9 ms·

Scientists re-emerge after a year in Mars simulation project

115 points by _____k 2y ago

lintalist 2y ago
CHAPEA Mission 1 Egress Event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNezVXznaHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNezVXznaHQ
polairscience 2y ago
I've been following these efforts closely. For these projects, crewed endurance space efforts, I strongly believe the most difficult component is the human. It's really difficult to be isolated in a high stress environment. And we don't adequately simulate or study what that might truly be like. I know that this was about nutrition but I just don't think nutrition is going to be the hard part of these missions. I say this with experience. Living and working doing science in the Arctic and on ships is grueling. It's grueling, and not anywhere near as difficult or unpredictable as being in space. The things that happen in that pressure cooker are really hard to explain to people who haven't lived it. It's not ethical or easy to do the kinds of simulations that would actually be useful. How do you simulate "your colleague is gravely wounded and on life support. now you have to work for 90 hours straight to fix whatever mamed them". Oh, also, you have 9 months of mission left with one less crew. It was mediocre at best but "for all man kind" highlights just how weird things might get in these places. The only analogous efforts I can imagine are the adventures of sea-fairing people of centuries past. Maybe we should invent time travel and do some sociological studies.
- yayr 2y ago
  there is this review of "for all man kind" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/ why should it be any different on mars than on earth? > This show has a cool premise, that being what if the space race never ended. It's a sort-of alternate reality and it does a good job of weaving in actual historical events with where the timeline diverged. The main problem is that I feel like the show is being pulled in two directions. In one direction, there is the tension of the space race, engineers scrambling to be the first on the moon/mars and dealing with all manner of technical issues in a realistic-ish way. That part of the show I enjoy. Then, for some reason, the show also throws in a bunch of trite interpersonal drama and stupidity. Like inter-marital affairs, people leaking NASA secrets to the soviets, and a CLEARLY unstable drug-addicted astronaut being given solo control of a super important mission. It's like the showrunners thought the show couldn't stand on it's own without dumb drama, as if there couldn't organically be issues and drama in the context of Frigging SPACE. The first season does this better, but by the 2nd/3rd seasons most of the issues come not from unforeseen difficulties of life on the moon/mars but idiots. It really makes me wonder if they just aren't sure who their audience are. The people who like the technical stuff are not going to like the artificial drama, and vise-versa. Pick a lane, show, and stick with it.
  - basementcat 2y ago
    I would argue that sometimes "dumb drama" is a good mirror of humanity. Inter-marital affairs really do happen (including in the highest levels of public policy as well as the astronaut corps), people do disclose "secrets" and pilots (including astronauts) are known to deceive medical professionals to avoid being "grounded". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak https://www.space.com/spacex-employee-lawsuit-sex-discrimination-retaliation https://www.space.com/spacex-employee-lawsuit-sex-discrimina... https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2019/04/30/after-video-of-spacex-explosion-leaked-nasa-workers-told-they-can-be-fired-for-sharing-images/ https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2019/04/30/after-video-of-sp... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-pilots-health-conditions-va-benefits/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-pilot...
    - exe34 2y ago
      Where there are humans, there will be dumb drama. It's practically a law of human nature.
    - nxobject 2y ago
      My other favorite example of dumb drama at the highest levels: ex-director of the CIA, David Petraeus, was forced to resign after being caught by the FIB in an extramarital affair with his biographer. [1] You'd certainly think that the ex-military head of a spycraft organization would know to be a little more disciplined... and less vulnerable to blackmail. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal
      - jowdones 2y ago
        My expectation is the exact opposite, CIA chief would be a libidinous drug addict, but my view has been shaped by this character: https://americandad.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Bullock https://americandad.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Bullock
  - Filligree 2y ago
    The drama isn’t even done that well. Like you say, it’s stupid; the people are on average just worse than the sort of people who would actually be there. I wanted the technical sci-fi to be worth it, but it wasn’t. There really isn’t much catering to an engineer audience.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  > It's really difficult to be isolated in a high stress environment. Mars seems more like a high boredom environment. It's a dead planet where nothing more than the occasional feeble dust storm happen.
  - fooqux 2y ago
    > Mars seems more like a high boredom environment. Something tells me that the first few thousand people sent to Mars won't be bored. There will be tons of things to do in the pursuit of making a habitable space. Besides that, you have the constant death factor. I know we all live with risk 24/7. But, unless we're doing something outside our comfort zone, our brains largely ignore it. Living on Mars will not be like that for a settler. There are real risks that some piece of equipment will fail and kill you all. You'll likely be well aware of that because you'll be working on it. (Or worse, that idiot over there holding the spanner the wrong way is working on it.)
