Mars One by Erik Seedhouse

Author:Erik Seedhouse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

TEDDY BEARS AND BOONDOGGLING

So please: no more wailing about how isolated these Mars One contestants will be. No more griping about how real time interaction with people back home will be impossible, and no more whining about difficult it will be for these contestants to be faced with the prospect of only interacting with each other for the rest of their lives. Look, in the best case scenario, the chances are high that they will never reach the surface of Mars, so 'the rest of their lives' won't amount to a tin of beans. And no more of this nonsense about how isolation will cause mental illness, depression, insomnia, and emotional instability. Have 21st century humans truly become so soft that people really believe a few months cooped up in cozy spaceship will cause nervous breakdowns? Apparently the psychologists do. Shackleton, Nansen and company must be spinning in their graves. Look, all these so-called experts should stop making sensationalist comments about crewmembers becoming homesick and isolated and start reading some of the classics of exploration. 'Endurance' by Alfred Lansing, 'Fatal Passage' by K. McGoogan, 'The Worst Journey in the World' by Apsley Cherry-Garrard – take your pick. Why? Because by reading these books they will discover that humans have an extraordinarily high threshold for isolation and confinement. At least, 100 years ago they did. The problem these days is that people are soft (see sidebar). They have their iPhones and streaming video. They have their on-demand movies and e-mail. They have their… well, you get the idea. Mention 'social isolation' and today's merchants-of-doom psychologists throw their collective teddy bears in the corner and complain about the terrible health burdens that will result. Oh please!

Boondoggled #1

To boondoggle is to perform work of little or no value, merely to keep or look busy. Here's an example. In 2005 the US government authorized $452 million to build two bridges in Alaska. One of these bridges, which became known as the Bridge to Nowhere, would have connected Ketchikan to Gravina Island, home to just a few dozen people. Crazy, right? That's a boondoggle for you. Here's another. In July 2009, the State Scientific Center of the Russian Federation conducted a 105-day pilot confinement study by locking six crewmembers in a tin can (see Figure 5.10). This study was a prelude to a 520-day study that was supposed to simulate a mission to Mars. Completed in November 2011, six multinational crewmembers spent 520 consecutive days of confinement in a 550 m3 pressurized facility. Facility modules were equipped with life support systems and an artificial atmospheric environment at normal barometric pressure, and activities simulated the work routine on board the ISS. The crew lived on a five-day work cycle, with two days off, except for emergency simulations. Dozens of experiments were performed in the disciplines of physiology, biochemistry, immunology, biology, microbiology, operations and technology, and of course psychology. I wonder what the Pomori would have made of these crewmembers living in the lap of luxury? The

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