The headline on the Tribune website reads: “Pale-faced Mars crew “lands” after 520 days in isolation.” Don’t get too excited. Technically, it was a “Mars” “crew,” not a Mars crew.
I wonder if the job posting made it clear that successful applicants were going to jail, not Mars:
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Pale-faced but smiling, the crew of a long-duration isolation study emerged bleary-eyed to a flood of daylight and applause on Friday after 520 days locked away in windowless, cramped cells to simulate the length of a journey to Mars.
The $15 million Mars500 experiment aims to answer one of the big unknowns of deep-space travel: Could people stay healthy and sane during more than six months rocketing to the Red Planet?
In a study set to recreate the psychological strain of a real Mars mission as closely as possible, the six male volunteers will briefly embrace friends and family before being ushered directly into a three-day quarantine period. [Reuters]
At least this mission went better than the last one:
A previous 420-day experiment ended in drunken disaster in 2000, when two participants got into a fistfight and a third tried to forcibly kiss a female crew member.
I’m guessing they lasted longer because the Kindle was invented between stints in the hole.
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