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Will Living On Mars Drive Us Crazy?
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "When astronauts first began flying in space, NASA worried about 'space madness,' a mental malady they thought might arise from humans experiencing microgravity and claustrophobic isolation inside of a cramped spacecraft high above the Earth. Now Megan Garber writes in The Atlantic that NASA is hoping to find out what life on Mars does to the human emotional state by putting three men and three women in a 1,000-square-foot habitat shaped like a dome for four months. The volunteers in the second HI-SEAS mission — a purposely tiny group selected out of a group of 700 applicants — include, among others, a neuropsychologist, an aerospace engineer, and an Air Force veteran who is studying human factors in aviation. 'We're going to stress them,' says Kim Binsted, the project's principal investigator. 'That's the nature of the study.' That test involves isolating the crew in the same way they'd be isolated on Mars. The only communication they'll be allowed with the outside world—that is to say, with their family and friends—will be conducted through email. (And that will be given an artificial delay of 20 minutes to simulate the lag involved in Mars-to-Earth communications.)
If that doesn't seem too stressful, here's another source of stress: Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week. The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits. In the Hawaiian heat. Throughout the mission, researchers will be testing the subjects' moods and the changes they exhibit in their relationships with each other. They'll also be examining the crew members' cognitive skills, seeing whether—and how—they change as the experiment wears on. Binsted says the mission has gotten the attention of the TV world but don't expect to see much inside-the-dome footage. 'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
If that doesn't seem too stressful, here's another source of stress: Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week. The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits. In the Hawaiian heat. Throughout the mission, researchers will be testing the subjects' moods and the changes they exhibit in their relationships with each other. They'll also be examining the crew members' cognitive skills, seeing whether—and how—they change as the experiment wears on. Binsted says the mission has gotten the attention of the TV world but don't expect to see much inside-the-dome footage. 'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
But it will turn us into thrrrrice-breasted mutants.
Get yoo ass to Mahs.
I don't see how that would be different from living here.
Wouldn't mars be frostbitingly COLD though?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
Might want to pull back the macroscopic lens there chief before you drown in the irony of the fact that you're conducting this very experiment in order for us to send people on a one-way trip to Mars.
I think we've already established the fact that ethics in this discussion is questionable at best, and should be of little concern. How about you ask those you're torturing if they'd like to have a million-dollar payday in a few months from said producers. You might just be surprised that the answers are not as ethical as you thought.
The Navy's been doing this for years, I find it difficult to understand why mixing in microgravity will suddenly make people go nuts.
Not that one data point is enough but hasn't this been done before? http://www.wired.com/2011/10/f... So now we're in a space race with the Russians to... stay secluded on Earth the longest?
"...The stress will be compounded by the fact that the only time the crew will be able to leave their habitat-yurt is when they're wearing puffy, insulated uniforms that simulate space suits..."
Seriously, they're doing this in HAWAII?
That quote above is pretty much normal life for 6 months every year in MN...he said, looking out the window at 10" of new snow on April 4.
I'm only 80% joking. I kind of wonder if the people from here (and northward into America's hat) would be just psychologically better prepared for this sort of thing from a lifetime of having great chunks of your year sequestered inside.
-Styopa
...is the longer Martian day (sol). What will that extra 1/2 hour (approximately) do to a species evolved for a shorter day? I suspect this will be another source of stress, especially as "interplanetary" communications schedules will fall in and out of step with sleep schedule.
Using Antarctica to model remote outposts. Limited water (takes too much fuel to melt), limited space (severe frostbite in one to two minutes), and no sunlight for 6 months. Now this was the FIRST station at the south pole.
Millions of people live like that now in Tokyo. No big deal.
You can't even let the water run while brushing your teeth.
Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time
So? Just pick 6 other people from the mission and shower with them. Viola, 8 minute shower every day.
Plus, you'll always have someone to scrub your back.
Summation 2
Aside from the number of people being smaller, this does't seem that different from a tour of duty on a nuclear submarine. Three months is normal for that. Having little time to shower is a minor stress which could easily apply to almost any military duty, and submarines are again in that category. Moreover, submarine showers are disgusting. At least with a Mars mission you won't have the constant movement and shaking. And they don't get the regular email contact because they are underwater. http://www.cracked.com/article_20871_6-things-movies-dont-show-you-about-life-submarine.html discusses some of the many unpleasant things about subs. It seems like the people who are worried about the "human factors" are massively overestimating what conditions human minds can actually cope with, and it seems they also aren't doing a good job looking at counterexamples to their worries. This shouldn't be that surprising though: Robert Zubrin in his excellent book "Case for Mars" argued that a large part of the medical and psychological research to see if humans could handle a trip to Mars was more excuses for grant funding than serious concerns.
The one thing I never see mentioned is if their helmets and windows will be red shifted. The major concern I would have for humans on mars is we are adapted to expect blue skies and the associated light frequencies that come with it.
Anyone else worried that Pauly Shore will accidentally wander into the testing facility before it closes up?!?!
