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Volunteers Wanted For Simulated 520-Day Mars Trip
anglico writes 'Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.'
Mars goes to you!
Okay, now that's out of the way, only intelligent discussion from here on out. Come on Slashdot, I know you can do it.
See: Biodome. The failed movie or the failed experiment.
I figure it this way. They need to pass a lot of downtime. Let them play a MMORPG. Then if your really creative you can let them farm gold and pay for the trip by selling the gold and characters they create.
Well I am kind of serious about the first part. Its going to take something highly addictive to keep them occupied during the trip there and back. Certain types of games would do it just fine. If you could find a way of combining learning into them all the better, but in some ways mindless entertainment may be key.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I say they should make a porno, actually. Who doesn't want to do what sex on other planets will be like?
Granted, many of us here on /. don't even know what sex on this planet is like... :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Yup. You read that right. 520 people for a 6 day party.
Mars needs women!
For a one-way mission?
so there aren't any extra unplanned astronauts to arrive on "mars"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Lesbian crews. More specifically, HOT lesbian crews.
Video cameras everywhere, the trip would pay for itself.
Okay, this might sound a little naive, but why can't they use people who have long prison sentences but are not severely criminal? The data gained concerning space travel could allow these people to contribute to society when otherwise they would just be rotting in a cell.
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver --Proverbs 25:11
Wouldn't that suck? Spending 8 months in transit to Mars only to find a crowd waiting for you once you land: "yeah, we actually invented this really cool new engine like the week after you guys took off."
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
that one of the volunteers spends each of those 520 days asking, "Are we there yet?!" over and over...
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Obviously you're reading this from the perspective of a project manager.
"If it takes 520 days for 6 people to get to Mars, we'll get 520 people and make it in 6 days!"
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The United States Congress.
We won't miss them, really. How many more new laws do we need? Seriously.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
At least according to this Slashdot article http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/10/19/1324222/VASIMR-Ion-Engine-Could-Cut-Mars-Trip-To-39-Days
That's a good point.
Of course I have to wonder about the validity of the psychological effects. In a simulation you _know_ when it is over, "Earth" is just an "exit door" away. On Mars, you are putting your life on the line and don't have your support system (friends, family) "next door" so to speak.
I wonder if the monitoring the psychological effects of the experiment would include adding an increasing the amount of lag between when the isolated crew send a message to Mission Control, and when they get a response back. After all, instant response would make the crew feel like mission control were just a phone call away. Also, wouldn't the atmosphere of the environment be different, because you would always know you could be brought out if something went wrong. To run a real simulation, wouldn't the crew need to really think they were millions of miles away with no chance of rescue?
An astronaut playing WoW during a 520 days trip to Mars while moving near the speed of light could barely get his character to level 40, while in the same time-span on earth his identical twin will easily have maxed the gear of 3 different characters.
(of course, one might argue that the astronaut simply is a n00b)
People act like sticking these people in an isolated chamber for a few hundred days is a new problem, it isn't. Sailors have been doing it for centuries.
If you want to study the effects further, give these people all a free 600 day cruise around the open sea. They're going to get horny, they're going to get angry, and they're going to get bored. That is what will happen.
Put a server on board with some quake and a few other video games. Give them all a bunch of contraceptives.
It will be fine. Trust me.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.
WTF!?
If I were going on a trip to Mars, the last thing I'd take along would be some techno-listening Eurotrash with unreasonable demands for prompt health care and a propensity for labor unrest. Hell, with their thin figures and tight jeans, some Eurotrashtronaut might get sucked out of the spacecraft through some any ol' tiny tear in the outer wall.
Don't they need any good old corn-fed Midwestern American boys on this mission? Sign me up.
My bicyles
Wouldn't the psychological effects of knowing that you're taking part in a (mostly meaningless) test negate any actual behavioral data collected?
If I was given the opportunity to walk on Mars, I'd consent to outright torture for 6 months.
