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Astronauts Could Get Lazier As Mars Mission Progresses
sciencehabit writes "Imagine life on a spaceship headed to Mars. You and your five crewmates work, exercise, and eat together every day under the glow of fluorescent lights. As the months pass, the sun gets dimmer and communication with Earth gets slower. What does this do to your body? According to an Earth-based experiment in which six volunteers stayed in a windowless 'spaceship' for nearly a year and a half, the monotony, tight living space, and lack of natural light will probably make you sleep more and work less. Space, for all intents and purposes, turns you into a couch potato."
Explains why Riker stopped shaving second season.
I've already done this experiment over 30 times. Its called winter.
It turns you into a Spudnik.
are the best fit to colonize space for sure!
It is telling you : "I am empty and deadly. Please enjoy your planet responsibly."
A year and half in simulated mars mission where you know it is a simulation has to be worse. In a real Mars mission, the crew will be know their activities are important: for the excitement to be first on mars, for the knowledge that a serious screw up could them their lives. On a simulated mission, you're just guinea pigs. Staying motivated must very difficult.
This is why the Heart Of Gold is shaped like a running shoe - does all the running FOR you. Outsource everything...
Full spectrum lights are already used for treating depression.
The lack of windows will not be valid - they will be used for observation of external activity (minor repairs, antenna alignments, ...
The big problem with long flights is eyesight - lack of long distance focus causes the eyeball to change shape gradually (known on submarines). Result is near sightedness.
I call mulligan and demand they do a real field test over a simulation.
The Russians knew how to fix this back in 1997: http://www.theonion.com/articles/mir-scientists-study-effects-of-weightlessness-on,1211/
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Are these the astronauts with Alzheimer's? From the other day?
Give them meaningful works that could only be done on space. Else boredom kills.
Too Lazy Didn't Read
Americans are clearly the most experienced, well-trained, and qualified.
Couch Potato.. check.
So, being confined to a small place with no need for physical fitness results in less physical activity? That's quite shocking.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Just install more lights.
I am John Hurt.
I have been training for this mission my entire life.
Sadly enough, I think you're being serious.
This experiment was precisely to test if trained astronauts, in peak physical and mental health, could maintain that over a long period of isolation and lack of earth-like conditions. Unsurprisingly, the answer was "No" for reasons that anyone (at least, anyone living up here in the north, where sun doesn't stay up for more than a couple of hours a day for several months each winter) could have predicted:
Actigraphy revealed that crew sedentariness increased across the mission as evident in decreased waking movement (i.e., hypokinesis) and increased sleep and rest times. Light exposure decreased during the mission. The majority of crewmembers also experienced one or more disturbances of sleep quality, vigilance deficits, or altered sleep–wake periodicity and timing, suggesting inadequate circadian entrainment
To suggest that "The fact that such environment seriously fscks up your physical and mental health is just because they were sloths to begin with. REAL men wouldn't go through such." is just absurd.
Imagine life on a spaceship... You and your five crewmates work, exercise, and eat together every day under the glow of fluorescent lights. As the months pass, the sun gets dimmer...
Did anyone else picture the crew from the original Matrix movie?
People keep researching Mars missions, being two years in space, like this would be a singular even in human history because of the isolation. The fact is, humans have been doing long duration missions for quite some time. Old Nantucket whalers could be at sea for a year or two. US Navy personel on deployed aircraft carriers and submarines are at sea isolated for six months at a time, sometimes more. Old explorers on Cook's ships, Magellan's ships, were at sea for years. This has been done. We know how to do this. You have a tight captain, brutal discipline, keep people busy, and the mission continues. If there is a problem, it may only be that the crew of a presently manned Mars mission might be too small for that, but maybe we need to rethink what that crew would be?
Similarly, for all the talk of why mars, or why colonize space, no one has ever, even the left trying to be diabolical, or the right being religious nutty, ever mentioned the concept of the right to form religious colonies. Like, the pilgrims came to America to form their own fruitcake colony so they could live exactly as they wanted to under god. This gulf between science and religion, at least in the case of colonizing space, need not be so vast. Let's have a government that invests and encourages investment in space, so that, if people do want to have a tax free haven on the moon, or on mars, they can. If they want to have a pledge allegiance to the flag of mars and they think mars was made 6000 years ago, let them. Or, if people want to have a libertine sex colony on the moon, let them. The whole point of expanding into space isn't about commerce, its about, breaking away from a crowded earth that demands rules so we can all get along, in exchange for the promise of a loosely populated place where you can live, like the way you want to.
This is my sig.
I've already hit rock bottom so there will be no surprises.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Example: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/research-reveals-link-between-low-vitamin-d-and-military-suicide/
"Research published this past week is the first to report that low vitamin D levels are associated with an increased risk for suicide in US military personnel."
Seasonal Affective Disorder is well known to be correlated with low sunlight levels:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/mental-health-and-learning-disorders/depression/
So, I can believe blue morning and red evening would help as mentioned in the article, but I would expect that the participants are getting vitamin d deficient too, because the RDAs are generally several times too low (at least in the USA, not sure about Russia). See also: http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Aren't there some fairly simple solutions to this "issue"? Provide the spacecraft with more "natural" lighting and give the astronauts earth based work schedule (9-5 job). The article makes these suggestions as well but only in a few sentences in one paragraph out of 10. Astronauts should be deeply involved in adjusting/finalizing the missions survey areas, they can continue training and familiarizing themselves with their equipment and soon to be home. They should have plenty to do on their trip, not laying about waiting for the landing.
That it will take 18 months to get to Mars. I know they're using the rocket model for this but I have to explain:
Rockets expend a vast amount of their energy just getting free of Earth gravity and then use the acceleration to head toward any object but not under power. So they expend the fuel just within the band of the origin.
