Six Men Lock Themselves In A Box For Science

From Kotaku.com

  Quote

Three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Columbian, and a Chinese walk into a fake spaceship, and don't walk out again for 520 days. Stop me if you've heard this one.

 

Starting today, a crew of six pseudo spacemen will be spending a year-and-a-half inside the Mars 500, a mock spacecraft, in order to help the Moscow-based Institute for Medical and Biological Problems and the European Space Agency simulate a manned trip to Mars.

 

See, getting men to Mars isn't the main problem. Getting men to Mars without them killing each other, as scientifically documented in movies like Danny Boyle's Sunshine - that's the problem.

 

People aren't meant to spend so much time together in enclosed spaces. Within hours tensions start to rise, tempers flare, and soon enough dad is threatening to turn this car around and go back home.

 

A manned trip to Mars would be much more inconvenient. There'd be no stopping to stretch your legs, no pit stops at Denny's, and no relaxing evenings at the Motel 6, watching the scrambled porn channel after making sure the kids were asleep in the next room.

 

No, a manned trip to Mars sounds like my idea of hell, so I'm glad that it's a team of multinational volunteers that will be sealing themselves inside a 20,000 cubic foot windowless capsule to simulate the 520 day trip to and from Mars.

 

"When everybody interacts with the same people in the same space, habits and behavior become apparent very quickly. These habits may irritate and cause indignation - and even fits of aggression," said Mikhail Baryshev, a psychotherapist who is connected to the program.

 

The six men will spend their 520 days performing various experiments, eating canned food, and desperately trying to stave off space madness. To make things worse, they'll only be able to shower once every 10 days, which is half of what I believe the normal number of showers should be.

 

Still, they'll have video games!

 

The ESA (European Space Agency)said the crew will also regularly play video games as part of the agency's project to develop personalized software to interact with crews on future space missions.

 

The ESA (Entertainment Software Association) would approve.

 

Still, will games be enough to keep these six men from each other's throats?

 

In 1999 an experiment much like this one failed, after a Canadian woman complained a Russian team captain had kissed her, and two crewmembers splattered blood all over the walls during a fistfight.

 

Russian officials blamed the incident on cultural gaps and stress.

 

Three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Columbian, and a Chinese walk into a fake spaceship...oh wait, I already said that.

 

On behalf of everyone here at Kotaku, I wish these brave non-explorers well, and hope their time not in space teaches us a great deal about how to endure a long space flight until Sam Neill shows up.

I read about this earlier today.

520 days! I'd go completely postal within a few hours.

bring in a copy of wikipedia on a dvd (edit:) and a copy of tetris (edit:) and one of those siterips you can get on pureTNA, sorted.

pretty sure knowing i'm going to mars for scientific purposes wwould b awhole lot more fullfilling then sitting in a pseudo cubby house for 500 days. you'd go bonkers!

the thread title alone made me tense up

a nasa-grade synth rig and loaded xbox would dull the insane annoyance this would be

I imagine those anuses after the experiment ends

  On 6/4/2010 at 1:27 AM, ruiagnelo said:

I imagine those anuses after the experiment ends

nasa encourages fapping to fight the muscle atrophy from living in zero gravity

  On 6/4/2010 at 1:23 AM, hahathhat said:

a nasa-grade synth rig

Actually, it would make sense to me to give them things to pursue their creative interests (music making, painting, writing, etc). 500 days to focus on your art with minimal distractions actually seems like a unique sort of opportunity to me. By the time it was over, you'd either loathe it or be making really top tier stuff.

  On 6/4/2010 at 1:27 AM, ruiagnelo said:

I imagine those anuses after the experiment ends

it's not like a this never leaves the capsule situation... they're being monitored.

  On 6/4/2010 at 1:23 AM, hahathhat said:

a nasa-grade synth rig and loaded xbox would dull the insane annoyance this would be

first shoop with cs5, puppet warp!

  On 6/4/2010 at 1:51 AM, dr lopez said:

  On 6/4/2010 at 1:27 AM, ruiagnelo said:

I imagine those anuses after the experiment ends

it's not like a this never leaves the capsule situation... they're being monitored.

Even so. Some of them will just go "who cares, i can't hold it anymore" and it will happen.

fart chamber opportunity

i'll give 'em a week

  kaini said:

bring a copy of techno tetris and a boombox

fixd

Gime empty room and pc with max/msp. I think I could live just with this for 520 days. And food of course.

They must be paying these guys a fucking mint.

Are they all men? They're fucked if so.

If they were to travel to Mars, the crew would require equal number of men and women because sex would be required for such a journey. True story.

A dude spent three months in a space station once, he started cracking up after a month.

Reminds me of Moon

i think they should just admit that humans have needs and bring like a porn star or something to please the inevitably male crewmembers. first porn star in space.

that was my first thought too, 520 days without sex, fuck that, terra firma for me

actually it's funny, way back in the day I read some books on preparation for the mars missions.. this isn't the first time they have locked people up, they actually did it in antartica one winter and after a few months people became quite... eccentric.. even way back then the assumption was that there would be partners sent to the mars mission (sexual that is) i find it really funny that they haven't prepared for this very basic human need, either that or they found some real introverts who have never had any anyway

kim stanley robinson's red mars talks a lot about that.

  On 6/4/2010 at 4:39 PM, theSun said:

i think they should just admit that humans have needs and bring like a porn star or something to please the inevitably male crewmembers. first porn star in space.

this.

  On 6/4/2010 at 4:34 PM, Capsaicin said:

Reminds me of Moon

and this.

  On 6/4/2010 at 4:39 PM, theSun said:

i think they should just admit that humans have needs and bring like a porn star or something to please the inevitably male crewmembers. first porn star in space.

 

DEFINITELY this.