A view of the HI-SEAS habitat on the island of Hawaii, where six crew members will spend a year in isolation. The experiment is meant to test the social and psychological effects of a real Mars mission. (HI-SEAS/University of Hawaii)
Posted on 09/02/2015 10:48:30 PM PDT by ETL
On Aug. 28, six scientists left the comforts of civilization, set to be gone for an entire year. Their mission will simulate what it might be like for astronauts journeying to Mars.
In the confines of a 36-foot-wide and 20-foot-high solar-powered dome in a remote location on the island of Hawaii, the six team members will have to live together for 365 days. They will have no face-to-face contact with humans outside of the dome. This is the fourth and longest such mission carried out by the Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) program, and its goal is to find out how people will respond to the isolation that might accompany a mission to Mars.
"We hope that this upcoming mission will build on our current understanding of the social and psychological factors involved in long-duration space exploration," Kim Binsted, principal investigator for HI-SEAS, said in a statement from the University of Hawaii.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Where is Everybody?
Airdate: 2 Oct 1959
"A man finds himself alone on a dirt road, walking towards a diner. Inside he finds a jukebox playing loudly, and a pot of hot coffee on the stove. But there are no other people. He inquires for some breakfast, but no chef or waitress is to be found. He is dressed in an Air Force flight suit, but he does not remember who he is or how he got there.
After leaving the diner, he walks to a nearby town. The town seems deserted, but everywhere the man goes, he seems to find proof that someone had been there recently: food is cooking on a stove, water dripping in a sink, and a cigar is burning in an ashtray. He grows more and more unsettled as he wanders through the empty town, looking for someone—anyone—to talk to, all the while having the strange feeling that he is being watched.
In a soda shop after talking to himself he idly spins racks filled with paperback books until he comes to an already spinning rack filled from top to bottom with the same book: "The Last Man on Earth, Feb. 1959".
Day turns to night and the man is still alone in the town. Street lights turn on all around him. Even the movie theater is illuminated. As he goes into the theater, he sees a poster advertising the film playing Battle Hymn, which causes him to remember that he is in the US Air Force. Finding no one in audience or the projection booth, he desperately runs through the theater until he crashes into a mirror.
In a panic, the man runs through the streets, until he finally collapses next to a street crossing and presses a button labeled WALK. As he whimpers for someone to help him, It is revealed that the walk button is actually a panic button. And the man is not alone in a deserted town, but is instead in an isolation booth being observed by a group of uniformed servicemen.
His name is Mike Ferris, an astronaut in training who has been confined to an isolation room located within an aircraft hangar for 484 hours and 36 minutes. He has been undergoing tests to determine his fitness for spaceflight and whether he can handle the psychological stress of a prolonged trip to the Moon alone. The town was a complete hallucination, an escape valve for his sensory-deprived mind.
As Ferris is carried out of the hangar on a stretcher, he sees the Moon above him, and says wistfully, "Hey! Don't go away up there! Next time it won't be a dream or a nightmare. Next time it'll be for real. So don't go away. We'll be up there in a little while."..."--Wikipedia
Main Cast: Earl Holliman, James Gregor
A view of the HI-SEAS habitat on the island of Hawaii, where six crew members will spend a year in isolation. The experiment is meant to test the social and psychological effects of a real Mars mission. (HI-SEAS/University of Hawaii)
wait until the Mauna Kea protesters get ahold of this news and show up at the Mars habitat with their haole go home signs. it’s coming
Sheila Jackson Lee (Democrat)
Member of the U.S. House
of Representatives
from Texas's 18th district
On a visit to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2005, Jackson Lee made embarrassing news by asking if the Mars Pathfinder had taken an image of the flag planted there in 1969 by Neil Armstrong.[2]
Prior to the 110th Congress, Jackson Lee served on the House Science Committee and on the Subcommittee that oversees space policy and NASA.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100409095818/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Jackson_Leep>
Ping!
They will know they are not really isolated though
They will know they are not really isolated though
I agree, and believe tests like this are bogus and prove nothing.
Outside of actually sending them to space, drop them in about 200 ft of water. No communication, no way to walk outside and get air, no circadian rhythm.
Anyone the rest of the group doesn’t beat to death, or shoot out of an air lock, gets to go to Mars.
Good point. But still, I suspect the solitude can drive one nuts after awhile anyway.
Waste of money! Contractors at DEW sites in Alaska have spent years in complete isolation in real extreme conditions. I can attest most are crazy as hell.
Some of the sites were designed as bases, so there were more facilities than they needed. One time sitting down in the chow hall with 100 or so chairs, one of them said, “That’s my chair,” accompanied by his trademark 1000-yard stare. I’m not ashamed to say I moved my butt.
Let’s mix it up and make it a reality show with a fag, lesbian, a couple straights and a queer hair dresser.
Again, the Twilight Zone seems to cover it...
"The Lonely"
Airdate: 13 Nov 1959
James A. Corry, a convicted criminal, is confined to solitary confinement on an asteroid nine million miles from Earth. Allenby, a supply ship captain, takes pity on him and leaves him a robot that looks like a woman. Eventually Corry falls in love with the robot.
Main Cast: David Wayne, Thomas Gomez, virginia Christine
The Mars Society has been doing this kind of thing for years in the Canadian Arctic and the Utah desert. Not for such a long stay though. The MS members are all volunteers and don’t get govt. funding and have to get back to things called jobs.
Mars simulation, spend a year in Hawaii, oh the hardships. ;’) I’d love that kind of hardship. I’m definitely going to look into this junk.
Maybe a reality show, set in one of these simulations... that would be a way of pushing the costs off into the private sector...
Audrey Hepburn?
That was a classic.
Both of them, that is.
why cant they recruit at those comic conventions? They’re smart, alone, anti-social and virgins. Surely they can take the isolation better than anyone
Lol!
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