6 ms·

When a Mars Simulation Goes Wrong

97 points by scott_s 8y ago

jimnotgym 8y ago
As interesting as this is, and no doubt useful for the pioneering missions to Mars, most of these concerns are rather negated by the plan to colonise Mars. Looking at the Elon Musk plan he is talking about taking 100 people at a time IIRC. This allows social groups to form, and allows breaks from the norm by the ability to visit others. If we are talking about 100's at a time, then there would be doctors, engineers, surgical facilities, public meeting areas etc. Presumably the initial settlement will take place in one place not in lots of isolated areas? Early trips presumably would be setting up the space-port and living facilities, making rocket-fuel etc. I think with work to do and with more people and more space to wander around the social problems would be rather easier to bear
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Some separated and independently operable facilities would be useful to avoid losing the whole project to a meteor (or seismic activity? or weather?).
  - gonzo41 8y ago
    How far apart are you going to put them? Remember a few years back when that sedan size meteor hit a frozen lake in Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLjB5qavxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLjB5qavxY It was breaking windows many kms away. Around 3:10
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Obviously you can't mitigate all risks. Meteoroids presumably are more devastating still because of the thin atmosphere. Some interesting analysis - http://spaceacademy.net.au/env/planet/marsmtrts.htm http://spaceacademy.net.au/env/planet/marsmtrts.htm
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        It is also worth noting that mars meteoroids have been so devastating that material ejected from their impact has subsequently hit earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
- Nokinside 8y ago
  Visiting Mars few times, then the public losing the interest is the most likely scenario. Mars Colonization in our lifetime is fantasy. Not necessarily from technical but from purely economic perspective. You can't make near time colony self sufficient and maintaining it would require billions in subsidies year after year.
  - annerajb 8y ago
    Sounds cheap. All of Earth's space countries could pay a billion or two a year and pay it easily. At least initially while it grows.
    - Nokinside 8y ago
      Billions. It might cost 20 billion per year (the whole NASA budget) or several times of that. Economically speaking Mars would not achieve economies of scale needed for becoming self sustaining. Manufacturing every component for higher safety standards than commercial aircraft or nuclear submarine is expensive. Building whole society that works in safety critical environment 24/7, starting from daycare and ending with microprocessor and chemical plants is just fantasy in the near future. Maybe in 100 or 150 years we can start dreaming.
  - rory096 8y ago
    >Visiting Mars few times, then the public losing the interest is the most likely scenario. That's why colonization must start on the first mission. Flags and footprints missions are self-defeating. >You can't make near time colony self sufficient and maintaining it would require billions in subsidies year after year. The US alone already spends $5 billion per year on ISS.
    - Nokinside 8y ago
      >The US alone already spends $5 billion per year on ISS. ISS has crew of 6 located 400 km from the surface of the Earth. In the emergency they can leave the station in minutes (in two Soyuz capsules). Time between the decision to leave and landing in Kazakhstan is 3.5 hours or less.
- petre 8y ago
  Sending 100 people at a time to on a near suicide mission is quite a dumb thing to do. You realize that bringing them back might turn out to be very difficult, that is if they survive the trip to Mars and the landing. Also the infrastructure to do so will be quite expensive. We've sent robotic gear to Mars and most of it has failed. Gear that doesn't require air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and that can be just abandoned there.
  - jimnotgym 8y ago
    > Sending 100 people at a time to on a near suicide mission is quite a dumb thing to do. Tell Elon, not me > We've sent robotic gear to Mars and most of it has failed. Gear that doesn't require air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and that can be just abandoned there. Whilst humans appear squishy and delicate compared to a robot, unlike machines they are very adaptable. For instance a robot that is a million miles away with a broken power supply lead is lost because even a simple repair is impossible. An air supply unit that breaks to a room with humans in has a much better chance of being repaired by the humans. The humans could abandon that room, wear space suits for a while, fly home or fix it with duct tape. There is no reason top believe it is harder for humans to survive, just because the robots find it hard.
    - lttlrck 8y ago
      A broken power supply lead might not be the best example given what happened to the human on Hawaii.
  - skissane 8y ago
    > You realize that bringing them back might turn out to be very difficult Maybe that's the point, the "emotional blackmail" approach to space funding? Apollo could be cancelled because cancelling Apollo didn't involve abandoning anyone to death. If people are stuck on Mars with no way to return, then indefinite regular resupply trips will become necessary and it will be politically impossible to cancel the budget for them. The space program ceases to be discretionary spending. (Even if it is a private mission, e.g. SpaceX–if US citizens on Mars are reliant on a private corporation for their continued life, then the US Congress may find irresistible the urge to provide public support to that corporation or to have NASA take over its resupply functions.)
