Posted on 10/11/2004 6:17:41 PM PDT by Simmy2.5
Russian space researchers will lock six men in a metal tube for more than year in an effort to mimic the stresses and challenges of a manned mission to Mars.
The 500 Days experiment, under development by the Russian Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, will isolate human volunteers in a mock space station module for -- as its namesake suggests -- a complete 500 days to study how a long mission to Mars might affect its human crew.
"Obviously, we're very interested in the results," NASA spokeswoman Dolores Beasley said of the long-duration study during a telephone interview. "It is a high priority for us."
During the 500 Days study, six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water. A doctor will accompany volunteers inside the module to treat illnesses and injuries. Volunteers will only be allowed to quit the experiment if the develop a severe ailment of psychological stress.
But experiment participation is not solely reserved for Russian volunteers, institute officials added.
"We have informed our American colleagues that we plan to start an imitation of a manned flight to Mars with the help of volunteers in 2006," Yevgeny Ilyin, deputy director for science at the institute, told Russia's Interfax news agency during a recent Russian-American working group meeting in Moscow.
NASA has been invited by Russian scientists to join in on the Mars mock mission, but a final decision by the U.S. space agency is pending, said NASA's Guy Fogleman, NASA director of the Office of Biological and Physical Research's Bioastronautics Research Division, to Russian reporters.
The space agency has not yet decided whether it will participate, though a decision is anticipated some time in the next few months, Beasley added.
NASA astronauts currently serve six-month missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS), though Russian flight controllers have lobbied to increase joint U.S.-Russian missions up to one-year in duration.
"Any medical and biological experiments made on board the International Space Station aim at long-distance space flights of the future," Ilyin said.
The U.S. single spaceflight endurance record falls on the crew of ISS Expedition 4, Carl Walz and Dan Bursch, who lived aboard the space station for a total of 196 days.
Veteran Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, a medical doctor, set the current world record for the longest continuous spaceflight when he spent about 438 aboard Russia's Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.
Polyakov told Interfax reporters that the 500 Days experiment will not include female volunteers.
I volunteer Kerry!
I hope the pay is good...that would suck.
Actually, long space expidititions should be couples only. They will come out loving each other more than ever....or hate each other.
After 500 days nothing left except 1 fat dude and a pile of bones.
"We have informed our American colleagues that we plan to start an imitation of a manned flight to Mars with the help of volunteers in 2006,"
Hot damn, Al Gore may yet have a purpose in life!
Ok, Ok, you got me there.... Kerry AND EDWARDS.
K?
How are they going to simulate the lack of gravity for that long? Geez, if I wanted to demonstrate the effects of being cooped up for a couple of years, all I'd have to do is nominate my slacker brother for this.
Can we bring this experiment to Gitmo, and expand it?
They can use the videos from our fake moon missions. Maybe they'll retrieve our flag for Sheila Jackson Lee. It would look good on her wall.
500 days. They emerge, thinking they've actually been to Mars. And nobody is paying any attention to them. Looks good on a resume?
Interesting. I think they need to drop their "cell" in about 100 feet of water.
It has to add the stress of loss of environmental integrity. 100 feet isn't too bad, divers can hit that, but it's enough that it becomes an imperitive if it fails.
Not to mention, any space mission to mars will require some kind of radiation shielding. Water around the capsule is probably the most efficient. You use the water, both ways. Lead is heavy and hard to eat.
Not without at least a good supply of porn and a private room.
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