Hope the engineers designing the rockets, space ships, space stations, payloads, suits, arms, etc for Mars are getting what Gene Kranz termed, the āHuman Factorā.
Without it simulations with astronauts are a waste. They will die on mission.
We donāt need to let the lessons of Gus Grissom-Ed White-Roger Chaffee be repeated.
Man, some people have really cool jobs.
Theyāre āreturning to earthā today.
Except tonight, on the slopes of Mauna Loa, they see a quaintly old-fashioned town, populated by their long-dead loved onesā¦
Cosplay taken to the next level.
Most of the time simulation is different in reality.
I applied to be a part of this (Maggie here at BB suggested it to me actually) and made it to the final round of applicants! They didnāt choose me, but one of the researchers e-mailed me when they were preparing signups for a second simulated mission suggesting I should apply again. I didnāt think Iād be available, so Iām bummed I missed the opportunity.
Participants did get a (small) stipend for their troubles but itās not a ājobā as another commenter put it, itās basically a volunteer/internship type thingā¦ you had to be able to be unemployed for the whole time, with no worry about that causing a problem with paying your bills or whatever, and be in a position where hopefully this looks good on your resume. Limits the pool basically to unemployed academics (whose families can support them financially) planning to go to but not yet in grad school who are passionate about space exploration and stuff (#gpoy).
Anyway, part of the application process was to design an individual project youād complete, in addition to the various things involved with the actual experiment. I did some research on tools and equipment used on Apollo missions on the moon, and my project was going to be expanding on and improving them for use in scientific exploration of Mars. Iām not an engineer so I didnāt expect anything I designed would ever actually get used, but I am a geologist with a lot of experience using equipment in the field, and with bulky space suits there are a lot of geology things you canāt do (and which the Apollo astronauts couldnāt do on the moon) so I thought itād be fun and useful to think about those sorts of problems.
I always suspect that whatever data is collected on āthe human element/isolation/etcā¦ā is going to be a bit skewed by these researchers truly understanding that if the shit hit the fan, that. ultimately, they could just walk out that (loosely fitted looking) door flap into fresh breathable air, and hitch a ride to civilization. Knowing that itās all a play has to tone down the stress level and perceived finality of a situation, at least compared to the āreal thingā where a suit mishap, a failure to close a door properly, or any one of a number of other simple mistakes could mean the end, and thereās no potential to give up and go home.
That could certainly be the caseāthat the subjects donāt necessarily feel the strain of living off-world and therefore maybe they donāt exhibit some symptoms that would otherwise be harmful in an off-world situation. That said, theyāre still doing valuable research that will benefit the community in a number of ways, whether itās suit design that can stand up to the rigors of a working, long-term environment, or the stresses of living in a small habitat at distinctly close quarters for long periods of time. Thereās only so much research information we can get out of our only off-world location at the moment, so it makes sense to study conditions on the ground as best as can be done.
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