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Nasa ends year-long Mars simulation on Hawaii
- cornchips 10y agoObligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVdP8bQ94XY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVdP8bQ94XY
- dang 10y agoPlease don't do this here.
- Proof 10y agoThis article really lacks substance. Why not do a semi in depth interview about what it was like, their biggest struggles, biggest wins, how they kept sane, ect. Seeing that is posted here, I would've expected more of an interesting read than just "they were in a dome a whole year." As commentators pointed out, Navy sailors go through confide quarters for better part of the year. Not too mention, America houses the most prisoners in the world, surely they would be a good example of cramped living. Hmm, oh well, it is has gone.
- ceejayoz 10y agoNavy sailors and prisoners get fresh food, interact with more than six people, and can phone friends/family without a multi-minute time delay. It's more than just cramped living.
- msielski 10y agoIt's kind of just a repost of the BBC article http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37211051 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37211051 which itself is thin but at least has photos.
- ourmandave 10y agoIkr! It doesn't even say if they tried to grow potatoes.
- scrumper 10y agoThis is frustrating, I agree. I would like to understand a bit more about what actually happened. Where were the points of friction? What kind of unforeseen problems arose between the crew? Maybe we will have to wait for the official reports and papers.
- Alexey_Nigin 10y agoIn my opinion, getting used to living in small space is the simplest thing about surviving on Mars. It is much more difficult to maintain a steady supply of oxygen, water, food, and energy. Also, there is always a possibility that something important will suddenly break down and the colonists will need to repair it using only what they have at hand. I would be much more impressed if they tried to test how humans and current technology cope with these hard tasks.
- ourmandave 10y agoThe dome was about living in the small space with a shitty roommate for a year.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y agoTrue. If there is anything that can be considered an unambiguous benefit to this otherwise hollow era of ubiquitous entertainment, it is that living in a small space has become much easier to cope with. Just go to 4chan and check out a lair thread. People will go to utterly squalid lengths to stay glued to their skinner boxes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- freshyill 10y agoWhat is it with the use of the word "just" in headlines over the past few years? They're not going full-on "you won't believe what happens next", but it seems like it's a form of clickbait-lite.
- creshal 10y agoI honestly don't understand NASA's approach with simulating and studying long-term isolation. Submarines, especially nuclear ones, have been doing 100+ day missions under cramped conditions for over eighty years, and in war times with crews that were anything but picked for their compatibility with each other. And yet, from Mercury on, NASA never seems to have tried to tap into that experience, nor the hardware, and keeps insisting on doing everything themselves from scratch. Why?
- jerven 10y agoThe navies do not share any of this information.
- creshal 10y agoOther navies, sure, but the USN?
- pjc50 10y agoI think he's hit on the real reason; if it's classified, then not only does it need to be replicated outside in the non-classified environment, but the people researching it need to actively avoid talking to people with classified knowledge lest their research be tainted and hidden forever. (This is far easier than trying to get it declassified)
- codeulike 10y agoNASA never seems to have tried to tap into that experience How far have you looked? A quick google seems to confirm that NASA are talking to the Navy about this all the time.
- creshal 10y agoTalking about what? Recovery ships, yes, oceanography, yes, astronaut candidates, yes please; but in all the documentations about NASA's long term habitation studies (even back in the 60s, when "long term" meant "a few weeks") they never seem to mention the obvious possibility of knowledge transfer from the submarine forces. Where'd you find anything about it?
- mvd366 10y agoThe BBC article includes a picture of the dome's interior. http://i.imgur.com/oQnNUfY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oQnNUfY.jpg Is that a Tardis on the left?
- pascalmemories 10y agoSure looks like it : http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-08-29/scientists-on-nasa-mars-simulation-build-tardis-into-their-living-quarters http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-08-29/scientists-on-nasa...
