The biggest surprises from living in a simulated Martian habitat for a full year | Hacker News Reader

The biggest surprises from living in a simulated Martian habitat for a full year

newatlas.com

103 pointscurtis59 comments

The very last sentence:

It's the whole thing about living in a common space where everyone has to share and it's difficult at times but we got through it, we're on the other side now.

was the only mention of personal friction. I admit that I might be over analyzing here, but it's such a strange cultural thing that we can't talk about anything except the most positive emotions when dealing with other people. Why is anger, hostility, annoyance，etc. so taboo to mention in public?

I think people feel that discussing it will only make more of it.

that's pessimism vs optimism

Basic PR rule: Do not associate your stuff with negative words.

You can bet they are discussing everything in great detail internally. Just not giving it all to the press.

It's interesting that one person responded, with no distractions I could get loads of stuff done, and the other responded, it was hard to get anything done because of all the distractions. Identical circumstances but two totally opposite interpretations of it.

They never talk about very important factors: relationship and sex. No one can expect that these people will just stop doing it, but it could cause serious issues as there's nowhere to go after a break up. So they will take drugs to suppress these emotions? What alternatives are there?

> No one can expect that these people will just stop doing it

What about professional attitude? Astronauts sacrifice a lot more than simple lust. Of course, if they went in for a quick fling in the bunks, a break up wouldn't be far around the corner. I'm sure they are aware of that.

On the other hand, in sci-fi depections they send couples and they still break up, but that's more for the dramatic effect. I couldn't imagine myself to allow any distrust in the few people that my life literally depends on.

Maybe we could send only castrated men, and women who have either had a hysterectomy or are post-menopausal.

I mean, we do the same things to dogs because they're a menace otherwise.

Last time I was in a topic like this on HN, there was a discussion about whether a mission could have as its mission parameters a part where they just send people willing to entirely abstain from sexual relationships - whether this could possibly be a pragmatic thing for early exploration-oriented pioneering missions where people are likely to die on Mars anyway.

Or rather, it started pragmatic, but it turned into a bit of a culture-wars clash immediately (apparently some people feel quite strongly about humans abstaining from sex), and honestly, if any US or European space program did the same, they'd have to deal with the fallout, so... it may not be the best plan.

We can just send couples with a contract to have sex regularly. I am sure many people are willing to subscribe to that and professional attitude should guarantee to fulfill the contract even if negative sentiments start to set in at some point. Afterall such contracts were common throughout the history and people did just fine.

Can you provide some references for the things your suggesting here? I've never seen any mention of this sort of thing in any of the history material I've read.

Or I could just have missed the joke.

You've missed the joke; the contract referred to is marriage.

There is a thing such as an amicable break up. You'd hope that the psych evaluation would select for people who can handle sex and relationships in a mature way without jeopardizing the mission.

Given the circumstances, I think most adults could suck it up and be pleasant to each other after a relationship ended. The modern day table flip "I never want to see you again" is a luxury that comes with living in cities.

I think the bigger problem would be accidentally getting pregnant. That could be fatal for the mother, and caring for a baby on Mars, not to mention bringing it home, could prove impossible.

You could simply sterilise people (storing their sperm/eggs just in case). Sure, it sounds inhumane, but then that kind of appropriate if you want to survive in such an inhumane environment as is Mars.

There are long-acting contraceptives like IUDs and implants which, as a bonus, come with a near-zero failure rate. Quietly include a few just-in-case pills to account for the 0.05% failure rate (https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/unintendedpregnancy/p...) and hope the religious right doesn't get wind.

Well, that's one way to solve the problem. However, I think your "religious right" could maybe be convinced to fund space missions to support the survival of the first whoopsie space baby. Some of the major churches pull in a billion/week. A guy can dream....

"No one can expect that these people will just stop doing it"

Why not? I'm pretty sure many people live ok without sex.

Who exactly?

Asexual people

Sure, but presuming the deployed personnel are not Asexual, the problem still stands.

What problem? Non-asexual people can simply decide not to have sex, just like people decide to not eat sugar or meat.

It's not that simple, since sex is an instinct. It's hard-wired in our brains, not lile sugar or meat that are luxuries. But definitely possible with a ton of self-control.

That might be true for the average person, but since they only need a few candidates, it'd be pretty easy to select people with little or no sex drive. They are not very rare.

I don't believe truly asexual people exist the same way gay people do

I think they have depression, body issues, anxiety, etc but they don't have a true lack of sexual orientation

1.5% of the population, according to Kinsey. A bit less, according to newer research, but still not an insignificant number.

The era of free love is rather recent, and quite localized. Until not that long ago, and still today in many countries, people who are single or widows - particularly women - often live without sex for many years.

I thought it was more. I suspect a lot of married couples don't have sexual relationships anymore. I also see a lot of single persons that have a hard time (or don't even try) to find someone and so on...

Oh, I think these were just people who were sexless by choice (so, OK with it); there's probably many more who want to have sex but don't.

I recall reading an interview with one of the Russian cosmonauts that stayed for a long time at Mir, mentioning something about a couple of wet dreams and then not really thinking much about sex for the rest of his (long) stay.

Can't find the link now, but I did see Canadian Chris Hadley make a similar (less explicit) comment in his Reddit ama: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1s4l7v/i_am_col_chris...

And while I'm sure people would like to think that the military have sex with each other all the time -- I'm pretty sure people manage to avoid having sex aboard submarines and other environments that are similar to a space expedition: dangerous and with long days filled with taxing work in the form of various experiments, exercises and routine tasks.