    - russfink 2y ago
      Should we pursue such a simulation in an undersea environment instead? Real stress, real risk, real isolation - but could pull someone up if super urgent. Would also simulate the long voyage to get there.
      - OnlyMortal 2y ago
        That might be a good idea if space suits are available. It would be risky, tbf.
      - whyever 2y ago
        Analog astronauts are already doing this.
      - fooqux 2y ago
        >but could pull someone up if super urgent This is the key, IMHO. We've simulated such things as human isolation and closed-loop ecologies before, numerous times. And we did learn some things. But I don't think there is much you can do, and surely not anything ethical, that would correctly simulate being months away from Earth. Just as you said, when you're on-planet, anything that goes wrong can be dealt with. Have a leak you can't fix? Someone just had a medial issue and is unresponsive? You just can't take it any more? Whatever the case, help is just a press of the red button away. I'm not sure if you've played many video games on Hardcore mode, but it's a totally different experience to know your saved game file(s) are in jeopardy if what you're about to do goes south. I would imagine the feeling is somewhat like this, but worse. A lunar base might simulate it. An undersea base (as you suggested) might work too if you put it deep enough. But again, you're entering unethical territory here by making something exceedingly dangerous just for the sake of increasing the risk/stress.
- nxobject 2y ago
  It's a little bit unfair to say that this mission was just about nutrition – apparently there were simulated stressors, although I wish there were more details about what there. That being said, you're right to say that people weren't being pushed psychologically to the "real" limit that you'd get on long-term isolated missions... I guess that's where The Right Stuff of ye olde Space Age comes in. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/about-chapea/ https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/about-chapea/
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Colonization will entail a pretty large population of people across all fields of expertise. You will also have all supplies and materials necessary for any sort of contingencies. You're not going to have the electrician trying to improv as a doctor. I think it's highly probable that many people will die, but not in particularly grueling ways, but far more mundane. Around 600 people have gone to space (which I'll define as at least LEO). During this (including training), about 30 people have died. A death ratio of 5% is ridiculously high, and most of the incidents have been far from remarkable. Fire in a capsule, oxygen valve failure, heat shield failure, don't use solid rocket boosters, and so on. It'll be the same stuff with Mars, except the death ratio will likely be substantially higher. It'll again be from just incidents that will look stupid in hindsight. And they will have been, but when you're working to prevent a billion bad outcomes, a few will always manage to wiggle through the cracks. All things considered I think Mars colonization will probably be far easier than the guys who were engaging in civilization building in the past. Settlers in times past were dealing with hostile natives, hostile waters, unknown diseases, unpredictable weather, even mundane things like rats getting into your rations, and had very little ability to measure or adapt to what they were dealing with. For instance Vasco de Gama (Europe to India guy) took 3 weeks to cross the Indian ocean the first time. On his way back, it took 3 months. By the time he returned, about 70% of his crew was dead. Colonizing Mars will be absolutely brutal but we will have quite far fewer unknowns. Of course the issues will will have to deal with will be far harsher than anything anybody else ever had to manage, but they are known - and so that really simplifies the process.
  - 9dev 2y ago
    People arguing in favour of mars colonisation always kind of skip the time between now and a future in which we’re able to ship an entire populace to another planet. We will need to send smaller crews first. Not just to do the science and validation necessary, but also because it would be plain unethical to send a large group of people without knowing what effect that kind of travel will have on them. And all of that in spite of knowing how that venture would even be technologically feasible. If you haven’t, I can highly recommend reading A city on mars by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith.
    - 2y ago
- monkeyfun 2y ago
  Are there any stories or examples you could provide of what you described with arctic work? That sounds quite interesting!
  - polairscience 2y ago
    Buy me a beer in person and you can have as many as you want until you're bored. Post them publicly on the internet for anyone to recall at any moment? Absolutely not, under no circumstances, no. Which is an important and relevant boundary for this discussion. Any space extended space travel is going to be mind numbingly public. Which is not a good thing
accrual 2y ago
I found this quote from the article especially heartfelt. To me it doesn't just convey a hopeful message, it also shows the attitude and inner strength of someone who just endured the closest thing we have to living & working on a new frontier. It's a powerful message when read through that lens. > "We can do these things together," Brockwell said. "We can use our senses of wonder and purpose, to achieve peace and prosperity and to unlock knowledge and joy for the benefit of everyone in every part of planet Earth," he added.
yayr 2y ago
I could not really find a TLDR or dive into the mission results... Is there something already?
timonoko 2y ago
I bet they did not give even a minute thought about the people who live and die in tiny boxes on desolate icefields. There was weird customs and rules to make this life possible, as for example Peter Freuchen documented. This should be the starting point, imho. Those cultures were honed in 10000 years just for Mars survival perfection.
