Next spring six volunteers are put together for 500 days in a simulated environment they cannot leave under any circumstances. A spectacular psychological experiment. And a very necessary one. Earlier space travels took only up to a week and a half and, although away from earth, the home-planet was always very visible. The emotional distance to earth was relatively small and astronauts could always communicate by using email or telephone.
When going to Mars, communication between earth and the shuttle can take up to 44 minutes, the earth itself will be a tiny dot in the black. How do people respond to that? Earlier isolation experiments only lasted half the time necessary to travel to Mars. Results from those isolation experiments and the results from earlier space travel show the participating subjects were not capable of adjusting their behavior to their colleagues. It resulted in fights, desolation and broken self-image and egos. Cultural difference were blown out of proportions. The problem with space travel we face today is not of technical nature, but human.
How do you cope with the human factor in a world where the possibilities technology offers seem endless? To what use do you develop the technology?
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They could take robots aboard
They have to figure out something, check out these plans. Space Race Part two:
- China has already had two people in space. The CNSA plans to have a robot powered vehicle on the moon in 2012. The first Chinese on the moon is planned for 2020. After that the Chinese will head for mars. They are determined to arrive there before the Americans.
- India will launch a satellite to the moon in early 2008. The chairman of the ISRO (Indian NASA) said in 2006 India will have a manned spaceship on the moon before China.
- The US have responded with shifting more budget towards NASA from 2009 onwards, with a planned manned moonlanding in 2020.
- Japan has declared it wants a permanent base on the moon in 2025. But not manned by human beings, but by robots. In 2007 Japan launches Selene, the most sophisticated lunar exploration mission in the post-Apollo Era. Its goal: research the moon.
- Russia is the most positive in its plans. It has increased its space budget tenfold since 1999 and the director of RKK energiya (which builds spaceships) has stated Russia will have a manned base on the the moon in 2015 and will start transporting helium-3 in 2020.
- In Europe, the space agencies have woken up to this relived interest in the moon and beyond. The French want the ESA (European Space Agency) to focus on manned missions. The Germans recently reserved half a billion euros for a satellite to monitor the moon. This action does not involve the ESA, because Germany believes France is to dominant in this agency. Italy and Great Britain also have independent lunar plans. The ESA does have the Aurora program which goal it is to put a human on mars in 2030.
there are very interesting ‘thought experiments’ to be found in science fiction literature (yes literature.)
one of my most recent books was chasm city (alistair reynolds). in this book they describe a space voyage that takes 3 generations to reach it’s destination. this ship brings a ‘colonly’ in frozen form (a couple of thousand highly engineered frozen individuals.) but the ship is run by a community of about 150 people. old, young, couples, singles, everything. this group of people knows it has to reproduce to fulfill their task. there grandsons and granddaughters will reach the destination they are heading for. and they didn’t send 1 ship, but 5. because they foresaw the downfall of these ships but more importantly t5 communities could trade while living apart.
what i find interesting is that this ‘experiment’ reverses the dependency. where we want to ‘adapt’ individuals to ‘fit’ into a situation like a trip to mars with 5 other people. here the trip (and technology) is designed to adapt to the human physiology and psychology. what would be best ‘environment’ for a manned mission to mars?
i was thinking of one central facility. all 6 people could have their personal ‘aircraft’. these aircrafts can ‘dock’ the central facility and ‘couple’ with one other aircraft. this way privacy in various constellations can be assured. and some group activity can be conducted in the central aircraft. did anyone think of such a scenario? do all these space agencies conceive of such initiatives? when will we be seeing alternative space travel?