gonzo41 8y ago
My first thought is kill one, train a thousand. Mars is a long way away and if you have a problem its your's alone to solve. But really how do you not have rcd power supplies in this sort of context! Does Nasa stuff run on AC? I can't see a reason why you wouldn't want something like mains power for the crew being 12v dc for most applications and only a few things like an oven or high wattage device needing more. Kettle?
- matt4077 8y ago
  > My first thought is kill one, train a thousand. While there may be an argument to make for more risk-taking in science, with space travel itself being among the likeliest candidates, I don't see how it applies to this situation. Remember that every one of these simulated missions provides hundreds or thousands of examples for indidividual human interactions each. That's an indication of the amount of data needed to draw applicable conclusions. Allowing people to die could never approach those levels. Any conclusions would also be tainted by the nature of these experiments as simulations far more than any other events–because "is the result worth the price" would be the dominating question.
  - gonzo41 8y ago
    I was being flippant. I was suprised by the electrical fault. That sort of mistake doesn't really seem very NASA.
- walrus01 8y ago
  12vdc is hard to distribute with any higher amperage more than a few feet. One of the reasons why serious telecom stuff is 48 to 56vdc, so you don't have to run a 4 gauge wire to everything. In this particular setup they use consumer grade electronics which are pretty much all AC powered, so they have a setup that is not dissimilar from an off grid photovoltaic home with a few big DC to AC inverters, fed off the battery bank, in the 3500W to 6000W size range.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  My first thought is kill one, train a thousand But this accident was caused by something that many people have already died from and has already been solved by common electrical code requirements. If someone is going to die or be injured during one of these experiments, it shouldn't be from a well known risk that has simple mitigations.
walrus01 8y ago
Sounds like some seriously amateur hour electrical shit. I've seen photos of their setup. An off grid photovoltaic system with battery storage, and propane generator that feeds a battery charger, is not rocket science. Telecom people build them all the time for remote mountaintop sites with kWh/day loads much greater than their habitat. They can't ground things properly and have exposed wiring? For the multi million dollar budget, inexcusable. I could build a better power system than what I've seen pictured for well under $80,000 in one time equipment expenses. This article focues on how the medevac compromised their experiment. How about their failure to adhere to proper engineering standards compromised their experiment? Nobody wants to take the blame. Edit: Here is a photo of their pv setup. All COTS stuff. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project-hawaii-completion/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project-hawai...
- exelius 8y ago
  Not disagreeing with you at all; just keep in mind that these conditions are ultimately no more dangerous than camping — where exposed, temporary electrical setups are common — which probably gave them a false sense of safety about the setup. Real NASA systems would need to be orders of magnitude more safe/reliable, but I suspect this experiment was at least partially designed to identify potential failure points that engineering solutions need to be built for (I.e. what things can a human fix safely and what needs failsafes and self-healing).
  - walrus01 8y ago
    The Wh stored in their battery and the AC power of their inverter are significantly larger than that you'd see camping. Maybe what you'd see "camping" in a $90,000 50 foot luxury motorhome. I'm guessing the habitat has a battery bank of at least eight 12v 100Ah batteries (if AGM lead acid, or equivalent capacity), and at minimim one 4000W sine wave inverter feeding several 120v 15a circuits. Also sounds like somebody shocked themselves on the AC power side, maybe the generator transfer switch, maybe just exposed wiring. Either way there are safe ways to do temporary ac power with twist lock receptacle extension cables and distribution boxes that are insulted up to 600 or 1000V and won't shock people.
txsh 8y ago
What a complete waste of time. The point of a simulation like this would be to see observe how people react in isolation and under stress. But, reading this article, its clear that these people are acting to please the scientists rather than reacting naturally to events. If everyone clucks like a chicken on Day 7, is it because that’s what happens under these conditions or is it because the software developer from New York saw it in a movie and thinks that’s what the scientists want to see? They’re even quoting lines from the Martian while they are in the simulation. They are playing make believe. This is not science.
- walrus01 8y ago
  It's a "social" science experiment to see what happens. Might as well put four people in a 900 sq ft condo for six months, give them a 40 minute telecom latency, and black out all the windows.
- practice9 8y ago
  The article gives an impression of a group of people who behave like cultists.
