Speaking with a crew member from a NASA simulation of a long space mission | Hacker News Reader

Speaking with a crew member from a NASA simulation of a long space mission

scientificamerican.com

22 pointsax00x8 comments

The sleep deprivation thing is really surprising to me. Does anyone know why? I would be able to sleep for probably 10-12 hours a day.

I wonder if they have research that shows that less sleep makes for healthier crew?

There's a more interesting report from NASA on this mission here [1]. They were specifically experimenting to see what would happen to this crew with sleep deprivation. They were only sleep deprived during the week, though it's unstated how much sleep they were allowed on the weekends.

On a long term mission there will be an immense number of things that need to be done each and every day, and with the utmost precision. It's certainly important to see if sleep can be sacrificed when necessary and, if so, for how long before it starts to negatively effect their performance.

[1] - https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-final-hera-campaign-4-cr...

Another, far more grounded and cynical take on this experiment, from 2 weeks ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17381025

That's about a totally different simulation, isn't it?

Yes, though HERA is mentioned briefly in that article (regarding the evacuation during Hurricane Harvey) and HI-SEAS is mentioned briefly in this one (as a similar program).

The main difference, from what I can tell, is that HI-SEAS simulates a Mars surface habitat (with a 20-minute one-way radio delay) while HERA simulates a crew inhabiting a spacecraft (with steadily increasing radio delays until the 'asteroid' 5 light-minutes away is reached, then decreasing as the 'spacecraft' heads home).

Oh, damn, my bad. You are 100% right!

I love reading about experiments like this. As a general simulation buff, I want to try making an abstract version of this mission to try out with my astronaut candidate-kids this summer. Without the jars of pee of course...

I couldn't wait and just tried a simple version of this activity with my daughter, using 440MHz mini-radios and an activity list. She decided she wanted to be in an underwater simulator, something like Aquarius Reef Base[0]. Her bedroom served as the base in this simulation.

She made it halfway through the list of activities (lego building, drawing, yoga, etc.) and we determined that the environment will require lots of patience for a five-year-old. :) We simulated an emergency egress and she swam back, hoping it was OK to continue playing with the radios.

My sons decided to take their simulation outdoors and are currently exploring Mars with a stopwatch that times their radiation exposure. We'll see how they do. Lots of interest so far. (Edit: They did "a lot of things" on the planet and said they enjoyed the exploration)

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3qqO8yQswg

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