- oersted 2y ago
  A lot has been written by and about Peter Freuchen. Could you provide a more specific reference for these customs and rules? I'd like to read-up on it.
  - timonoko 2y ago
    I read the "Vagrant Viking" fifty years ago. And the book was probably heavily censored in translation because ungodly family habits. So I am not sure where I got all the ideas from. There was somebody else married to eskimo too, interesting because he made an Umiak suitable for outboard engine.
- coffeebeqn 2y ago
  It’s still an order of magnitude more chill off a life than Mars. You’re surrounded by drinkable water and breathable air and some critters to hunt
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    Also how simple it is to remove yourself from some situation. Something is getting on nerves. You can just put on some clothing and walk outside. Stand there for 15 minutes or half and hour and get to decompress... No such opportunity on other objects...
HPsquared 2y ago
Browsing the modern web would be a nightmare from Mars, with a 30-minute ping and all the HTTP back-and-forth that modern pages require. I guess you would have to use an Earth-based remote desktop.
- cdelsolar 2y ago
  That would still have a 30 minute ping. You should just have a Martian Internet and then sync up the two every few hours or something.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >You should just have a Martian Internet and then sync up the two every few hours or something. the "internet" is just a network of computers. "sync up the two" would involve replicating the servers and coming up with some sort of consensus protocol. Needless to say, that's non-trivial to implement and needs to be done for each site individually. If there was a martian colony it might be economically feasible for some sites to do this, but if it's just a few astronauts the most feasible way of implementing internet browsing would be something like archive.today, where you send a url to some server on earth, the server runs a headless browser and takes a screenshot, and sends the captured contents back to mars/spacecraft.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Probably not possible for the first several years, with limited bandwidth. Maybe they could use sneakernet for periodic updates.
    - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
      Most internet traffic will be predicted/generated by AI by then, so they'll only need to send a few tiny deltas.
  - ironhaven 2y ago
    The question is whether it will be like Usenet with nntp or a BBS with xmodem
paulnpace 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pseingatl 2y ago
How much law do we take with us? marslegalcode.org
cubefox 2y ago
One thing I don't understand: In over two decades of ISS operation, there apparently was never time to do a zero-g pregnancy experiment on mice or other small mammals. Zach/Kelly Weinersmith mentioned this in an interview with Sean Carroll on Mars colonization: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dJqr_cCi9tM https://youtube.com/watch?v=dJqr_cCi9tM If it turned out that mice can't properly reproduce in the zero-g environment of the ISS, it would be very likely that (much heavier) humans can't properly reproduce in the low-g environment of Mars. Which would be a very important thing to figure out. Perhaps more important than the mostly psychological Mars simulation project.
- quotemstr 2y ago
  > One thing I don't understand: In over two decades of ISS operation, there apparently was never time to do a zero-g pregnancy experiment on mice or other small mammals. Coincidentally, I was looking for research into zero-g pregnancy myself a few days ago and was surprised just as you are. I did, however, find https://www.audubon.org/news/the-amazing-story-cold-war-space-egg-race https://www.audubon.org/news/the-amazing-story-cold-war-spac.... The Soviets did some good research on this subject and were able to successfully hatch birds at least.
  - cubefox 2y ago
    Interesting. Here is more detail on how those Soviet quail experiments went: https://finchwench.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/cosmoquails/ https://finchwench.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/cosmoquails/ Unfortunately, the chicks often came out deformed and many died early. Though birds are not closely related to us (our last common ancestor lived more than 300 million years ago), so I really would like to see ISS experiments on whether mice fare any better, or perhaps even worse. Overall, I'm pessimistic about colonizing Mars. In the interview mentioned before, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith also mention other problems, like the necessity to live underground in caves, due to radiation. Building an underground city on Earth would be vastly easier than on Mars, yet nothing like it has ever been tried. I think the most likely thing that will happen is this: In about 20 years, NASA will use Starship (a SpaceX rocket currently in development) to send a few US Americans to Mars, they will plant the flag of the nation, and, having beat the Chinese, that will be mostly the end of humanity's Mars aspirations. Basically like the moon missions: Once the novelty is gone, people will likely lose interest in earlier aspirations of establishing a permanent base. Especially if the ISS mice turn out crippled.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
I recommend the book A City On Mars, which covers many aspects related to the feasibility of traveling to and colonizing Mars.
bGl2YW5j 2y ago
This is quite a sacrifice for humanity's sake, so thank you to these people for taking part in this experiment. I'm surprised more effort wasn't put in to making the habitat homely. It's very austere and scientific. I'd have thought that this experiment would also provide means to test ways to provide comfort in trying situations.