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    Guess what, if you give people some high purpose, lock them away from society and force them to stick together, they start acting like cultists. It may still be useful to see what kind of cults develop there. If I had to guess, I'd say the experiment planners want to discover how to manipulate people into the right kind of cult.
- walrus01 8y ago
  Also, if they really want to simulate it on earth, do it somewhere very remote, in a harsher climate, and difficult to access. The center of the desert in Bir Tawil, perhaps.
MisterTea 8y ago
This sounds like a complete lack of training. I imagine the astronauts on a real mission to mars would be instructed to keep hands clear of any live-front electrical gear during such operations.
- petre 8y ago
  Electrical gear should be properly insulated and staff operating on live electrical equipment should wear appropriate protection gear. Moreso on Mars than on Earth.
  - walrus01 8y ago
    At the voltages and amperages this size of small off grid pv system is, all you would ever need is insulated gloves and 1000V rated insulated electricians tools. We're not talking about arc flash suits here.
    - petre 8y ago
      Right. You only need stuff readily available at any hardware store. But somehow a crew member managed to electrocute himself and whoever set up the habitat wiring managed to do a lousy job with the circuit breaker panel insulation. I can't really blame that woman for leaving the experiment.
      - walrus01 8y ago
        Yes. I could go buy the necessary tools to build a much better pv system right now from home depot, Platt and graybar. This is all commodity off grid photovoltaic stuff and then ordinary 120v distribution on the AC load side. Nothing special or NASA about it. Maybe they have some current shunts in place or ammeters monitoring load data, same as a residential "Sense" install.
        lopmotr 8y ago
        Whenever someone does a bad job, there are others who could have done it better, but you couldn't have done that person's entire job better because you weren't available and didn't apply and probably weren't qualified for all their other roles. I think the real problem is that Hawaii apparently has loose electrical safety regulations. Where I live, you're not allowed to wire your own fuse box. It might even be a criminal offence, but no homeowner would ever do that. If there are exposed live wires, then some electrician is responsible for that failure.
Nokinside 8y ago
I don't think testing small group dynamics with a crew who are not "the right stuff" tells lots of useful things of what happens when astronauts go to Mars. Especially when there is no real danger.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  It has been suggested before that people who are "the right stuff" might actually be poorly suited for a Martian mission. Becoming an astronaut or world-class scientist is highly demanding and takes a lot of energy. But a Martian trip will likely be incredible boring and stress interpersonal relationships. So what we really want is competent, relaxed people who can handle 6 months of downtime in tight quarters.
  - walrus01 8y ago
    Sounds like they need people who buy $150 gaming mice and have 400 items in their Steam library, all single-player/offline games, or thigns that work on a LAN. The sort of person who spends 3 weeks building a masterwork in Cities Skylines.
    - irascible 8y ago
      Omg I'm a Mars settler!
  - Nokinside 8y ago
    Are you familiar with the Navy saying: Every Sailor a Firefighter? Do you think that damage controlman rating trains mainly for boredom (because usually nothing happens) or do they drill for surviving in a emergency? Just like the life in the sea, aviation or in the ISS, Mars mission will be going trough checklists and routine inspections and preparation for emergencies. When something goes wrong it's the end of the downtime.
    - neurotech1 8y ago
      Not disagreeing with the "every sailor a firefighter", although the current generation ISS astronauts get considerable EMT training, along with other necessary emergency skills. Most astronauts have considerable knowledge of electrical system as well. Were the Hi-SEAS astronauts trained to the same level as a NASA ISS astronaut? Unlikely. Should a future Mars simulation have at least one highly experienced EMT, if not an actual emergency physician? Yes. Should a future Mars simulation have at least one person with considerable experience in electrical engineering, computer science or avionics systems? Yes.
liquidify 8y ago
Article was way too long.
21 8y ago
Interesting thought in the article: > If the crew goes rogue, the people back on Earth might have no idea. Some degree of eavesdropping on the crew might be necessary.
eps 8y ago
Having an option to call 911 in a pinch renders this whole setup a complete joke. Regardless of what they are testing the mere existence of this failsafe massively skews the results, if not rendering them useless completely. Remarks like "I'm not a doctor, but it could be a heart attack or something" don't instill much confidence in the quality of the experiment either. It's also telling that first responders refer to them quite bluntly as "fake astronauts."
duxup 8y ago
It makes me wonder who they are testing with and if they are all just academic folks testing isolated academic folks who are constantly concerned about the test they're in.... is that really a test about an experience on Mars? Touching exposed wires (what the heck), turning on the wrong port on a switch (how can they not fix that them self?), nobody answering an EMERGENCY phone? Obvious safety issues not being taken seriously by other participants... Seems like a wonky experiment gone wrong that is pretty distant from testing a Mars experience with people who actually might go to Mars.

