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Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Could Live on Mars
- bosky101 11y agohey netflix growth team, 1) you should launch your own contest to select 6 people to volunteer living under similiar conditions - but with unlimited netflix streaming access, vip access. 2) launch a weekly show just talking about what they watched. 3) then get audiences to recommend what the folks in the room should watch, through social voting/recommendation that said, i'd imagine that most people in their lifetime may end up watching more than what the folks would watch in ~500 days ~B
- hnal943 11y agoThat's alllmost the plot of Mystery Science Theater 3000
- Mahn 11y agoYes, because that experiment would be about as helpful, if not more, as studying the logistics of sending a group of people to Mars.
- joshuapants 11y agoI was unaware that entertainment providers were responsible for "helpful" studies with nothing of lesser importance permitted. Thank you for setting the record straight.
- reddytowns 11y agoReminds me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi
- thret 11y agoIsn't the survival of our species in the event of a global catastrophe half the reason we want some people living on Mars? Surely five of those people should be women.
- gambiter 11y agoThis is really interesting, particularly because there's no mention of problems. Many isolation experiments haven't ended with everyone happy with each other, so I'm curious if this team had any of the same issues. Does anyone know? If they didn't have issues, I wonder how much could be chalked up to the teamwork they experienced while playing counter strike...
- Mahn 11y agoI'm kind of surprised that they had books and videogames, but then it's not supposed to be a prison. I guess it's feasible to play Counter Strike on Mars after all.
- dvdfvo 11y agoYou could play any kind of turn based games over planets. In the future even non-turn based games are going to be played, although indirectly. A fun game would a real time military strategy game where the delay for both planets is artificially made the same. Then the command delay becomes part of the game, but the game still runs in real time with information updating as soon as it is available.
- Apocryphon 11y agoPeople aren't going to stop playing chess or go, after all.
- hnal943 11y agoThat reminds me of Neptune's Pride, which is a game that leverages latency for dramatic effect: http://np.ironhelmet.com http://np.ironhelmet.com
- raverbashing 11y agoOf course, the dynamics of video-game playing in zero-gravity should be interesting. (Do optical drives work in zero-g?)
- pmalynin 11y agoYes, why wouldn't they work, they don't particularly rely on gravity to operate. But then the question is why use optical drives at all?
- raverbashing 11y agoBecause mechanical parts (and the way they are controlled) sometimes are built to compensate for gravity, so the absence of it might change the way it functions.
- gtirloni 11y agoNo mention of interest in programming. That would be a lovely way to pass the time and create some useful things. If not for leisure, perhaps to improve the environment (but that could be dangerous, one mistake and they're dead).
- dvdfvo 11y agoIt is awesome to think that martians would code on their own machines, but information is one of the only things that is free to transport over planets and almost without delay. In reality, due to their scarcity, first settlers will perform exclusively physical tasks, software will be updated and fixed remotely, and repairs will be performed following strict instructions or advice from Earth. Coding as relaxation is plausible, but mostly for short projects and nothing serious. It is hard to focus on serious mental activity after laborious work.
- Zigurd 11y agoTl;dr: The two survivors plan to marry.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago"“I missed the world in general. Seeing things move, seeing cars, dogs, the sun. My colleagues were amazing, and I couldn’t have picked better people to be locked up with, but you start missing meeting new people on nights out, the social variety,” he said. “For me, that was the trickiest part.”" This seems to be a recurring theme in isolation experiments and have shown up in movies recently. In the movie, "I Am Legend" its clear Will Smith attempts to keep himself sane by using his imagination to create some kind of human interaction. I found it to be a profound theme running through the movie. I think above all, this is a primary factor with the human condition. It's the need for social interaction. Without it, we don't seem to do very well.
- doragcoder 11y agoThis makes prefect sense. The worst thing you can do to punish a person in prison (which is a pretty bad punishment to begin with) is solitary confinement.
- bra-ket 11y agothere is an interesting analysis of the changes in their microbiota: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848073/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848073/ "it can be concluded that the powerful stressful condition of prolonged containment in an isolated module had no “dramatic” effect on the state of the intestinal microbiota and did not lead to significant negative consequences for the health of the participants of the experiment. "
- grizzles 11y agoThe most important lesson they learned was to never pick up what looks like a used tissue. I doubt that this is the first time 6 men wasted a year of their life playing CounterStrike. But it's probably the first time 6 men wasted a year playing CounterStrike and also pretending to be astronauts. Credit to them tho, because I couldn't do it. The last thing I'd want is 5 other fellahs doing their business in close proximity to me 3-4 times a day. I hope they were well paid.
- suprgeek 11y agoGreat Experiment. But they missed a crucial and very big stressor if they want to compare it to a real space stay... that of being out of reach of ANY possible help. Imagine one of them gets an aliment of somekind that gets life-threatening. Ethics would dictate that here, the person would be evacuated. On Mars? Not so much. Just that knowledge alone could be a remarkably stabilizing influence on someone's Psyche.
- Consultant32452 11y agoI think a lot of contemporary ethics have to be questioned in this scenario. At what point, if any, do we sacrifice someone in order to prevent the potential spread of disease to the others? How do we feel about the death penalty? Euthanasia without explicit consent? The things we expect here are no longer practical. Forensics experts for alleged crimes, not to mention judges, juries, and lawyers.
