Mission to Mars: Life in a tin can
- April 3, 2009 3:09 PM |
- By Quirks
By Bob McDonald, host of the CBC science radio program Quirks & Quarks
Six volunteers from Russia and Europe have locked themselves in a windowless habitat, about the size of four mobile homes, for a 105-day isolation test that simulates a trip to deep space.
If successful, it will be followed by a 500-day mission, which will represent the total travel time for a single trip to Mars and back. While engineers face the technical challenges of building rockets for a trip to the Red Planet, the Mars 500 Project will examine the psychological challenges of living with others in a confined space for a year- and-a-half, a challenge that could be greater than the technical one.
The Russians are the masters of long duration space flight, with several cosmonauts spending more than a year on the former Mir Space Station. On a trip to Moscow, I met the chief psychologist at Mission Control who described morale among crewmembers as vital to a successful mission. In space, there is no room for personality conflicts, petty arguments, depression or anxiety.
Yet they do pop up occasionally, due to basic human nature. To tackle those issues, the Russians hold weekly video conferences with the families, so cosmonaut fathers can see their wives and children for a brief time. A more powerful morale booster is when a cosmonaut’s favourite hockey player, actor or performer is brought in for a chat, so the spacemen can have a chance to talk to someone who has nothing to do with space or the family.
Unfortunately, a mission to Mars will not have these luxuries. Only three days after launch, the Earth will be gone from view. For seven months, crewmembers will see nothing out their windows but the blackness of interplanetary space. As their distance from Earth increases, so too does the travel time of their radio signals, creating a delay of up to 20 minutes. Normal dialogue with home will be impossible. All communication with the ground will be one-way, mostly by email.
The four Russians, one German and one Frenchman taking part in the experiment will attempt to endure this type of isolation and deal with the larger problem of getting along with one another in a confined windowless space where there is no escape. Any conflict that arises has to be solved on the spot. In space, you can’t stomp out the door and go for a walk to simmer down (an earlier isolation experiment involving an international mixed gender crew had to be cut short when one of the male members became overly amorous to a Canadian woman).
Such are the challenges of sending humans to other worlds. It will take a special type of person to explore interplanetary space. Even the Apollo astronauts who went to the moon were never more than three days from home. Those on a mission to Mars are completely on their own, with no possibility of rescue for months.
We tend to think of the exploration of space as the discovery of other worlds, but the farther out we go, the more it becomes an exploration of the most basic human characteristics - the ability to get along. Considering how well we get along on Spaceship Earth, perhaps the more difficult journey into a space where no one has gone before is a journey inside the human mind.
(Check out our documentary on what it would take to settle the stars beyond our galaxy - the MP3 audio file on that page is still valid. Or listen to our documentary on whether we need humans in space at all.)
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Comments (15)
Another fundamental reason to justify space exploration was described by Carl Sagan. He once said that the biggest reason for space exploration was the survival of the Human race. You don't put all of your eggs in one basket so that the next large meteorite doesn't wipe us out like it did the dinosaurs.
I remember many years ago a sci-fi story (later made into a half-hour TV program) about just such an "isolation booth" in which future astronauts were being trained.
The story was about the problems they faced and how they tried to solve them, told from the pov that the astronauts believed they were in space. The plot twist at the end was the revelation that they were really safely (?) on Earth.
It well may be that in real life we'll have to sit here at home and rely on sending cybernetic robots to do our explorations and relay the information back to us.
Space is truly the "final frontier". But as with all frontiers, the initial challenge seems daunting to say the least. But take a look at what the "Human" spirit has achieved over the past several hundred years. We have progressed from cave dwellers to house dwellers, from scattered flocks to a mass of humanity. From diverse cultures to diverse cultures. We have made tremendous strides as a species, but the article really strikes at the most important reality, the ability to co-exist in peace. Technically, we have advanced with tremendous strides, but culturally, emotionally, and maturity we still need much, much work. I have no doubt that space travel will indeed be achieved and those who will step forward to accept the challenge will do an excellent job. But the final analysis is the ability to co-exist and in that respect, the challenges of space travel may pale in comparison. Nuff said for now.
How big a part will/should/can pharmacology play in the success of such a venture? If we acknowledge the abnormal stress attendant to the "artificial" conditions, is there anything wrong with creating artificial means to cope? I'm confident it's already being explored, I just wonder if this will be another aspect of space exploration that directly benefits society. A new "Tang" for the masses. Sign me up!
