
Nasa ends year-long Mars simulation on Hawaii - Cozumel
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37211051
======
dang
Url changed from [http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/six-scientists-just-
eme...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/six-scientists-just-emerged-from-
a-dome-after-a-year-simulating-life-on-mars), which points to this.

------
creshal
I honestly don't understand NASA's approach with simulating and studying long-
term isolation. Submarines, especially nuclear ones, have been doing 100+ day
missions under cramped conditions for over eighty years, and in war times with
crews that were anything but picked for their compatibility with each other.
And yet, from Mercury on, NASA never seems to have tried to tap into that
experience, nor the hardware, and keeps insisting on doing everything
themselves from scratch. Why?

~~~
InclinedPlane
They do share information, but it's a much different situation.

It's not 100 days, NASA already does 100 day missions on the ISS, there's
little NASA doesn't know from direct experience that any navy could tell them.
The most common scenario for a mission to Mars would involve 6 month trips
with 18 month stays on the Martian surface, for a total of well over 2 years
away from Earth. With a crew of maybe 4, on the low end. That's a situation
that's completely unprecedented in history. Not only do you have extended
isolation, but there's no way to get out of that isolation, no matter what
happens. They are locked in to that extremely long term of isolation, there's
no abort scenario to bring them back home sooner (in many mission designs
anyway). The closest analogy on Earth isn't submarine voyages, it's actually
prison. And that's a big reason why there's been a desire to study these sorts
of things separately, without the extensive cost of space hardware in the
picture. Because it is an unknown and it does have the potential to impact the
potential success of a mission.

~~~
jcranmer
Whalers and fishing ships in the Medieval era would have been going on ~6-12
month journeys, with no contact faster than sending your boat somewhere.

The Pitcairn Islands were settled by mutineers from the Bounty, and this
settlement wasn't recontacted for 18 years.

Small groups of people being out of practical contact with anyone else would
have been relatively common in the Age of Sail--it's only with the development
of radio telegraphy that ship voyages were not horribly isolated.

------
mvd366
The BBC article includes a picture of the dome's interior.

[http://i.imgur.com/oQnNUfY.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/oQnNUfY.jpg)

Is that a Tardis on the left?

~~~
CookieMon
Damnnn, you're going to be stuck in a tent for a year, and they don't even put
in some windows.

The surroundings look martian enough. They weren't trying to artifically
simulate a day/night cycle were they? (No articles mention this)

~~~
bbctol
Not having windows seems like an important part of the test! It looks like
there might be a small porthole on one of the sides, but I doubt a real
Martian habitat would have much more than that, and the psychological impacts
would be interesting to know.

------
Alexey_Nigin
In my opinion, getting used to living in small space is the simplest thing
about surviving on Mars. It is much more difficult to maintain a steady supply
of oxygen, water, food, and energy. Also, there is always a possibility that
something important will suddenly break down and the colonists will need to
repair it using only what they have at hand. I would be much more impressed if
they tried to test how humans and current technology cope with these hard
tasks.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
True. If there is anything that can be considered an unambiguous benefit to
this otherwise hollow era of ubiquitous entertainment, it is that living in a
small space has become much easier to cope with.

Just go to 4chan and check out a lair thread. People will go to utterly
squalid lengths to stay glued to their skinner boxes.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber)

~~~
coldtea
Lair? Skinner boxes? I'm losing my grasp on today's youngsters...

~~~
ceejayoz
Skinner boxes are from the 1930s.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber)

