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Mars500 Mission Begins
krou writes "The six participants in the Mars500 project have entered their sealed facility. The project, which lasts for 18 months, is designed to try and simulate a mission to Mars, completely isolated and cut off from the outside world, with a '20-minute, one-way time-delay in communications to mirror the real lag in sending messages over the vast distance between Mars and Earth.' They also have limited consumables, with everything required being loaded onboard from the start. You can follow developments via the blog, or the Twitter feed of Diego Urbina, one of the would-be cosmonauts."
Having had in-depth conversations with scientists that are actually in the field, I can confidently say that you're wrong.
We have the technology for a trip. We don't have the political will.
The trip would be return though - we don't have the technology to sustain a habitat there independent of earth.
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Last time the Russians tried this, two of them bloodied each other and one of the women was nearly raped. No women this time.
"Men willingly believe what they wish." - Julius Caesar
The specifics of the article have nothing to do with his rant.
I'm sure he's been just itching to trot that one out. In fact, he already posted this rant last week verbatim. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Are you perhaps familiar to one of the previous attempts where one of the Russian volunteers tried to force himself on a Female Canadian memeber of the crew.
There is a research university that recommended growing a Dwarf wheat as a Mars mission strategy, instead of trying to take all the food you need with you, you cultivate the grain, burn the stalks to turn them into a bio-char that can be used first to filter the air, and then later as fertilizer for to grow more wheat. If their premise is right and you can't possibly carry enough food for the trip then I'd want to see multiple crews practicing their farming skills here on Earth and get it right for 18 months at a time before I sent up anyone who was totally dependent on the system.
There is plenty of work we can down here to get ready to go out there.
Yeah, I actually almost got recruited into the boomers, and have worked with lots of sonar technicians. Probably the closest analogy we have to space travel, where they just dive under water and disappear for months and travel through practically inaccessible places under the ice caps.
Might be a good size for a micro-colony, but I still wouldn't draw a comparison to camping out in microgravity in an enclosed space slightly larger than the Apollo for a year or so.