115 points by _____k 2y ago

CHAPEA Mission 1 Egress Event https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNezVXznaHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNezVXznaHQ

I've been following these efforts closely. For these projects, crewed endurance space efforts, I strongly believe the most difficult component is the human. It's really difficult to be isolated in a high stress environment. And we don't adequately simulate or study what that might truly be like. I know that this was about nutrition but I just don't think nutrition is going to be the hard part of these missions. I say this with experience. Living and working doing science in the Arctic and on ships is grueling. It's grueling, and not anywhere near as difficult or unpredictable as being in space. The things that happen in that pressure cooker are really hard to explain to people who haven't lived it. It's not ethical or easy to do the kinds of simulations that would actually be useful. How do you simulate "your colleague is gravely wounded and on life support. now you have to work for 90 hours straight to fix whatever mamed them". Oh, also, you have 9 months of mission left with one less crew. It was mediocre at best but "for all man kind" highlights just how weird things might get in these places. The only analogous efforts I can imagine are the adventures of sea-fairing people of centuries past. Maybe we should invent time travel and do some sociological studies.

yayr 2y ago
there is this review of "for all man kind" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/ why should it be any different on mars than on earth? > This show has a cool premise, that being what if the space race never ended. It's a sort-of alternate reality and it does a good job of weaving in actual historical events with where the timeline diverged. The main problem is that I feel like the show is being pulled in two directions. In one direction, there is the tension of the space race, engineers scrambling to be the first on the moon/mars and dealing with all manner of technical issues in a realistic-ish way. That part of the show I enjoy. Then, for some reason, the show also throws in a bunch of trite interpersonal drama and stupidity. Like inter-marital affairs, people leaking NASA secrets to the soviets, and a CLEARLY unstable drug-addicted astronaut being given solo control of a super important mission. It's like the showrunners thought the show couldn't stand on it's own without dumb drama, as if there couldn't organically be issues and drama in the context of Frigging SPACE. The first season does this better, but by the 2nd/3rd seasons most of the issues come not from unforeseen difficulties of life on the moon/mars but idiots. It really makes me wonder if they just aren't sure who their audience are. The people who like the technical stuff are not going to like the artificial drama, and vise-versa. Pick a lane, show, and stick with it.
- basementcat 2y ago
  I would argue that sometimes "dumb drama" is a good mirror of humanity. Inter-marital affairs really do happen (including in the highest levels of public policy as well as the astronaut corps), people do disclose "secrets" and pilots (including astronauts) are known to deceive medical professionals to avoid being "grounded". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak https://www.space.com/spacex-employee-lawsuit-sex-discrimination-retaliation https://www.space.com/spacex-employee-lawsuit-sex-discrimina... https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2019/04/30/after-video-of-spacex-explosion-leaked-nasa-workers-told-they-can-be-fired-for-sharing-images/ https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2019/04/30/after-video-of-sp... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-pilots-health-conditions-va-benefits/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-pilot...
  - exe34 2y ago
    Where there are humans, there will be dumb drama. It's practically a law of human nature.
  - nxobject 2y ago
    My other favorite example of dumb drama at the highest levels: ex-director of the CIA, David Petraeus, was forced to resign after being caught by the FIB in an extramarital affair with his biographer. [1] You'd certainly think that the ex-military head of a spycraft organization would know to be a little more disciplined... and less vulnerable to blackmail. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal
    - jowdones 2y ago
      My expectation is the exact opposite, CIA chief would be a libidinous drug addict, but my view has been shaped by this character: https://americandad.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Bullock https://americandad.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Bullock
- Filligree 2y ago
  The drama isn’t even done that well. Like you say, it’s stupid; the people are on average just worse than the sort of people who would actually be there. I wanted the technical sci-fi to be worth it, but it wasn’t. There really isn’t much catering to an engineer audience.
BurningFrog 2y ago
> It's really difficult to be isolated in a high stress environment. Mars seems more like a high boredom environment. It's a dead planet where nothing more than the occasional feeble dust storm happen.
- fooqux 2y ago