If I was placed in isolation, and told that at the end, I'd have gobs of paperwork and medical exams to complete, my psychological perspective would be rather different. I'd get very bored very quickly.
On the flipside, if I became severely ill in space, I'd (rightfully) panic, while I'd be more comfortable in an isolated trial, knowing that the full facilities of Moscow's health system were at my disposal, a few blocks away.
Also don't forget the physiological effects of zero-gravity and increased radiation in space that you wouldn't experience on earth.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
IIRC one time they tried this, there wás a female on board, and it caused problems. But last time it consisted of 6 males, http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE52U4PT20090331 . And I would not bet on having females in this crew either.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
"ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part."
oh wait! how about: ...because everyone knows that Europeans already live in a bubble, so the transition should be no problem for them.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Russia has conducted shorter simulations in the past and has seen firsthand the issues that arise, including sexual harassment. In an eight-month IMBP simulation in 2000, a Russian man twice tried to kiss a Canadian female researcher after two other Russians had gotten into a bloody brawl.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Send six lesbians and install webcams. Might as well make some profit off it right?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
They get volunteers from America, Russia, and Poland. The Americans insist on taking 100 cases of junk food, the Russians insist on taking 100 cases of vodka, and the Poles insist on taking 100 cases of cigarettes. After 520 days, the American emerge even fatter than before. The Russians emerge slightly soused, but still in good spirits. Lastly, the poles emerge, looking shaky and sullen, and the first words out of their mouths are, "Has anybody here got a match?"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I smell a new reality TV series. Can we vote people out the air lock?
Yeah! They were talking about a simulated one-way trip. At the end of the experiment, all of the volunteers will be suffocated or killed in a fire.
Less than a month into her run, Lapierre suddenly encountered serious problems. She was twice forcibly French-kissed by the Russian team commander, and soon afterwards witnessed a 10-minute-long fight between two Russians that left blood spattered on the walls.
She insisted that the controversial kisses were not merely “friendly celebrations” and that she had vigorously told the Russian to back off. She quoted him as saying, "We should try kissing, I haven't been smoking for six months. Then we can kiss after the mission and compare it. Let's do the experiment now."
Lapierre dismissed the notion that the Russian thought his actions were normal and acceptable. "Why did he try to pull me out of sight of the camera?" she asked.
When Lapierre's team first entered the modules, Dr. Valery Gushin, the scientific coordinator of the project, voiced attitude that in hindsight could have been seen as warnings about the problem. "Men, they have some expectations from women," he told a Canadian television team. "They want them to be more like women, not just partners. At least Russians do."
Following the incident, Gushin blamed Lapierre. His official report, which Lapierre has seen, saud she had "ruined the mission, the atmosphere, by refusing to be kissed." She should have been taken out, he wrote, and he also insisted that the foreigners had caused the fight.
rock pools and stuff
From "Horse With No Name
There were plants and birds and rocks and things...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Posting to slashdot would still work well enough, although you'd cop more -1 redundants than normal. Otherwise I guess you could play single player games. Like System Shock, or Doom for example. What could possibly go wrong?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
They should really perform this experiment in Antarctica, in the winter, somewhere near the South Pole (or at least, several hours from the nearest base). Make them eat pre-packaged food and recycled water, and breathe recycled air, for a year and a half, with only the habitat walls standing between themselves and a rapid death from hypothermia, and you'd have something that begins to approach the experience of traveling to Mars.
If we can't keep a crew alive for the required time period in a hostile environment on Earth, it's just stupid to think we're ready to plan to go to Mars.
So what you're saying is that past research has found that Russians shouldn't go to Mars?
The best way to express it would be six people, none of whom are sexually attracted to any one of the others, or three very stable couples, or some other dynamic that does not allow the buildup of sexual tension.
Throw in 520 days in an isolated environment, and none of the above starting parameters has a glimmer of a chance of making it through.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.