I've spent long periods of time underwater with about 120 others. I've seen how people slowly go mad under those conditions so I always come around to how they are going to keep people mentally fit during those long months in deep space. It's probably much lonelier out there between Earth and Mars vs the space station with it's constant view of Earth and of possibility of rescue.
1. Send a lot of people (15?) and give people some flexibility in who they spend time with.
2. Give people a lot of space. I mean a _lot_ more than you think you need. Inflatable habs could be one approach, but if Starship gets going we might not even need that.
3. Let people escape. Loads of video games, books, creative projects, etc.
4. Help people anticipate the destination. Include remote control (obviously not real time) of robots at the landing site as one of the ongoing training exercises. Regularly simulate missions you'll be undertaking on the surface.
5. Give people lots of space at the destination. Cut and cover enormous living areas, and let people customise them. Give the crew something to look forward to.
People survive worse, and some people are better suited to it than others. We'll start by sending the people who are expected to fare best.
I suppose I am just some random on the internet, but I think a lot of people unjustifiably think "human factors" are insurmountable. Yes, it'll be hard, but the kind of people who plan these missions are used to solving hard problems.
If anyone gets the chance I’d challenge you to visit Biosphere II in Arizona. It has some mixed success and controversy associated with it back in the day, but anyone can visit and take a tour if you want to feel what it would actually be like to live in a domed space colony.
The reason I suggest doing it, is because it might inspire you. When you open the door to the main dome you walk into an overgrown tropical rainforest, complete with waterfalls, insects, exotic plants, and so on. It left me with a feeling that yeah, actually, we could live on other planets and it wouldn’t be half bad.
We are not even a teeny tiny bit close to being able to replicate an environment like that in space. Waterfalls? With what gravity? Insects and exotic plants? You mean the invasive species that came to dominate Biosphere 2?
And even if we could replicate that level of Biosphere 2…well guess what? Everyone still went nuts anyways.
They went bonkers in a sealed bubble on Earth, with Earth gravity and Earth diurnal cycles. How would that possibly be easier on a planet where you’d have the innate factionalism in human interactions combined with the grinding stress of living on a world that wants to kill you?
I don't think anyone would expect that - but the goal in space is not to replicate as much of the Earth biospheres variety in a closed system, but to feed a couple people for as long as possible (but not necessarily indefinitely) with the materials at hand.
I think a vat-grown culture of highly nutritious fungi (or algae or whatever, I'm no expert and I don't pretend to have even an SF writer's level of understanding of the subject) would be a much more viable solution.
Yes, on that one I should have said “within a ship or station”.
But within that domain, my point still stands. We have no plausible way to construct such a ship or station that produces significant pseudo-gravity by rotating. Building such a thing is basically impossible with anything we can manufacture—building a “wheel” that can rotate fast enough and be large enough to not cause wild motion sickness and have the structural integrity to hold enough mass to sustain an ecosystem is beyond our materials science, and would be impossible to lift into space.
Exactly, while an interesting exercise, that would be insane!
But built from Lunar/asteroid material ? Sure, you can build 8 by 32 km cylinder from steel with dirt for shielding with that has a standard earth gravity just fine. No exotic materials required:
thats an interesting one. Humans can only just about tolerate rotation rates of about 1 rev/min or slower or get dizzy. That means the radius of such a rotating habitat has to be quite large to achieve any meaningful acceleration, which leads to its own challenges.
For example, to achieve 0.5g at rotation rate of 1/60 per second requires an arm length of 0.5 x 9.81 x 60^2 or about 10 miles. If you tentuple the rotation speed, ie 10 revs / min, you still need a radius of 180m
A have been thinking about all the things you could do in an aqua-park on a sizeable habitat in the zero-g section. Circular rotating pools - hello up there! And think about all the slides - possibilities are endless! :D
Yeah, other than the fact that Biosphere II completely failed to be self sustaining, then sure, it resembles what a space colony might look like.
And you are assuming there are no resource constraints on the sizes of those domes; Biosphere II was made by shipping machinery and raw materials across modest distances by truck, as opposed to shipping supplies from Earth by rocket.
I remember reading about Biosphere II in Omni magazine, in the late '70s. We still cannot create a self-sufficient sealed ecosystem here on Earth, 45 years later.
That's just cause it was too small. Only 3.14 acres. Need at least a few square miles. Dome a canyon. Pump up the air. Introduce water. Would be an amazing experiment.
We just spent years in quarantine. Some people “went mad,” others thrived. Surely we can use that giant experiment to pick who fits best on a trip to mars.
The article quips that only incels will live on mars as a derision towards those that do better in solitude. I think what they meant was many people on the spectrum would be well placed in a place where solitude is the default situation and they can socialize in a well controlled environment via streaming video and audio with a delay. What I felt sad about was the derision, an almost musk like “pedo” comment, by a neurotypical about our neurodiverse.
Your last point, about the possibility of rescue, is really interesting and I wonder if there's any clever ethical way to control for that in a study like the one in the podcast.
I have written anything because it's hard to describe. I'm sort of working on it. As for books, I didn't think I had any but just realized I went through a phase where I read nothing but Arctic and Antarctic exploration books. I related to the extremes we find ourselves in and the fear we feel when we realize there is no hope of rescue should something go wrong and it seems highly likely something will go wrong.
NASA did a program/simulation of a Mars base on the Maura Loa volcano in Hawaii where they had a crew live for an extended period of time. There has been a lot of great writing about it as well as a good podcast (The Habitat)
I believe you are describing working on a submarine. If so, is it possible that there are other factors? I have heard that it is hard to get enough sleep, air quality is poor, and the work schedule is relentless. All the information I have is second/third hand, but it seems like at least some of those stressors might contribute, and could probably be avoided in a mars mission. I would be very curious to hear your thoughts.
Which, to me, seems like the closest real-world-on-Earth-world training simulation you could develop.
You’d be totally reliant on one power source, sealed inside a pressurized tube, with totally disrupted circadian rhythms. But at least on a nuclear sub, you have the chance to escape to the the surface world, and a chance to restock there. On Mars? Step outside, you’re dead, and if you can’t replicate a resource on a world with less gravity & less solar power & not a shred of a biosphere, you’re dead.
Sounds like a fun, low-stress environment to me. Humans do great with living with unrelenting psychological stress in sealed metal tubes.
The first realistic colonies should be at the bottom of canyons with glass ceilings. If they are big enough you won't even feel like you're stuck in a sealed metal tube.