97 points by scott_s 8y ago

As interesting as this is, and no doubt useful for the pioneering missions to Mars, most of these concerns are rather negated by the plan to colonise Mars. Looking at the Elon Musk plan he is talking about taking 100 people at a time IIRC. This allows social groups to form, and allows breaks from the norm by the ability to visit others. If we are talking about 100's at a time, then there would be doctors, engineers, surgical facilities, public meeting areas etc. Presumably the initial settlement will take place in one place not in lots of isolated areas? Early trips presumably would be setting up the space-port and living facilities, making rocket-fuel etc. I think with work to do and with more people and more space to wander around the social problems would be rather easier to bear

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Some separated and independently operable facilities would be useful to avoid losing the whole project to a meteor (or seismic activity? or weather?).
- gonzo41 8y ago
  How far apart are you going to put them? Remember a few years back when that sedan size meteor hit a frozen lake in Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLjB5qavxY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLjB5qavxY It was breaking windows many kms away. Around 3:10
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Obviously you can't mitigate all risks. Meteoroids presumably are more devastating still because of the thin atmosphere. Some interesting analysis - http://spaceacademy.net.au/env/planet/marsmtrts.htm http://spaceacademy.net.au/env/planet/marsmtrts.htm
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      It is also worth noting that mars meteoroids have been so devastating that material ejected from their impact has subsequently hit earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite
Nokinside 8y ago
Visiting Mars few times, then the public losing the interest is the most likely scenario. Mars Colonization in our lifetime is fantasy. Not necessarily from technical but from purely economic perspective. You can't make near time colony self sufficient and maintaining it would require billions in subsidies year after year.
- annerajb 8y ago
  Sounds cheap. All of Earth's space countries could pay a billion or two a year and pay it easily. At least initially while it grows.
  - Nokinside 8y ago
    Billions. It might cost 20 billion per year (the whole NASA budget) or several times of that. Economically speaking Mars would not achieve economies of scale needed for becoming self sustaining. Manufacturing every component for higher safety standards than commercial aircraft or nuclear submarine is expensive. Building whole society that works in safety critical environment 24/7, starting from daycare and ending with microprocessor and chemical plants is just fantasy in the near future. Maybe in 100 or 150 years we can start dreaming.
- rory096 8y ago
  >Visiting Mars few times, then the public losing the interest is the most likely scenario. That's why colonization must start on the first mission. Flags and footprints missions are self-defeating. >You can't make near time colony self sufficient and maintaining it would require billions in subsidies year after year. The US alone already spends $5 billion per year on ISS.
  - Nokinside 8y ago
    >The US alone already spends $5 billion per year on ISS. ISS has crew of 6 located 400 km from the surface of the Earth. In the emergency they can leave the station in minutes (in two Soyuz capsules). Time between the decision to leave and landing in Kazakhstan is 3.5 hours or less.
petre 8y ago
Sending 100 people at a time to on a near suicide mission is quite a dumb thing to do. You realize that bringing them back might turn out to be very difficult, that is if they survive the trip to Mars and the landing. Also the infrastructure to do so will be quite expensive. We've sent robotic gear to Mars and most of it has failed. Gear that doesn't require air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and that can be just abandoned there.
