Posted on 07/14/2009 1:04:31 PM PDT by george76
SIX volunteers from Russia and Europe today emerged from a capsule inside a Moscow research facility where they had been locked away for the last three months to simulate a mission to Mars.
The six stepped out of the module smiling and in apparent good health after 105 days cut off from the outside world at the isolation facility at the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems .
Dressed in blue overalls like real-life spacemen, the four Russians, a Frenchman and a German were handed bouquets of flowers and waved at well-wishers as they stood arm-in-arm outside the capsule.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Like the eco dome in Arizona some years ago.
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correct me if i am wrong but isn’t it closer to a year to get to mars....??...they need to get back into the capsule....
Does the Domino’s delivery promise of under 20 min apply?
First the Frenchman surrendered to the German, then the German killed off 2 of the original 6 Russians on board and declared the Russians' crew quarters and kitchen to be his Lebensraum.
If they had been playing GTA, would they be returning from San Andreas?
Depends on what trajectory you use. A high-energy trajectory can get you there relatively quickly, at the cost of a great deal of propellant.
They've still got to spend over a year at Mars once they get there. And the techical aspects of the return trip -- such as meeting up with the propellant for the return stage -- is a bit daunting. Also daunting is the technical challenge of stopping once they make it back to Earth....
They were not locked away from gravity I’ll bet.
Actually it sounds like they were in there TOO long.
I’ll bet they had it as tough as a submarine crew. or less.
Interesting experiment...and fairly useful too.
Otherwise, the German wants to have a sex change, and the Frenchman wants to marry him after he has his sex change, and the Russians drank all the simulated rocket fuel.
“...and the Russians drank all the simulated rocket fuel.”
Uh-oh. If the Russians fart, they’ll find themselves in space FOR REAL.
The problem being that, even if this thing works, it's a tremendous power hog.
Consider: they're to operate at a cumulative thrust of 214 mN/kW. Thus, to move a 1 kg mass at 1g would require a thrust of 9.8 N, and about 46 kW of power.
A manned spacecraft would at a very minimum require a mass on the order of 100,000 kg, including food, water, structure, people, and equipment.... and also the power generation system.
Thus, to get that mass to Mars at 1g would require something on the order of 4.6 MW.... That's a pretty huge reactor.
Four Russians, a German, and a Frenchman? What did they do in all that time, partition Poland?
I thought SEVEN went in?
So that’s where Pauly Shore has been lately.
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'Cold fusion' rebirth? New evidence for existence of controversial energy source
Researchers are reporting compelling new scientific evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called "cold fusion" that may promise a new source of energy. One group of scientists, for instance, describes what it terms the first clear visual evidence that LENR devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists view as tell-tale signs that nuclear reactions are occurring. ...
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