------
JoeAltmaier
A more complete simulation could have taken place on the top of Mt Everest.
Except living there for a year would be far easier than living a year on Mars.

~~~
Diederich
I'm not sure if you're being serious or snide; either is fine with me, because
there's a lot of truth to what you said.

It might be interesting to actually break that comparison down a bit. I won't
attempt to do that, but a couple of things jump to mind.

1\. The 'cost per kilo' to Everest is probably a lot lower. 2\. The chance of
mortality per trip is impossible to know for Mars, but we can just assume it's
about the same as for Everest. 3\. Everest has a lot more atmosphere than any
location on Mars. 4\. I'm not certain, but I believe there are locations on
Mars that are warmer on average than Everest. 5\. Mars lacks an effective
planetary radiation shield. 6\. A somewhat educated guess on my part: because
the atmosphere is so thin on Mars, the wind at its worst can't cause anything
like the damage it can on Everest. One of the few intentional unscientific
things in The Martian was how much force wind on Mars has. 7\. I think the big
Mars win, compare to Everest, is how much flat land you there is available.

This is a kind of whimsical thought process, but it belies a deeper mental
struggle on my part. There are few people more excited about the prospect of
humans forming living on Mars. It just makes me giddy and warm all over
thinking about it. But at the same time, there are countless enormous and
serious problems here on earth that could be attacked with the huge sums of
money and resources required to setup shop on Mars.

So what it is all about? Musk says that we need to make humans a multi-
planetary species. Ok, fair enough. But consider the timeframe and odds of an
event on earth that would make human life here impossible. Sure, we could have
a total nuclear war after 10x worst case climate change after etc etc etc. But
I think that will leave more people alive and more or less functional in the
long term than we could put on Mars in a hundred years.

So what is it about?

One of my dark guesses is this: Musk, looking into the future, sees humanity
tearing itself apart for various reasons. And that those death spasms, over
the course of years and decades, will likely destroy any extreme, 'mars
replacement' outposts we make here on earth.

Millions of miles away, a few thousand people on Mars might be immune to such
events.

This is an emotionally driven analysis on my part, but it does cross my mind
from time to time.

In the meantime, I look forward to this Saturday's SpaceX launch and return!
And even more keenly I look forward to next month's Mars Architecture
presentation.

~~~
dogma1138
Mars is a radiation bath because there is no magnetic field.

Mars is a dead planet it is not geologically active which means it has a solid
core that does not provide a dynamo effect.

We still don't know why, one of the theories is that it lacks a large moon
which might have an important impact on the longevity of the planet.

The other suspect is nuclear elements that decay and produce heat but it is
not known if it's enoguh to keep the plant cool.

The other 2 planets that are still active are Venus and Pluto.

Pluto has a very large moon (relative to its size) but Venus doesn't, however
it could be that the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is enoguh to keep the
planet not only warm but in overdrive because the atmosphere is thick and
heavy it puts a lot of pressure on Venus which might be enough to keep it
going.

------
Proof
This article really lacks substance. Why not do a semi in depth interview
about what it was like, their biggest struggles, biggest wins, how they kept
sane, ect. Seeing that is posted here, I would've expected more of an
interesting read than just "they were in a dome a whole year." As commentators
pointed out, Navy sailors go through confide quarters for better part of the
year. Not too mention, America houses the most prisoners in the world, surely
they would be a good example of cramped living. Hmm, oh well, it is has gone.

~~~
ceejayoz
Navy sailors and prisoners get fresh food, interact with more than six people,
and can phone friends/family without a multi-minute time delay. It's more than
just cramped living.

------
freshyill
What is it with the use of the word "just" in headlines over the past few
years? They're not going full-on "you won't believe what happens next", but it
seems like it's a form of clickbait-lite.

~~~
nannal
Because it implies that this news is the newest news. it JUST happened.

~~~
creshal
…a day before that article was written, so two days ago.

~~~
mobiuscog
So recently... not long ago.

------
legodt
Why are Atlas Obscura articles tolerated on HN? They often lack substance when
compared to more upstream sources and invariably come packaged with social-
media ready clickbaity titles.

~~~
dang
It belongs to a class of sites that produce both interesting original content
and blogspam, i.e. low-quality ripoffs of other sources. The present post
unfortunately was the latter, which is why we eventually changed the URL to
the BBC piece it was lifted from.

This category of sites is problematic for HN. We want their best articles, so
we don't ban them (though we do typically penalize them by default). But we
definitely don't want their dreck.

One thing's for sure: if we don't notice that an article is lifted from
another source and/or spammy, users will. In that case, please let us know.
We're as eager as you are to have HN link to the best story on a topic. The
best way to let us know is by emailing hn@ycombinator.com. We can't read all
the comments here but we do read all the emails.

~~~
legodt
I had no idea that certain classes of sites have default penalties ascribed to
them here, very cool. Thanks for the explanation!