- jimnotgym 8y ago
  > Sending 100 people at a time to on a near suicide mission is quite a dumb thing to do. Tell Elon, not me > We've sent robotic gear to Mars and most of it has failed. Gear that doesn't require air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and that can be just abandoned there. Whilst humans appear squishy and delicate compared to a robot, unlike machines they are very adaptable. For instance a robot that is a million miles away with a broken power supply lead is lost because even a simple repair is impossible. An air supply unit that breaks to a room with humans in has a much better chance of being repaired by the humans. The humans could abandon that room, wear space suits for a while, fly home or fix it with duct tape. There is no reason top believe it is harder for humans to survive, just because the robots find it hard.
  - lttlrck 8y ago
    A broken power supply lead might not be the best example given what happened to the human on Hawaii.
- skissane 8y ago
  > You realize that bringing them back might turn out to be very difficult Maybe that's the point, the "emotional blackmail" approach to space funding? Apollo could be cancelled because cancelling Apollo didn't involve abandoning anyone to death. If people are stuck on Mars with no way to return, then indefinite regular resupply trips will become necessary and it will be politically impossible to cancel the budget for them. The space program ceases to be discretionary spending. (Even if it is a private mission, e.g. SpaceX–if US citizens on Mars are reliant on a private corporation for their continued life, then the US Congress may find irresistible the urge to provide public support to that corporation or to have NASA take over its resupply functions.)

gonzo41 8y ago

My first thought is kill one, train a thousand. Mars is a long way away and if you have a problem its your's alone to solve. But really how do you not have rcd power supplies in this sort of context! Does Nasa stuff run on AC? I can't see a reason why you wouldn't want something like mains power for the crew being 12v dc for most applications and only a few things like an oven or high wattage device needing more. Kettle?

matt4077 8y ago
> My first thought is kill one, train a thousand. While there may be an argument to make for more risk-taking in science, with space travel itself being among the likeliest candidates, I don't see how it applies to this situation. Remember that every one of these simulated missions provides hundreds or thousands of examples for indidividual human interactions each. That's an indication of the amount of data needed to draw applicable conclusions. Allowing people to die could never approach those levels. Any conclusions would also be tainted by the nature of these experiments as simulations far more than any other events–because "is the result worth the price" would be the dominating question.
- gonzo41 8y ago
  I was being flippant. I was suprised by the electrical fault. That sort of mistake doesn't really seem very NASA.
walrus01 8y ago
12vdc is hard to distribute with any higher amperage more than a few feet. One of the reasons why serious telecom stuff is 48 to 56vdc, so you don't have to run a 4 gauge wire to everything. In this particular setup they use consumer grade electronics which are pretty much all AC powered, so they have a setup that is not dissimilar from an off grid photovoltaic home with a few big DC to AC inverters, fed off the battery bank, in the 3500W to 6000W size range.
Johnny555 8y ago
My first thought is kill one, train a thousand But this accident was caused by something that many people have already died from and has already been solved by common electrical code requirements. If someone is going to die or be injured during one of these experiments, it shouldn't be from a well known risk that has simple mitigations.