- jlarocco 11y agoReminds me of the first episode of the Twilight Zone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Is_Everybody%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Is_Everybody%3F
- ekianjo 11y agoSo how did they deal with conflict/fights between people ? Is the answer really Counter Strike ? :)
- dvdfvo 11y agoIt was probably just the lowest common denominator of "fun". Personally I was fed up with it after a couple of days in a lan. A ( space themed ) DnD would be better in every way. Imagination, teamwork, combat, discourse, story, ...
- morbius 11y agoSomething like this I presume? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_%28Wizards_of_the_Coast%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_%28W...
- dvdfvo 11y agoNo. Why use licensed worlds when you can invent your own.
- morbius 11y agoExactly! Which is why I said something LIKE. :) There's literally nothing more fun than creating your DnD campaigns; it would be so cool to construct worlds involving interplanetary trade -- which incidentally, is one of that Star Wars RPG's strengths and also why I mentioned it.
- theothermkn 11y agoOne of my pet peeves with Mars enthusiasts is that they ignore the reality that living on Mars is going to truly, truly suck. You will never be outdoors again. You will have the constant whirr of machinery. You will have to plan outings down to the last bottle of O2. You will eat shit food. And you will gaze upon a dim Sun through a dusty porthole. The idea of Mars is spectacular and wondrous and ecstatic and beautiful. Actual Mars sucks harder than you can possibly imagine.
- api 11y ago... for the first few generations, until people figured out how to live there. People are pretty good at that. Look into native American tribes that lived in the arctic, or ancient peoples who lived in harsh deserts. People would eventually figure out ways of building, living, entertaining, eating, moving, etc. that made the best of what the environment had to offer. The assumption is that nobody would be interested in making a massive investment of effort and personal hardship to create the potential of a new future.
- Leszek 11y agoThere's a big difference between "it's really cold out here" and "I literally can't breathe the air". Also, making the best of a horrible environment could make it less horrible, but doesn't mean it wouldn't still be pretty horrible.
- theothermkn 11y ago> The assumption is that nobody would be interested in making a massive investment of effort and personal hardship to create the potential of a new future. My hypothesis is actually that the most vocal Mars dreamers are escapists and, as such, have latched on to the idea of Mars vs. the reality of Mars. Go into any forum where living on Mars is discussed, and the focus is on how cool it would be, or how you wouldn't be encumbered by political contingencies, or how much science you could do, or how science-fictiony it would all be. It all revolves around how removed from familiar experience that Mars would be, around how thrilling it is. As a matter of emphasis, this is just unrealistic. Your bones will be disintegrating and your muscles atrophying. You'll constantly be stuffy. You'll be breathing stale air. There will be toilets, and people's shit will stink. You'll get rejected by girls on Mars, and have the occasional erectile dysfunction. There is no Internet on Mars. Instead of browsing, you'll be unclogging toilets and scrubbing away mold. You are going to pay rent on Mars, and it is going to be really, really high. All for a "future" that belongs to those who will live long after you die. You live in space right now, and it's a really nice part of space; It has air and food and water and everything. Most of your manufacturing and other work is performed by a local underclass and an overseas underclass at discounted wages. Mars enthusiasts don't talk about that. They talk about the Dream of Mars. Until the day-to-day realities of living on Mars, and not the romance (which you have even done!), are treated in a realistic manner in the discourse of Mars, I don't think that people are really engaged with the actual endeavor. Everybody needs a hobby, though. Mine is complaining on the Internet.
- aceperry 11y agoThe next step would be to include women and see what would be the dynamics of integrating them into the mission.
- Handwash 11y agoThey should test for hopelessness. If you put yourself in a simulation, you know that you will get out of it eventually. That gives hope and motivates you to keep going. In real-life scenario, you might be on Mars without possibility of going back.
- gtirloni 11y agoI think that is a certainty for the first generations. Simulating that on Earth would be a legal nightmare though.
- gonzo41 11y agoSo, is murder illegal in space? I spent a few months sharing quarters with other soldiers when i was in the Army. We got to go outdoors, run about, work and relax. regardless, the urge to kill started to rise up in all of us. I don't think we're going to go interstellar until we can deal with things like euthenasia (say you break a leg, or are crippled?) is Mars wheel chair friendly. And ageing, low gravity is a killer for bone density.
- Kiro 11y ago> the urge to kill started to rise up in all of us Sorry, but wtf?
- gonzo41 11y agoI should clarify, not kill others, kill each other. Its tricky living together for months and months, isolated away. Cabin fever is a thing.
- palmer_eldritch 11y agoThe article say they spent a fair amount of time playing counter-strike. So you could say that a sizable portion of their time was dedicated to killing each other.
- kbart 11y agoI too think that's the biggest problem -- doesn't matter how well you get along with the certain people, after spending too much time in the same (shared) room with them, something (even innocent, trivial things) starts to annoy and this feeling gets stronger and stronger with time and after a while - unbearable. I shudder even thinking about spending the rest of my life sharing small apartment with the same people and no way out.
- signa11 11y agoif folks have not already read "The Martian" by Andy Wier, take a look. it is pretty cool robinson-crusoe'sque survival thing, easily devoured over a weekend...
- Iazel 11y agoPff... Some hikkikomori hasn't leave is room for 5+ years!
- return0 11y agoI do not see the need to send humans to mars other than for vanity. It would be more cost effective to plan terraforming mars with robots.
- ohitsdom 11y agoI think there's great value in building a Mars base as a intermediate step to terraforming. We're still a long ways away from terraforming technology, and there is a lot we could learn with a permanent base on Mars.