  > Mars seems more like a high boredom environment. Something tells me that the first few thousand people sent to Mars won't be bored. There will be tons of things to do in the pursuit of making a habitable space. Besides that, you have the constant death factor. I know we all live with risk 24/7. But, unless we're doing something outside our comfort zone, our brains largely ignore it. Living on Mars will not be like that for a settler. There are real risks that some piece of equipment will fail and kill you all. You'll likely be well aware of that because you'll be working on it. (Or worse, that idiot over there holding the spanner the wrong way is working on it.)
  - russfink 2y ago
    Should we pursue such a simulation in an undersea environment instead? Real stress, real risk, real isolation - but could pull someone up if super urgent. Would also simulate the long voyage to get there.
    - OnlyMortal 2y ago
      That might be a good idea if space suits are available. It would be risky, tbf.
    - whyever 2y ago
      Analog astronauts are already doing this.
    - fooqux 2y ago
      >but could pull someone up if super urgent This is the key, IMHO. We've simulated such things as human isolation and closed-loop ecologies before, numerous times. And we did learn some things. But I don't think there is much you can do, and surely not anything ethical, that would correctly simulate being months away from Earth. Just as you said, when you're on-planet, anything that goes wrong can be dealt with. Have a leak you can't fix? Someone just had a medial issue and is unresponsive? You just can't take it any more? Whatever the case, help is just a press of the red button away. I'm not sure if you've played many video games on Hardcore mode, but it's a totally different experience to know your saved game file(s) are in jeopardy if what you're about to do goes south. I would imagine the feeling is somewhat like this, but worse. A lunar base might simulate it. An undersea base (as you suggested) might work too if you put it deep enough. But again, you're entering unethical territory here by making something exceedingly dangerous just for the sake of increasing the risk/stress.
nxobject 2y ago
It's a little bit unfair to say that this mission was just about nutrition – apparently there were simulated stressors, although I wish there were more details about what there. That being said, you're right to say that people weren't being pushed psychologically to the "real" limit that you'd get on long-term isolated missions... I guess that's where The Right Stuff of ye olde Space Age comes in. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/about-chapea/ https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/about-chapea/
somenameforme 2y ago
Colonization will entail a pretty large population of people across all fields of expertise. You will also have all supplies and materials necessary for any sort of contingencies. You're not going to have the electrician trying to improv as a doctor. I think it's highly probable that many people will die, but not in particularly grueling ways, but far more mundane. Around 600 people have gone to space (which I'll define as at least LEO). During this (including training), about 30 people have died. A death ratio of 5% is ridiculously high, and most of the incidents have been far from remarkable. Fire in a capsule, oxygen valve failure, heat shield failure, don't use solid rocket boosters, and so on. It'll be the same stuff with Mars, except the death ratio will likely be substantially higher. It'll again be from just incidents that will look stupid in hindsight. And they will have been, but when you're working to prevent a billion bad outcomes, a few will always manage to wiggle through the cracks. All things considered I think Mars colonization will probably be far easier than the guys who were engaging in civilization building in the past. Settlers in times past were dealing with hostile natives, hostile waters, unknown diseases, unpredictable weather, even mundane things like rats getting into your rations, and had very little ability to measure or adapt to what they were dealing with. For instance Vasco de Gama (Europe to India guy) took 3 weeks to cross the Indian ocean the first time. On his way back, it took 3 months. By the time he returned, about 70% of his crew was dead. Colonizing Mars will be absolutely brutal but we will have quite far fewer unknowns. Of course the issues will will have to deal with will be far harsher than anything anybody else ever had to manage, but they are known - and so that really simplifies the process.
- 9dev 2y ago
  People arguing in favour of mars colonisation always kind of skip the time between now and a future in which we’re able to ship an entire populace to another planet. We will need to send smaller crews first. Not just to do the science and validation necessary, but also because it would be plain unethical to send a large group of people without knowing what effect that kind of travel will have on them. And all of that in spite of knowing how that venture would even be technologically feasible. If you haven’t, I can highly recommend reading A city on mars by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith.
  - 2y ago
monkeyfun 2y ago
Are there any stories or examples you could provide of what you described with arctic work? That sounds quite interesting!
- polairscience 2y ago
  Buy me a beer in person and you can have as many as you want until you're bored. Post them publicly on the internet for anyone to recall at any moment? Absolutely not, under no circumstances, no. Which is an important and relevant boundary for this discussion. Any space extended space travel is going to be mind numbingly public. Which is not a good thing

