Mission to Mars

Mars 500 is a Russian experiment due to start in the final quarter of this year, to simulate conditions on a trip to the red planet.  Basically they’ve locked 6 scientists together in a tube for 520 days.  The logic is that it will 250 days to get there, 240 to get back and they’ll spend 30 days on the planet itself.

The volunteers (that’s right volunteers) will have no contact with the outside world except email to mission control, which operates with a 20 minute delay.  They have no shower, instead they will have a sauna-like cupboard here they can scrape dirt off with a napkin.  All food is based on what’s available on the International Space Station – so pretty limited on the diet stakes.

Then during the 30 day landing simulation the cosmonauts (terranauts if they’re not leaving Earth?) will be subjected to antiorthostatic hypokinesia- the practice of sleeping with one’s head lower than the body by about 6 to 8 degrees – to simulate weightlessness.

When I started reading about this, I was partly excited, as ever, about more research into space travel; and partly I was furious that they haven’t put web cams in this thing.  This is the harshest reality show never made.  6 super-intelligent, hungry, sleep deprived, stinking people locked in a metal tube -bring it on!

Consider what happened during the Marsolet Experiment, a 110 day simulation: Dr Lapierre a female Canadian volunteer got assaulted (one of the other cosmonauts forced a french kiss on her)  and two of the Russian cosmonauts had a fight so violent that blood was splattered on the walls of the simulation capsule. 

Come to think of it, it’s also a good set up for a low-budget horror film.