- CookieMon 10y agoDamnnn, you're going to be stuck in a tent for a year, and they don't even put in some windows. The surroundings look martian enough. They weren't trying to artifically simulate a day/night cycle were they? (No articles mention this)
- bbctol 10y agoNot having windows seems like an important part of the test! It looks like there might be a small porthole on one of the sides, but I doubt a real Martian habitat would have much more than that, and the psychological impacts would be interesting to know.
- legodt 10y agoWhy are Atlas Obscura articles tolerated on HN? They often lack substance when compared to more upstream sources and invariably come packaged with social-media ready clickbaity titles.
- criddell 10y agoIf we, as a community, didn't want Atlas Obscura articles, we wouldn't be upvoting them.
- dang 10y agoIt belongs to a class of sites that produce both interesting original content and blogspam, i.e. low-quality ripoffs of other sources. The present post unfortunately was the latter, which is why we eventually changed the URL to the BBC piece it was lifted from. This category of sites is problematic for HN. We want their best articles, so we don't ban them (though we do typically penalize them by default). But we definitely don't want their dreck. One thing's for sure: if we don't notice that an article is lifted from another source and/or spammy, users will. In that case, please let us know. We're as eager as you are to have HN link to the best story on a topic. The best way to let us know is by emailing hn@ycombinator.com. We can't read all the comments here but we do read all the emails.
- legodt 10y agoI had no idea that certain classes of sites have default penalties ascribed to them here, very cool. Thanks for the explanation!
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoA more complete simulation could have taken place on the top of Mt Everest. Except living there for a year would be far easier than living a year on Mars.
- MrZongle2 10y agoTrue... though aside from the likely extra cost of such a habitat, I wonder how often the experiment would be interrupted by refuge-seeking climbers who should have otherwise turned back.
- Diederich 10y agoI'm not sure if you're being serious or snide; either is fine with me, because there's a lot of truth to what you said. It might be interesting to actually break that comparison down a bit. I won't attempt to do that, but a couple of things jump to mind. 1. The 'cost per kilo' to Everest is probably a lot lower. 2. The chance of mortality per trip is impossible to know for Mars, but we can just assume it's about the same as for Everest. 3. Everest has a lot more atmosphere than any location on Mars. 4. I'm not certain, but I believe there are locations on Mars that are warmer on average than Everest. 5. Mars lacks an effective planetary radiation shield. 6. A somewhat educated guess on my part: because the atmosphere is so thin on Mars, the wind at its worst can't cause anything like the damage it can on Everest. One of the few intentional unscientific things in The Martian was how much force wind on Mars has. 7. I think the big Mars win, compare to Everest, is how much flat land you there is available. This is a kind of whimsical thought process, but it belies a deeper mental struggle on my part. There are few people more excited about the prospect of humans forming living on Mars. It just makes me giddy and warm all over thinking about it. But at the same time, there are countless enormous and serious problems here on earth that could be attacked with the huge sums of money and resources required to setup shop on Mars. So what it is all about? Musk says that we need to make humans a multi-planetary species. Ok, fair enough. But consider the timeframe and odds of an event on earth that would make human life here impossible. Sure, we could have a total nuclear war after 10x worst case climate change after etc etc etc. But I think that will leave more people alive and more or less functional in the long term than we could put on Mars in a hundred years. So what is it about? One of my dark guesses is this: Musk, looking into the future, sees humanity tearing itself apart for various reasons. And that those death spasms, over the course of years and decades, will likely destroy any extreme, 'mars replacement' outposts we make here on earth. Millions of miles away, a few thousand people on Mars might be immune to such events. This is an emotionally driven analysis on my part, but it does cross my mind from time to time. In the meantime, I look forward to this Saturday's SpaceX launch and return! And even more keenly I look forward to next month's Mars Architecture presentation.
- dang 10y agoUrl changed from http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/six-scientists-just-emerged-from-a-dome-after-a-year-simulating-life-on-mars http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/six-scientists-just-eme..., which points to this.