Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/26/nasa-seeking-martians-for-one-year-pretend-mission.html
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It could be fun, barring a potato famine.
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One of the premises in Andy Weir’s book Project Hail Mary was that studies like these proved that people can’t be cooped up in small spaceships together for months or years on end without eventually trying to kill each other, therefore NASA determined that induced comas are the only way to go for long-duration missions. It was necessary for the story but also seems sadly close to the truth.
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Trump, Musk, MTG and, just for a laugh, Liz Truss. And no coma. Just growing potatoes in their own shit.
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Define healthy. I meet the rest of the requirements…at least until I turn 56 in November.
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Before I signed up I would ask them to tell me how many pages the waivers add up to, if printed with ten point text on standard paper.
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A friend was just added to this year’s HERA tests (45 day Mars simulations) and is really excited.
The BB post left out that this requires advanced STEM education (masters or higher)
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I think there are literally thousands of marine examples of people cooped up in a tight ship (or submarine) for years and mostly not killing each other. But they all involve tight, even brutal discipline with strictly defined outlets for tension.*
*“Rum, sodomy and the lash”
I haven’t heard any examples of sailors spending years at a time on a cramped vessel without shore leave or even an opportunity to go outside.
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Most submarine tours are 60-90 days so that the crew remains alert and functional. And, as stated above, they can go breathe fresh air when surface cruising.
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Good. We should be running these kinds of experiments all the time, whether we claim they have anything to do with Mars or not. We have a lot to learn about how to actually manage living in a world where we have to do more/all of the things our ancestors and we have been leaving to nature to clean up.
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Obviously it is a further step to have them stuck indoors, but there were certainly multiyear voyages in the Age of Sail, some of them not touching land for months at a time.
Plenty of issues with those voyages, of course, but they at least show the ability to cram hundreds of people into a small space for a long time, with many cautionary examples to learn from.
Is it a B.Y.O.S. (Bring Your Own Sandworm) situation?
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I know, I’m 56 now and bummed that it’s a sign I’ve aged out of a lot of stuff.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my doctor just prescribed me some blood pressure medication…
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whether there will be astronaut ice cream or not.
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… made from real astronauts 
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