accrual 2y ago

I found this quote from the article especially heartfelt. To me it doesn't just convey a hopeful message, it also shows the attitude and inner strength of someone who just endured the closest thing we have to living & working on a new frontier. It's a powerful message when read through that lens. > "We can do these things together," Brockwell said. "We can use our senses of wonder and purpose, to achieve peace and prosperity and to unlock knowledge and joy for the benefit of everyone in every part of planet Earth," he added.

yayr 2y ago

I could not really find a TLDR or dive into the mission results... Is there something already?

timonoko 2y ago

I bet they did not give even a minute thought about the people who live and die in tiny boxes on desolate icefields. There was weird customs and rules to make this life possible, as for example Peter Freuchen documented. This should be the starting point, imho. Those cultures were honed in 10000 years just for Mars survival perfection.

oersted 2y ago
A lot has been written by and about Peter Freuchen. Could you provide a more specific reference for these customs and rules? I'd like to read-up on it.
- timonoko 2y ago
  I read the "Vagrant Viking" fifty years ago. And the book was probably heavily censored in translation because ungodly family habits. So I am not sure where I got all the ideas from. There was somebody else married to eskimo too, interesting because he made an Umiak suitable for outboard engine.
coffeebeqn 2y ago
It’s still an order of magnitude more chill off a life than Mars. You’re surrounded by drinkable water and breathable air and some critters to hunt
- Ekaros 2y ago
  Also how simple it is to remove yourself from some situation. Something is getting on nerves. You can just put on some clothing and walk outside. Stand there for 15 minutes or half and hour and get to decompress... No such opportunity on other objects...