walrus01 8y ago

Sounds like some seriously amateur hour electrical shit. I've seen photos of their setup. An off grid photovoltaic system with battery storage, and propane generator that feeds a battery charger, is not rocket science. Telecom people build them all the time for remote mountaintop sites with kWh/day loads much greater than their habitat. They can't ground things properly and have exposed wiring? For the multi million dollar budget, inexcusable. I could build a better power system than what I've seen pictured for well under $80,000 in one time equipment expenses. This article focues on how the medevac compromised their experiment. How about their failure to adhere to proper engineering standards compromised their experiment? Nobody wants to take the blame. Edit: Here is a photo of their pv setup. All COTS stuff. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project-hawaii-completion/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project-hawai...

exelius 8y ago
Not disagreeing with you at all; just keep in mind that these conditions are ultimately no more dangerous than camping — where exposed, temporary electrical setups are common — which probably gave them a false sense of safety about the setup. Real NASA systems would need to be orders of magnitude more safe/reliable, but I suspect this experiment was at least partially designed to identify potential failure points that engineering solutions need to be built for (I.e. what things can a human fix safely and what needs failsafes and self-healing).
- walrus01 8y ago
  The Wh stored in their battery and the AC power of their inverter are significantly larger than that you'd see camping. Maybe what you'd see "camping" in a $90,000 50 foot luxury motorhome. I'm guessing the habitat has a battery bank of at least eight 12v 100Ah batteries (if AGM lead acid, or equivalent capacity), and at minimim one 4000W sine wave inverter feeding several 120v 15a circuits. Also sounds like somebody shocked themselves on the AC power side, maybe the generator transfer switch, maybe just exposed wiring. Either way there are safe ways to do temporary ac power with twist lock receptacle extension cables and distribution boxes that are insulted up to 600 or 1000V and won't shock people.

txsh 8y ago

What a complete waste of time. The point of a simulation like this would be to see observe how people react in isolation and under stress. But, reading this article, its clear that these people are acting to please the scientists rather than reacting naturally to events. If everyone clucks like a chicken on Day 7, is it because that’s what happens under these conditions or is it because the software developer from New York saw it in a movie and thinks that’s what the scientists want to see? They’re even quoting lines from the Martian while they are in the simulation. They are playing make believe. This is not science.

walrus01 8y ago
It's a "social" science experiment to see what happens. Might as well put four people in a 900 sq ft condo for six months, give them a 40 minute telecom latency, and black out all the windows.
practice9 8y ago
The article gives an impression of a group of people who behave like cultists.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  Guess what, if you give people some high purpose, lock them away from society and force them to stick together, they start acting like cultists. It may still be useful to see what kind of cults develop there. If I had to guess, I'd say the experiment planners want to discover how to manipulate people into the right kind of cult.
walrus01 8y ago
Also, if they really want to simulate it on earth, do it somewhere very remote, in a harsher climate, and difficult to access. The center of the desert in Bir Tawil, perhaps.