VERY interesting.
I used to believe in the usefullness of space travel, but I've come to realize of late that space will become the property of corporations who will value profits over life. Hundreds will die in space, (maybe even the first Mars explorers), where no one will hear their screams, but the time delayed recordings of their chilling demise will haunt us all.
Kind of makes you wonder how Columbus did it, in 3 little ships without electronic communication. Took him a little more than 20 minutes to communicate with the people back home, too.
Not to mention the pioneers who moved out west in little wagons. How did they ever survive without a gameboy?
And what about Henry Hudson, Frobisher, and others?
Maybe they should go back and read their journals and see how those people coped.
While such a test-mission is of "scientific interest" one has to wonder of the educational, technical, and professional backgrounds of the volunteers. Simply, there are persons who can live on an assembly line and others who have to have a purpose.
Maintaining such a regiment of maintenance, cleaning, eating, sleeping, and working on a 24 hr "hot bunk" lifestyle indefinitely can be achieved by some unique individuals. However, without some "stress" to motivate someone to be alert and ready, how valid an experiment is it? One must ask if the test is designed to be a benchmark in a without a "risk to life stress" factor?
Without risk or purpose, it maybe a moot point. Case in point, strategic-submariners, or prisoners of war.
I also think such research or comparison to earlier out-of-orbit missions maybe missing the point. When we think back to the Apollo missions we often forget that that it was a cold war event to "beat the Russians" and that the majority involved were "willingly expendable people" who relished calculating the risk and then banking everything on it. To quote a Larry Gowan lyric, "there's nothing like the high from a ticking bomb". These were war-era test and fighter pilots who had risked their lives in the past.
Currently a flight to Mars is a one way trip. But who knows in 10 or 30 years. I just hope we as a civilization can find the motivation to tackle the psychological aspects of the pollution/consumption/population problems with as much zest.
The problem of potentially dangerous confrontational interactions occurring during prolonged space flight for men in relatively small enclosed quarters can be solved by having these men volunteer to leave their testicles at home. The organs will be stored and re-attached when they get back; problem solved.
Reminds me of the story I heard about Russian Cosmonaut training back in the days of Mir. (No, I don't have any citations to back up my story, to get that out of the way now.)
The training was very simple: put the proposed space station team in a small car in Vladivostok, and tell them to drive to Moscow, well over six thousand kilometers as the crow flies, and closer to nine thousand by the regular routes. If they were still speaking to each other by the time they got there, several days later, they'd be able to function together as a team.
They should send Buddhist monks or nuns. They have been studying "inner" space for centuries and would probably have the means to maintain peace amongst the crew. It would solve the issue of celibacy as well.
Lately the Chinese 'Year of the ----' has been my guidepost for who I choose to befriend. There is more to it than you think....I grew up in a family of non compatible signs, this I know now, life could have been so much better had I known this then.
So make sure the astronauts are compatible by animals and zodiac. Then they will get along.
Let me start off by saying i have alot of respect for Bob Mcdonald he has put alot of effort into scientific research and is not afraid to show us the dirty side of our mass consumption (pollution left by industry)(Gold Mining).
But this article is just stupid a "105 day Project will examine the psychological challenges of living with others in a confined space for a year- and-a-half, a challenge that could be greater than the technical one".
Comparison: 6 people in a jail cell with nothing to do no bigger than 1 mobile home,reading the same newspaper for weeks on end,
no psychological testing needed,next stop planet nowhere.But we can not send criminals to inhabit another planet
thats what happened to earth.
i say send David Suzuki, we know there will be beer in the fridge and caulking in all the cracks.
Do not send William Shatner (Captain Kirk) we know how he liked the ladies.Sign me up,maybe the economy will be better by then.
If I remember correctly, the last time an experiment like this was conducted, the whole operation had to be shut down early because violent rivalries developed between the men over a female cohabitant. I don't think it bodes well for future long-term space travel.
Clearly, this is one of those studies that can never precisely replicate reality; unlike an actual space-bound crew, the test crew will always know that if things do get bad (or good) enough (e.g. amorous love affairs)the capsule door opens only on a vacuum of earth-bound shame.