> people would like to think that the military have sex with each other all the time...

This is, in fact, the case though. It's not unheard-of for personnel to have a casual boyfriend/girlfriend for the duration of a deployment, in a what-happens-in-vegas way.

I'm sorry if I was unclear, I meant that sex is not that common in deployments in constrained/mission environments without leave, like while on board a (small) submarine.

Ah, gotcha. I'd still wager it's more common than we think :)

I'm actually not so sure about this, as people have sex all the time while aboard ship; a fan room usually ends up becoming the Love Shack. They're working 12-hour shifts and doing extra duty on top of that, and they're still banging. Careers get ruined when the woman shows up pregnant to sick call.

I don't know about submarines, mostly because they've been male-only until very recent, and attitudes on homosexuality have not been and still aren't very tolerant[1]. From the fact that Marines fuck in Porta-shitters in Afghanistan, I'm sure that life, er, finds a way.

[1] <insert ribald Navy joke here>

The statistics about sexual assult of men by men in the military are very vague and shrouded in secrecy, but even the most 'optimistic' number paint pretty dismal picture.

Relationships flower with pheromones. As part of the space sickness pack - the sinus of every astronaut is swelling and they can not smell anything anymore. Thus love in space becomes unlikely, due to space?

Love on mars though - well gonna have to ask David Bowie for that.

Stress can really put the zap on even those at their reproductive peak. It is a very common experience for men going through USMC bootcamp to not have a single erection in the 3 months they're there. Same story during combat operations. I fought in Fallujah for 7 months and I can tell you that sex was near the bottom of my list of concerns. Sure the number of opportunities were low, but even pornography held no interest. The tales of sex on deployment occur in very low stress environments: Navy ships and mega-bases, between personnel who don't see combat and have ice cream socials...

I imagine a Martian outpost would initially be pretty stressful. Once it becomes safe enough, and the stress levels decrease, sex won't be a mission-success/safety concern any longer. That isn't to say that there shouldn't be a plan in place, but it isn't as big a deal as folks make it out to be.

Having only a bucket shower once a week is probably a strong deterrent tho.

Maybe I'm antisocial, but noise from housemates drives me up the wall. I can't relax or concentrate with the sounds of people doing things adjacent rooms, and headphones only mask certain kinds of noises, and sometimes you don't want to wear headphones. The hab's design would be better if it gave people more privacy and separated the rooms around the circumference, and had better soundproofing.

It's intended to simulate a Mars mission. People like you simply won't be going - they're not going to waste launch mass on soundproofing bedrooms.

Who says it would cost launch mass to soundproof rooms ? Use your imagination. Everyone has their limits.

> Who says it would cost launch mass to soundproof rooms ?

I'm open to zero-weight soundproofing ideas that doesn't require a significant amount of wasted volume.

> Everyone has their limits.

And NASA'll be picking people with higher limits. If you "can't relax or concentrate with the sounds of people doing things", sorry, but you're not gonna wind up an astronaut anytime soon.

To spend a year in such tight spaces is quite an accomplishment. I wonder what could have been accomplished if the mission included a goal of remote material manufacturing. It might answer can we survive together and can we thrive together while doing so. Plus, I'd love to see what material could be made using Unmanned Ground Vehicles.

It's not a self-contained environment. They didn't have to grow food or recycle air. That was Biosphere II, which was a huge flop.

Is it fair to call that experiment a flop? It failed to achieve its goals of running a self-sustaining colony, but it sounds like we learned a lot about the challenges of doing so from running that experiment. I don't know if we should expect success on the first or second try of designing a self-sustaining ecosystem. Plus, didn't they last most of the 2 year period they were intended to? (I'm not an expert on it)

Hi-Seas crew journal entries: http://livefrommars.life

Wouldn't mindfulness meditation help change such a confined experience?

Also, I thought that astronauts had such full schedules that extracurricular activities were limited?

> Also, I thought that astronauts had such full schedules that extracurricular activities were limited?

That was the case until they mutinied. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_7#.22Mutiny.22_in_space

this was good reading :)

DON'T POP A NEWSLETTER FORM OVER THE TEXT I AM TRYING TO READ.

I'm sure this is an interesting article but the only way we will stop this practice is if we stop giving user-hostile publications our eyeballs.

http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/

...or you could use an adblocker - they block more than just ads (at least the good ones do).

Mine didn't work on this site. Most newsletter popups are home grown and adblockers don't work on them.

I just ignore them and try not to visit the site again if possible. (well done marketing geniuses! Was that your goal?)

abp didn't block this one. ublock may have tho, but in my experience even that lets through many of these by default

Options are limited on Mobile. But, pre-warned, I'll open this in Pocket, which avoids this.

If Firefox had an "open directly to Reader Mode" I'd use that virtually always.

> DON'T POP A NEWSLETTER FORM OVER THE TEXT I AM TRYING TO READ.

I'm running NoScript in default deny all JS here - I read the whole article without ever realizing there was a "newsletter form" until after I saw your comment above.

Websites behaviour like this led me to use toggles for js and images which are disabled by default.

If a click on a link of an article, I might actually want to read the article and not having stuff pop in my face or the content jumping around when the stock photo in the header has finally loaded.

HUGE POP UP when trying to read it. Gave up.

We're going to settle Venus way, way before we're going to settle Mars.

These projects should focus on exploring ways to build big blimps instead.

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