MisterTea 8y ago

This sounds like a complete lack of training. I imagine the astronauts on a real mission to mars would be instructed to keep hands clear of any live-front electrical gear during such operations.

petre 8y ago
Electrical gear should be properly insulated and staff operating on live electrical equipment should wear appropriate protection gear. Moreso on Mars than on Earth.
- walrus01 8y ago
  At the voltages and amperages this size of small off grid pv system is, all you would ever need is insulated gloves and 1000V rated insulated electricians tools. We're not talking about arc flash suits here.
  - petre 8y ago
    Right. You only need stuff readily available at any hardware store. But somehow a crew member managed to electrocute himself and whoever set up the habitat wiring managed to do a lousy job with the circuit breaker panel insulation. I can't really blame that woman for leaving the experiment.
    - walrus01 8y ago
      Yes. I could go buy the necessary tools to build a much better pv system right now from home depot, Platt and graybar. This is all commodity off grid photovoltaic stuff and then ordinary 120v distribution on the AC load side. Nothing special or NASA about it. Maybe they have some current shunts in place or ammeters monitoring load data, same as a residential "Sense" install.
      - lopmotr 8y ago
        Whenever someone does a bad job, there are others who could have done it better, but you couldn't have done that person's entire job better because you weren't available and didn't apply and probably weren't qualified for all their other roles. I think the real problem is that Hawaii apparently has loose electrical safety regulations. Where I live, you're not allowed to wire your own fuse box. It might even be a criminal offence, but no homeowner would ever do that. If there are exposed live wires, then some electrician is responsible for that failure.

Nokinside 8y ago

I don't think testing small group dynamics with a crew who are not "the right stuff" tells lots of useful things of what happens when astronauts go to Mars. Especially when there is no real danger.

akvadrako 8y ago
It has been suggested before that people who are "the right stuff" might actually be poorly suited for a Martian mission. Becoming an astronaut or world-class scientist is highly demanding and takes a lot of energy. But a Martian trip will likely be incredible boring and stress interpersonal relationships. So what we really want is competent, relaxed people who can handle 6 months of downtime in tight quarters.
- walrus01 8y ago
  Sounds like they need people who buy $150 gaming mice and have 400 items in their Steam library, all single-player/offline games, or thigns that work on a LAN. The sort of person who spends 3 weeks building a masterwork in Cities Skylines.
  - irascible 8y ago
    Omg I'm a Mars settler!
- Nokinside 8y ago
  Are you familiar with the Navy saying: Every Sailor a Firefighter? Do you think that damage controlman rating trains mainly for boredom (because usually nothing happens) or do they drill for surviving in a emergency? Just like the life in the sea, aviation or in the ISS, Mars mission will be going trough checklists and routine inspections and preparation for emergencies. When something goes wrong it's the end of the downtime.
  - neurotech1 8y ago
    Not disagreeing with the "every sailor a firefighter", although the current generation ISS astronauts get considerable EMT training, along with other necessary emergency skills. Most astronauts have considerable knowledge of electrical system as well. Were the Hi-SEAS astronauts trained to the same level as a NASA ISS astronaut? Unlikely. Should a future Mars simulation have at least one highly experienced EMT, if not an actual emergency physician? Yes. Should a future Mars simulation have at least one person with considerable experience in electrical engineering, computer science or avionics systems? Yes.

liquidify 8y ago

Article was way too long.

21 8y ago

Interesting thought in the article: > If the crew goes rogue, the people back on Earth might have no idea. Some degree of eavesdropping on the crew might be necessary.

eps 8y ago

Having an option to call 911 in a pinch renders this whole setup a complete joke. Regardless of what they are testing the mere existence of this failsafe massively skews the results, if not rendering them useless completely. Remarks like "I'm not a doctor, but it could be a heart attack or something" don't instill much confidence in the quality of the experiment either. It's also telling that first responders refer to them quite bluntly as "fake astronauts."

duxup 8y ago

It makes me wonder who they are testing with and if they are all just academic folks testing isolated academic folks who are constantly concerned about the test they're in.... is that really a test about an experience on Mars? Touching exposed wires (what the heck), turning on the wrong port on a switch (how can they not fix that them self?), nobody answering an EMERGENCY phone? Obvious safety issues not being taken seriously by other participants... Seems like a wonky experiment gone wrong that is pretty distant from testing a Mars experience with people who actually might go to Mars.