520 Days Later: Fake Mars Mission Ready to Return | Hacker News Reader

520 Days Later: Fake Mars Mission Ready to Return

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133 pointsjoeteplow35 comments

I think the fact that they could leave at any moment was an advantage - the sense that you're in control is very powerful for motivation. When going into space for real, you don't know if you're coming back or not, and if God forbid an accident happens, nobody knows how people would react stuck for months inside a small capsule.

But, as others have commented on various sites, of course people can live and work in these conditions. It is no different than a submarine, and during WW2 soldiers were on deployment for months at end.

Of course, they surfaced quite often and had some sun/air/ocean view, but it's not that far from being inside a capsule in space.

Now if we could launch a submarine into space somehow, our problems would be solved :-)...

I think the inverse might actually be true -- that it's harder to sit in a capsule on Earth for many months compared to a mission to Mars.

In the latter scenario you're a hero on a mission to extend the reach of humanity into space -- in the former you're just some dude in a petri dish.

Not only that, I reckon I would tend to fantasize about leaving every time I got upset, whereas without that choice I might give up such feelings faster.

Those submarines would have 50-150 men on them. This petri dish had 6. There are major psychological differences - in the former, you might not even know everybody; in the latter, you'll know them too well after about a month.

Exactly, we (humans) have loads of experience of people living in self-contained environments for long periods, these kinds of experiments are good for headlines, not for getting to Mars.

Nuclear subs stay down for months at a time, no problem.

Very cool.

The only hazard in this experiment is that there was no real sense of risk, which likely would affect the results tremendously. If they could have simulated loss of life somehow, that might give a more realistic view of how the confinement, and the isolation would have affected the astronauts.

Nonetheless, a great experiment!

I suspect they'll repeat in a few years with a capsule in orbit. If you're in orbit for 520 days, something's almost guaranteed to go wrong, so it'll be a good bit more realistic.

(I'm actually pretty sure I read about plans to do this around 2018 in orbit, but I can't find the article now. Anyone?)

Uhh.. how is that different than the ISS?

No single crew has been in the ISS, without other non-radio human contact, for 520 days. In fact, no single person has been in space for that long, period. The record at the ISS is 198 days; at MIR, 437[1].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records#Ten...

The differences between an orbital mars voyage simulation and the ISS would be that the ISS gets resupply shipments and isn't on a 26 minute radio response delay with ground control.

It's cool, but utterly pointless. Valeri Polyakov spent 437 days in orbit in one mission, in which he was routinely tested.

> Polyakov's mood stabilized to pre-flight levels between the second and fourteenth month of his mission.

So I really don't see a point of a test of this length, if mood stabilizes to pre-flight levels during the second month then there's no point of a test beyond two-months in duration if this holds true for multiple people. Given the number of astronauts and cosmonauts that have been on prolonged missions the data should be readily available to crunch.

Why bother isolating people for 520 days when you can crunch the data of hundreds of people isolated for months to gather the same data. It's a complete waste of money that could have been spent on real research.

33 men survived 69 days trapped in a mine after a collapse. Big groups have bigger risks of social cohesion failing. I think it speaks when 33 men not trained for the situation got through it fine.

Top that in risk, stress, quantity of participants and isolation. It was 16 days before they knew anybody was even looking to rescue them. Top that one for stress.

Wow. Virtual round of applause for such dedication. Those guys need a medal: even prison inmates are allowed more frequent showers.

This would make for a terrifying twist on a sci-fi movie -- they arrive back on Earth after being gone so long to find out that they forgot they had never left. Any movies like that? (Planet of the Apes seems close)

I won't spoil it, but if you think that concept is neat, you owe it to yourself to go watch _Moon_. It's one of the best sci-fi movies I've seen in a long time. Highly recommended.

I love Moon. I guess it's kind of the inverse of that situation :)

There was an episode of The Outer Limits (featuring Wil Wheaton) in which a ship destined for Mars got turned around and accidentally destroyed Earth.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Light_Bri...

Capricorn One doesn't have that twist, but it's about a fake Mars mission. I saw it when I was a kid and for some reason it made a big impact on me. (Reminder for myself: watch it again to see if it's any good).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077294/

Having also really liked it when younger, I watched it again relatively recently, and I thought it was terrible!

Stuff (music, art, films, books, whatever) that isn't very good can yet have a major impact on a person (usually a young person) if it presents, however badly, some idea they find compelling, but haven't seen portrayed before, so have nothing to compare the particular execution with.

There have been people on space station missions who've been up for more than a year:

http://www.astronautix.com/articles/aststics.htm

However, I believe crew rotations and resupplies were taking place during these missions, and there was no communications lag.

I wonder what the impact of knowing you can leave at any time is... Well, short of imprisoning them I guess this is the closest we can get to simulating the experience.

I suspect the ability to leave at any time was a requirement of institutional review boards (IRBs) and consent laws (false imprisonment, anyone?).

Perhaps a way to do it and remove the ability to leave would be to send them to the International Space Station for an extended period ... (still cheaper than a trip to Mars!)

I suspect that even the ISS would still pose some significant logistical hurdles for such a long experiment involving so many people. I don't know anything about the physical setup of the on-Earth "shuttle", but I would hope it is larger than the crew quarters onboard the ISS (for sanity's sake).

The trade-off, I guess, is that the simulation becomes more real when one incorporates the very real dangers of space.

I imagine knowing that you could leave would be very helpful. It's empowering to have that control in a situation & then to choose to stay - versus being unable to leave. I think it would be easier to fall into screwy thinking & hate what you've chosen when you literally have no choice in the matter.

Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov spent 437 days in the Mir space station in a similar experiment.

That was mostly a physiological experiment with a comparatively mild psychological components. They were trying to prove the physical viability of keeping someone in microgravity for the amount of time necessary for a Mars trip.

Things are different when communications are real-time, resupply ships show up frequently, and other crew members are rotating in and out regularly.

I hope real interplanetary space ships have wood panelling.

I hope you've read Vinge's _A_Deepness_In_The_Sky_? :)

I wonder if anyone has written an essay of the significance of wood as a medium of value in science fiction. I first noticed it with the burl in Niven's the _Integral_Trees_, but it also shows up in Cherryh and lots of other authors.

Hmmm, I have forgotten the significance.

Another example: in Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon, "mirrorwood" from Harlan's World is prized on Earth, but used as a common building materia on its homeworld.

Let me know if you find that essay!

No discussion of sex... one imagines it would come up.

I think Terri Schiavo would have aced this experiment and stuck through it, too bad she's still not around.

That's a total waste of time. 520 days gone for an experiment.

I have a wife, kid , family and friends and things to do and places to go to and goals to accomplish.

I would never spend 520 days of my life stuck in a make-believe space ship. rofl.

You might if one of your goals to accomplish was getting humanity to Mars.

i'd let someone else do it.

And isn't that exactly what's happening here? Someone else is going through an experiment, not you. Thanks for adding to the conversation.

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