Simulated Trip to Mars Is Planned

[cro-man]

If you have planetary vision, want to be on the cutting edge and don't get bored easily, the European Space Agency may be looking for you. It is looking for 12 volunteers for a simulated mission to Mars that will last up to 520 days in "extreme isolation and confinement."

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this picture of Mars 11 hours before the planet made its closest approach to Earth on Aug. 26, 2003.

. If you have planetary vision, want to be on the cutting edge and don't get bored easily, the European Space Agency may be looking for you. It is looking for 12 volunteers for a simulated mission to Mars that will last up to 520 days in "extreme isolation and confinement." Despite the rigorous conditions, more than 2,000 applications have been received in two days, project manager Jennifer Ngo-Anh said Thursday, June 21, 2007.

Despite the rigorous conditions, more than 2,000 applications have been received in two days, project manager Jennifer Ngo-Anh said Thursday.

"The reaction has been really overwhelming. My mailbox is full," she said in a telephone interview.

Candidates must be citizens of one of 15 European countries or Canada, be highly motivated and speak English and Russian, among other requirements.

Unlike the adventurous spirits attracted to the desert island prospects of reality TV, only the "serious" need apply for this simulated interplanetary voyage, the space agency said. The payoff is likely less glamorous, too. Remuneration is "in line with international standards" for clinical studies, is all it would say.

The Paris-based agency, known as ESA, is working on the Mars500 project with the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow and the simulated mission will be conducted there and include Russians. The Russian participants will be chosen separately in Russia.

The volunteers will investigate the "human factor" of a trip to the Red Planet - "a journey with no way out once the spaceship is on a direct path to Mars," ESA says.

The experiment will emphasize psychological factors, including stress resistance. The goal is to test how the volunteers hold up in nearly a year-and-a-half of close confinement, in cramped quarters with others and when communications with Earth can take 20 minutes to reach their destination - each way.

The simulation is to take place in a series of connected modules, mimicking life in a spacecraft on a trip to Mars, including once it has landed on the planet. The routine includes scientific experiments.

Read more Here

Want to pretend to go to Mars? Apply here

Edited June 22, 2007 by cro-man

[ricktendo]

Sign me up... Always wanted to poop in a adult diaper and drink purified/recycled urine

[cro-man]

LOL

[cygnus]

lmao eww that nasty