HPsquared 2y ago

Browsing the modern web would be a nightmare from Mars, with a 30-minute ping and all the HTTP back-and-forth that modern pages require. I guess you would have to use an Earth-based remote desktop.

cdelsolar 2y ago
That would still have a 30 minute ping. You should just have a Martian Internet and then sync up the two every few hours or something.
- gruez 2y ago
  >You should just have a Martian Internet and then sync up the two every few hours or something. the "internet" is just a network of computers. "sync up the two" would involve replicating the servers and coming up with some sort of consensus protocol. Needless to say, that's non-trivial to implement and needs to be done for each site individually. If there was a martian colony it might be economically feasible for some sites to do this, but if it's just a few astronauts the most feasible way of implementing internet browsing would be something like archive.today, where you send a url to some server on earth, the server runs a headless browser and takes a screenshot, and sends the captured contents back to mars/spacecraft.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Probably not possible for the first several years, with limited bandwidth. Maybe they could use sneakernet for periodic updates.
  - TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
    Most internet traffic will be predicted/generated by AI by then, so they'll only need to send a few tiny deltas.
- ironhaven 2y ago
  The question is whether it will be like Usenet with nntp or a BBS with xmodem

paulnpace 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

pseingatl 2y ago

How much law do we take with us? marslegalcode.org

cubefox 2y ago

One thing I don't understand: In over two decades of ISS operation, there apparently was never time to do a zero-g pregnancy experiment on mice or other small mammals. Zach/Kelly Weinersmith mentioned this in an interview with Sean Carroll on Mars colonization: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dJqr_cCi9tM https://youtube.com/watch?v=dJqr_cCi9tM If it turned out that mice can't properly reproduce in the zero-g environment of the ISS, it would be very likely that (much heavier) humans can't properly reproduce in the low-g environment of Mars. Which would be a very important thing to figure out. Perhaps more important than the mostly psychological Mars simulation project.

quotemstr 2y ago
> One thing I don't understand: In over two decades of ISS operation, there apparently was never time to do a zero-g pregnancy experiment on mice or other small mammals. Coincidentally, I was looking for research into zero-g pregnancy myself a few days ago and was surprised just as you are. I did, however, find https://www.audubon.org/news/the-amazing-story-cold-war-space-egg-race https://www.audubon.org/news/the-amazing-story-cold-war-spac.... The Soviets did some good research on this subject and were able to successfully hatch birds at least.
- cubefox 2y ago
  Interesting. Here is more detail on how those Soviet quail experiments went: https://finchwench.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/cosmoquails/ https://finchwench.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/cosmoquails/ Unfortunately, the chicks often came out deformed and many died early. Though birds are not closely related to us (our last common ancestor lived more than 300 million years ago), so I really would like to see ISS experiments on whether mice fare any better, or perhaps even worse. Overall, I'm pessimistic about colonizing Mars. In the interview mentioned before, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith also mention other problems, like the necessity to live underground in caves, due to radiation. Building an underground city on Earth would be vastly easier than on Mars, yet nothing like it has ever been tried. I think the most likely thing that will happen is this: In about 20 years, NASA will use Starship (a SpaceX rocket currently in development) to send a few US Americans to Mars, they will plant the flag of the nation, and, having beat the Chinese, that will be mostly the end of humanity's Mars aspirations. Basically like the moon missions: Once the novelty is gone, people will likely lose interest in earlier aspirations of establishing a permanent base. Especially if the ISS mice turn out crippled.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

I recommend the book A City On Mars, which covers many aspects related to the feasibility of traveling to and colonizing Mars.

bGl2YW5j 2y ago

This is quite a sacrifice for humanity's sake, so thank you to these people for taking part in this experiment. I'm surprised more effort wasn't put in to making the habitat homely. It's very austere and scientific. I'd have thought that this experiment would also provide means to test ways to provide comfort in trying situations.