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Stock up on movies, and books? I mean that's pretty much the daily life of most people on this planet right now. Go to work, come home, engage in entertainment / sex. Beyond that, they can't really expect to be able to go outside and walk in the park. I think everyone is overestimating how much free time these guys will have. It's not the equivalent of sitting in a prison cell without mission responsibilities(experiments, chores, food).

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Exercise, books, chess, learn a language, I can think of plenty of stuff to do. People in prison sometimes enjoy the opportunity they have to focus on self improvement without the stress of having to make money for food/shelter.

Surely being on a craft in deep space is not that much different to being on a nuclear sub for months and months on end, smaller I guess.

Do the subs not have internet access or comms to outside world?

Nuclear subs predate the Internet and I suppose you also want to limit your non-internet comm activity when sitting somewhere in the ocean waiting for a Russian first strike.

Radio waves don't work great under the oceans.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarine...

They do indeed perform a “sync” when they surface briefly.

Considering submarines and prisons historically aren't coed, I'd say space travel fares a bit better for basic human needs.

Same sex relationships in prisons and subs aside, I actually think intimate relationships between a confined team that works and lives together is a bad idea. The team needs to depend on each other hugely and having the emotional demands of a intimate relationship could make things pretty difficult for those involved directly or indirectly.

Obviously relationships will develop regardless, you put people together they are going to do stuff. It's just a another challenge, in my mind, rather than an advantage.

No different than sex in the workplace, clearly not a good idea, obviously it's going to happen. You hang out with someone long enough, they start being attractive.

Gimlet Media has a fun podcast following a year-long mock space mission. It explores the topic of relationships in a confined space, too: https://www.gimletmedia.com/the-habitat

> People in prison sometimes enjoy the opportunity they have to focus on self improvement without the stress of having to make money for food/shelter.

If not for the criminal record being a huge factor in job applications later, I'd consider low-security prison to be a pretty good way of getting a sabbatical. It's almost like basic income.

In my state at least it's only for 7 years and only felonies or financial crimes. So you could always commit some non-financial misdemeanor and refuse to do any pretrial diversion program if you wanted, I guess.

That's why "prison is punishment" is supported by some people - if there should exist a social self-improvement program, shouldn't we be giving it to those whose behaviors we want to encourage?

I think the issue here really is that regular life became so fucked up that prison seems like a better option. Isolation from participating in society should be punishment on its own, but it isn't, given how the participation looks for most people.

Reminds me of that time I remember from my childhood, when my dad had a friend in a hospital, and would go on ranting about how that friend has much worse food and entertainment than a typical prisoner...

Cuba has "Paquete Semanal," a weekly-updated offline selective mirror of the Internet, passed around via hard drives: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/23/cuba-offline-i...

If I was there I'd get a copy of all tutorials on https://github.com/danistefanovic/build-your-own-x along with my favourite batteries included programming language...

Actully, now that I think better of it I wouldn't need a batteries included language; having so much time I could implement the "batteries" myself!

VR headsets should be pretty decent by then, so a virtual walk in the park might be doable. Either on the treadmill or flying around trees in zero G.

That makes me wonder, what kind of bandwidth could you get out there? Obviously latency will be bad, but if bandwidth is good enough they might still be able to download a data pack daily containing messages from loved ones, news, and the occasional movie

Lasers are getting more common for high speed space comms, i think the range isn't quite there yet to manage the Earth-Mars distance.

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