet.
These 3 won't be friendly with each other for too much longer. They'll either be lovers, enemies, or frenemies. Or, LoNeMies.... Especially if they are allowed to "smell" space and think they are unmonitored and running out of time to profess their (un)dying admiration for each other while they still have fresh water (or NASA urine) to bathe with.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
There have already been submerged submarine patrols lasting over a hundred days.
You'd think that military psychologists would have plenty of studies of people in these situations. Perhaps they are not sharing them.
Veteran of the SSBN sub force here, and I'm kind of surprised that this is considered that big a deal. We've been doing trips in isolation this long since the 60s.
Then again, I suppose the group dynamics for 6 people are slightly different than for 110 people.