Will their lives be in danger every second, simulating a real hostile world with a the delay to save them taking months to arrive? If that isn't simulated I don't see them being stressed enough to get some kind of madness, living in closed quarters is not enough to make people go crazy
If we don't wipe ourselves off this planet first, then maybe colonization on Mars is possible but you have to definite what living is on a planet with extremely hostile conditions. Yeah they'll be living in a habitat but without it they won't be able to survive. I guess it would be akin to the research teams at the South Pole working isolation and cut off for months at a time from any chance of resupply or exodus but from time to time at least they can go outside with less life support than if they were in Mars. No, I think colonies on Mars would definitely need lots of heavy duty meds and other things to take the inhabitants minds off the fact that without their fragile eco system and periodic resupply from Earth, there'd be no way they could survive there, not live there, survive.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Or in the center of the Earth? They're equally likely and I demand we talk about it.
You have to be crazy to go. If you are crazy, they won't send you.
-
Adding space to a space ship takes very little relative mass and will likely stop people from killing each other. It's going to take trillions to send people to Mars. Adding an extra billion or so for a larger habitat isn't going to make that much of a difference to the overall budget.
While we are at it, why are we even thinking about sending people to Mars without an O'Neill Cylinder? Arriving with a third of your crew dead from heart attacks and near zero muscle / bone mass is really going to help with the colonization effort.
Didn't they do some experiment like that in Russia or something? Locked some people into a confined space for several months, without any real contact with the world outside. Or was it only on the planning stage? I don't remember.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
At least until they start opening a few 7/11's up there.
Can you imagine not being able to step out on a Thursday night for a microwave pizza puff, pack of smokes and a 2-liter Orange Crush?
Talk about driving somebody crazy...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do you want Reavers? Because that's how you get Reavers.
+ the post poking fun that they're doing this in Hawaii. I was immediately struck by the fact that the main part of the isolation is the realization that NO HELP CAN COME, and I AM STUCK HERE WITH THESE IDIOTS and I WILL DIE IF I GO OUTSIDE UNPROTECTED am wondering if they did this on the antartic, that might better simulate those more real impacts. I was going to write that the Europeans colonizing the Americas or Austrailia 400 years was a parallel, but it's not. Yes, help was delayed, and yes the outside was brutal, but the parallels just aren't the same in degree of impact.
Oh my beloved ice-cream bar! How I love to lick thy creamy center!
Living on earth is enough to drive me crazy, let alone Mars.
... NASA is hoping to find out what life on Mars does to the human emotional state by putting three men and three women in a 1,000-square-foot habitat shaped like a dome for four months.
This sounds a lot like a college apartment when we had our girlfriends over. Give them plenty of beer and everyone will be fine.
What about Biosphere 2
-Darkshadow (There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.)
In all seriousness, this isn't a personal hygene snark, I don't see how 8 minutes showering a week could be considered such a massive hardship.
Say you shower every second day, you're not going to be the freshest thing on Mars, but you'll not stink that bad. So that gives you a little over two and a quarter minutes to get a wash. No time to luxuriate. But plenty time to get clean if you get on with it.
It is not I who am crazy... IT IS I WHO AM MAD!
" Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week."
Sounds like they should be recruiting form the slashdot crowd. Unless the 8 minutes is Mandatory.
considering the insanity we culturally experience in 2014 imagine colonizing another planet. its either going to be the tightest family you could imagine or the wild wild west
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Three men, three women, not much to do. Watch what happens with their mode and relationships.
Will there be a Ross and a Rachel on the mission?
Wait... The puffy shirt was on Seinfeld!
Participants will be euthanized at the end of the "experiment". That's essentially what a one-way mission to Mars is, the worlds most expensive euthanasia program.
Hope is the currency of fools
Seeing posts by Hugh Pickets will.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I would just do all activities that dont require physical presence inside a VR earth/whatever simulator.... email, stuff... maybe even gym ...running in some kind of tropical paradise etc: ) ...reality is overrated :)
To make them believe that they are actually tens of millions of kilometers away from any possible rescue if something went catastrophically wrong?
nature has provided us with a cheap, non-addictive treatment for this kind of thing...
it's called Marijuana
let's work it into the mission plan....
for fans of sci-fi, you'll remember the Mars colonists in K.S. Robinson's Mars Trilogy drank a Kava/hash drink that had the same effect
Thank you Dave Raggett
- Cramped space - check
- One shower a week - check
- Human interaction only using internet - check
- Three women trapped inside - check
The slashdotter hunting season has begun!
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
Probably not.
Why?
Because living on earth has ALREADY driven us crazy.
So it's a case of "wherever you go, there you are".
Now let us spread our nuts to the universe!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We'll have thousands of potential colonists who can exist in that environment for months.
I don't think I could correctly participate in the experiment because I'd know if anything went wrong that it would all be over soon, and if anything really went wrong they would open it up and rescue me
Now if they told me I was going to fly to Mars and put me in a simulator that made me feel like I was actually lifting off and going into space (and I didn't know it was a simulation) I'd probably fall for it. Sounds like a better experiment to me. Actually, I think that's a J. G. Ballard short story already. Oh well.