But there's a little technology that is currently propelling a couple of satellites called ion propulsion. It's not a massive dump of energy but a slow, steady one while acceleration increases. Calculation show a trip to Mars would take about 39 days with ion drive. Granted, the spacecraft would be best built in LEO or above that way no aerodynamic issues have to be taken into account. Essentially you'd have something that looks like the lunar lander used in the Apollo program. Not sleek and graceful but sort of cute ugly.
Astronaughts are not your average joe! At least they weren't initially before we decided to start sending up teachers and the like. Last I knew they don't just take random people, but actually have criteria that must be met first.
You don't merit its use yourself...
APK
P.S.=> APK is a KNOWN troll -> http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3364827&cid=42513121 and thus, no man, FAR from it... ... apk
So, this may be help-full?
http://www.rockethub.com/projects/9684-codename-space-pong
fuck off, Dave, just fuck off.
This isn't new news... Amundsen talks about the effect in his report on his south pole expedition, and how it was important to have new things to do every day, even when they were over-wintering waiting to start for the polar push, or on the ship on the way down. Sure, the crew probably bitched about cleaning the dog kennels on the ship, or going out in dead of Antarctic winter to estimate the temperature by feel, just in case the thermometers all broke..
But, you can't beat a report that essentially boils down to: We had a plan to do something really hard that nobody had ever done, we executed the plan, there wasn't much excitement, we got to the pole on schedule, and for the sake of redundancy, actually surveyed 5 possible pole locations. Thanks for sending us.
That is all.
Astronauts tend to be the ultimate in task oriented workaholics that love what they do.
An astronaut's version of Lazy would be my version of overwork.
"That's one small step for a man, and I'd like to keep it that way."
Table-ized A.I.
Well, they are government workers ;-)
Table-ized A.I.
Twelfth Post!
-Mars Station 1
Table-ized A.I.
man gets off then other man comes into roomand gets face slapped with goo
OHHHH the floating horror
hahahahaha
no comment on solutions but i aint using devices the same way they use toilets
Houston: Maybe it wasn't a good idea to name it Tranquility Base.
Table-ized A.I.
"Fuck it, dude, let's just stop at the moon and put red cellophane over the camera lenses."
Table-ized A.I.
Stop saying "fluourescent tubes" as if it was a bad thing! You only picked a shitty color! All colors the sun ever has to our eyes are available as fluorescent tubes!
With multiple tubes or a simple movable filter, you can easily simulate all colors the sun has throughout the day. Including the UV/IR components.
Add a diffusion filter in front of it, and it looks like actual sky.
Come on, this has been solved decades ago! I can build you such a system for less than $100 (probably even less than $50) a piece!
Dear APK,
I are clearly mentally diseased. I urge you to take advantage of our society's safety nets and health care facilities to get the anti-somethings that you so desperately need. Be careful (but not too careful) not to overdose.
Love, Anonymous Coward.
P.S.=> Why should I use a HOSTS file again? I forgot.
I'm sure that this varies a lot but nuclear submarines are staffed by something like 150 people. It's not the same whether you spend long period of time in isolation with less than a dozen or well over hundred people. Also, despite the cramped corridors, the area in which you can move is a lot larger on a huge submarine than it is on a tiny spaceship. Also, it's not as if the wartime never caused any problems among the submarine crews but I doubt that any critical crew member on a submarine is irreplaceable in the same sense that crew on a mission to Mars is...
In other words: When NASA says "Our experiments show that unless we can find ways to maintain very earthlike conditions, crew isn't on peak condition after a long space trip", they probably know what they're talking about.
P.S.=> Jeremiah Cornelius is a KNOWN troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2238996&cid=36457426
This is lame. I think JC is one of the better contributors. And I'm not afraid to put my name to this, Mr Coward.
(I'll be taking a note of my haters at this point in time, and seeing who adds me, to try to find your identity.)
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
This is not a big deal. Those of us who live in the north country deal with this every year. We have evolved social methods for handling the lack of sunlight. The further north you go the greater the effect. Much like travel to Mars. In a space ship they can do the same sorts of things. One modern solution is as simple as using lights of the proper spectrum and intensity. Widely used. Not a big deal.
Hey, he actually has a healthy sense for it. Sometimes a little shaking up is all you need to resettle in a better local informational equilibrium. Just look at the history of science. That doesn't necessarily imply malice or trolling in the regular sense of the word.
Ezekiel 23:20
At least it would have been if I wasn't such a lazy astronaut on my way to Mars.
Mission To Mars Log Day 0
Working hard today, pre-launch. Worky work work.
Mission To Mars Log Day 1
We've launched. They're hardly able to fire me now. *slacks off*
Mission To Mars Log Day 1
All day in bed. Sweet.
... could see this coming.
Considering initial weight of Americans and the cost of transporting that weight out of our gravity well... maybe not all that ideal.
Until we build some sort of fat slingshot or something.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/11/04/mars-deep-space-simulation.html
Or just put a hot Canadian chick on the ship, and let the time just fly by. The fist fights alone would not only keep you in shape, but also entertained! Not to mention the unwanted sexual advances! The Drama! Of course it might be a bit awkward by day 2.
Free Mars!
Have anyone seen Wall-E?.
Old news. lol
APK makes it a point to troll JC personally, showing up in his JEs and such. Jeremiah seems to attract folks who hate him, probably because of his politics.
Free Martian Whores!
Sending droids to Mars is pretty much as lazy as you can get, NASA just needs to buy some La-Z-boys, bar fridge, and some game controllers and pretty much it could like your working out of your parent's basement.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Jeremiah Cornelius = troll, in his own words -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2238996&cid=36457426
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3373637&cid=42572023