Hawaii's Mars Simulations Are Canceled (theatlantic.com)

The dome where crew members practiced red-planet missions will now be converted to a simulated moon base. Excerpt from a report: For the last five years, a small Mars colony thrived in Hawaii, many miles away from civilization. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS, was carried out in a small white dome nestled along the slope of a massive volcano called Mauna Loa. The habitat usually housed six people at a time, for as long as eight months. They prepared freeze-dried meals, took 30-second showers to conserve water, and wore space suits every time they left the dome. To replicate the communication gap between Earth and Mars, they waited 20 minutes for their emails to reach their family members, and another 20 to hear back. Sometimes, as they drifted off to sleep, with nothing but silence in their ears, they really believed they were on Mars.

In February of this year, something went wrong. The latest and sixth mission was just four days in when one of the crew members was carried out on a stretcher and taken to a hospital, an Atlantic investigation revealed in June. There had been a power outage in the habitat, and some troubleshooting ended with one of the residents sustaining an electric shock. The rest of the crew was evacuated, too. There was some discussion of returning -- the injured person was treated and released in the same day -- but another crew member felt the conditions weren't safe enough and decided to withdraw. The Mars simulation couldn't continue with a crew as small as three, and the entire program was put on hold. [...]

Comments

Arctic.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want something close to a Mars simulation, go to the Arctic.
Hawaii is too warm.

Re:Arctic.

[ChromeAeonuim]

It's not so much the warmth as it is the rocky terrain. At high elevations Mauna Loa is rocky, barren, and sort of Mars-like, and it can get chilly up there (although nothing ever approaching Martian cold obviously).

I think the biggest thing is probably that you're still close enough to the medical facilities in Hilo if something goes wrong. This was largely a psych study, and there's no way you're getting an IRB to approve a something where people might actually die. If something goes wrong in Hawai'i, you'll be fine, but if something goes wrong in the Arctic, maybe not.

Re:Missed opportunity

[hey!]

You could even say this was realistic -- more realistic than anyone signed on for.

If you read first hand accounts of voyages from the Age of Sail, one of the things that's striking is how much long distance travel depended on human life being cheap. In Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, he recounts a journey in which he departed Boston on August 14 and dropped anchor in Santa Barbara on January 19, five months later. Because it's a sailing ship, the sailors have to climb the ice-covered rigging in a storm to tie and untie knots. Sailors are swept of the deck walking from the fo'c'sle to the galley for a meal, and in a gale at night there's nothing that can be done about it. Injury and death at rates that would unacceptable to modern sensibilities were literally just the price of doing business.

The practical implication for a Mars mission, which due both to costs and launch windows would have to survive for many months, is that the crew roster is going to have to be heavy on medical expertise to meet modern expectations of safety. If you're a youngster with ambitions of being on the first Mars mission, get an undergraduate degree in engineering or Earth science and then an MD.