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In Hawaii, a 6-Person Crew Begins a Year-Long Mars Isolation Experiment
The BBC reports that six volunteers have begun a planned year-long stint "without fresh air, fresh food or privacy" in a NASA simulation of what life might be like for a group of Mars colonists. The volunteers are to spend the next 12 months in the dome (11 meters in diameter, 6 meters high), except for space-suited out-of-dome excursions, where they will eat space-style meals, sleep on tiny cots, and keep up a science schedule. The current mission is the fourth (and longest yet) from the Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation; you can read more about this mission's crew here.
Because this will be unlike Biosphere 2 how?
http://wunc.org/post/what-less...
They should have done it under water, if they insisted on Hawaii instead of Antarctica, which would have been a better choice (or at altitude on K2 or Everest, as long as it was a non-permanent installation). There's too much temptation to cheat, there's no real danger, and we already know that curing concrete will eat all your CO2 if you are stupid and don't seal it.
The only good choice fora Hawaii location other than "under water" would be "Inside a large SO2 cloud near a volcano, so that breathing the external atmosphere would get you dead".
Imposing posting limits after only a couple of comments just drives people away, and that's exactly what Slashdot of today does not need!
Don't post as AC. Your limits are gone. Personally I'd say do away with AC posting all together 90% of them are trolling.
I'm sure they had shore leaves, and had to be replenished with food, and that even when on patrol the boat surfaced occasionally for the crew to get some sun.
Still, US (not sure about British) ballistic missiles *do* go out for as much as 90 days at a time (without, as I understand it, shore leave), so your point is valid.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Post per day limits are gone. Limits to how fast you can post (sucks for short messages when you're a good typist) and how soon you can make another post are still in place.
You might make an argument that a significant difference exists between inmates in a prison and highly tested, analyzed and trained astronauts with regard to their psychological makeup not to mention willingness and motivation to be confined.
I do think that long term encapsulation is probably psychologically burdensome at best and perhaps damaging to even the best possible astronauts.
Which makes me wonder how much NASA has thought about the psychopharmacology of space travel. There might be some benefit to some kind of sedating anti-depressant for stages of a long voyage that required just routine status checks and basic routine maintenance duties.
What can they hope to learn from this that they haven't/can't learn from the ISS?
Sexual behavior in confined space ?
Perhaps not, however it does remind me of my first six months in the college dorm.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Have gnu, will travel.
except for space-suited out-of-dome excursions, where they will eat space-style meals
That's pretty rough, making them eat their meals in their space suits.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
A journey outside the dome - which measures only 11 metres in diameter and is 6 metres tall - will require a spacesuit."
Sounds like winter in Vermont.
That sq-meterage of habitat is spacious at about 1,000 sq-ft for reference to a typical home.
Our house is 252 sq-ft for five people for a comparable. Smaller than usual but it gets us through the long Martin, er, I mean Vermont winters.
We spend much of each day in extravehicular activities in our space suites. We farm right through the cold northern mountain Vermont winters which would be much like them leaving their habitat and doing their daily work out on "Simulated Mars". Believe me, here on Vermont you dress up much like a space suit and you do not touch things with bare skin as the temperatures are routinely -25ÂF (-32ÂC) during the day and frequently dip to -40ÂF (-40ÂC)and that is all before the wind chill which drops it to -95ÂF (-71ÂC).
Simulating Mars might be more realistic on a Vermont mountain in some ways than in Hawaii although Hawaii might be more fun. South Pole could be good. Doing it while farming would make it even more realistic because you must go out and deal with the cold, the wind, the hostile environment and get real work done rather than just busy work in a simulation. You can die. Those who are dependent on you can die. Equipment really breaks down from the extreme weather. Bring two Tractors.
Onward to Mars! Pig Farmers in Space!
There are a couple of issues that invalidate these experiments.
1. The experiment participants know that if things go wrong they will not die. There is always the possibility of opening the door and going home. This will cause participants to take more risks and be more open to other people's ideas. If an idea goes horribly wrong in Hawaii no one dies. That is not the case on Mars.
2. Linked to that is the fact that they will be going home. Most people can deal with a bad situation for a defined period of time. Considering that there probably will be no return trip from Mars people will be less tolerant of issues. For most people the answer to "can I live with that for a few months" is yes. If the questions is "can I live with that for the rest of my life" the number of yeses is much smaller.
When every decision is life threatening and may be permanent there is much more stress than an experiment which can be ended at any time. Sorry but "do it wrong and we will die" causes much more stress than "do it wrong and we go home".
PS, Sure we could set up scenarios where the participants could die but then ethics get involved and no government would allow it.
And then, two-hundred years later, when tourists starts to go to mars, they'll greet us with a "G'day mate"