If only there were documented cases of people living in confined, isolated conditions in, I dunno, research bases in the Antarctic, prisons, hospitals, tin cans under the sea for weeks at a time, or even tin cans in low Earth orbit... then we could learn all about the effects of isolation and cramped conditions.
Now, I'm full of the Wrong Stuff, and won't be volunteering to go to Mars anytime soon... but if I did, I suspect it would be because, whatever the discomforts and dangers, you got to explore strange new worlds, boldly go where no one has gone before and all that jazz. Doing that in a simulation strikes me as particularly depressing with no pay off beyond some psychology and physiology research - that could probably be obtained from existing data, and are unlikely to result in any high schools being named after you.
Doing this in the Antarctic, or in some deep-sea habitat and combining it with some exploration or research that would motivate the non-psychologist members of the team seems like a better simulation.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
But Fox made a reality game show exactly like this except worse. It's called Solitary.
'You wouldn't believe the number of producers who called us,' says Binsted. 'Fortunately, we're not ethically allowed to subject our crew to that kind of thing.'"
Isn't it sort of an indictment of our culture that we do something for casual entertainment that we would never allow ourselves to do for the purposes of advancing human scientific knowledge?
"Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week."
That's 4 more than I get per week now. Sounds like bliss.
Each mission member will get only eight minutes of shower time ... per week.
Hmm.. well, the cave people reproduced..
living on earth drive us crazy ? yes.
Wouldn't the most critical component for the psyche be that you are on Mars? No calling off the experiment, no where to run. In the experiment, the participants will know in the back of their minds that if something goes terribly wrong, they will get pulled out or rescued.
Mod parent up -- the GP doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. Indeed this isn't a one-way ticket; iirc it's expected to reside on the surface at least half a year before it's possible to head back with the return vehicle.
Isn't this a bit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500 ?
Sounds like a good opportunity to utilize the Oculus Rift. Trick the brain into thinking they are on a beach on Earth for a few hours. Have custom programs within a virtual environment. It would be almost like Holodeck v.1.0. (now, let the Oculus/Facebook jokes commence)
Ren: [afflicted with Space Madness and holding a bar of soap he's been chewing] Oh, no! I know what you want! You coveteth my ice cream bar!
Stimpy: Easy now...
Ren: [shouts] No you don't! You can't take it from me now!
[starts to cry]
Ren: I've had this ice cream bar since I was a child. People... always trying to take it from me... why... won't they leave me... *alone*!
[grabs a toothbrush]
Ren: [shouts] Don't make me use this! One step closer, I'm warning you! Don't make me use it!
[Stimpy takes one more step]
Ren: Now you've done it! You forced me to use it!
[Brushes his teeth]
How is this different from winter over expeditions in the South Pole, where you have a small group of people, isolated in a dome from the rest of the globe, and only able to leave their dome through puffy bulky suits.
And in fact. winter time expeditions at South Pole station are a better representation of Mars would be: they are effectively isolated, with the potential of any minor equipment malfunction turning into a life-or-death issue in the harsh Antarctic winter, dependent only on their own supplies. I doubt these NASA volunteers staying in a balmy hawaiian island will have to worry much if a medical problem or equipment malfunction occurs.
And living in Detroit is any better?
People have been living there for thousands of years, with basically the same culture.
Grow a pair and stop whining.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
biodome?!
Had to
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x91e3a_ren-and-stimpy-space-madness_fun
to get there.
I distinctly remember experiments like this being conduced already ages ago, iirc under russian lead, but with pretty much exactly the same setup (including communication delay).
Male astronauts should give their shower time to female astronauts. The women enjoy the extra bathing and maybe have enough for a bath, and the men don't mind not showering anyway. You're welcome, NASA.
Still better than prison in the US.
They stil know they on earth.. If we could convince them theyre actually in mars and no help will get there in 6 months... Now that would change this test a bit more dramatic..
Remember what happened to the first expedition to Mars, in Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land? It ended badly. Classified-beyond-top-secret-out-of-embarrassment badly.
Of course, that was fiction.
Still, Heinlein's track record is fairly good.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
your whole post can be disregarded completely
you did not, in any way, offer any comparison to ****OTHER FORMS OF RELIEVING DEPRESSION****
every criticism you list, when applied to any other option, shows those options to be worse, often by an order of magnitude
also, no one believes your bullshit annecdote about seeing marijuana smokers "desperate to get their fix"
you're probably a surgeon who operates under the influence of Prozac...where's the research on how big pharma "anti-depressants" affect performance?
Thank you Dave Raggett
Do you mean crazy like walking into an elementary school and killing children or insitualized rape sanctioned by governments or do you mean the Xenophobia a community exhibits like Suni vs. Shite or a soldier shooting a number of their commrades?
Repharse the question: Do you think Mars will highlight to current mental health issues present in todays society? Yes, So long as they don't cover up cannibalism with a case of appendicitus.