Under the rules of the experiment, a participant who wishes to, or for any reason must, leave the extended experimental isolation can do so, however, he must be deemed as dead during the mission.
I wonder if this is really a good idea. Clearly it won't be an option on the real mission.
Yeah. Knowing you have the option of getting out - and that earth is just a few metres away - must have a huge impact on the state of mind of the participants. It cannot compare to the feeling of isolation knowing that you are in a tiny tin can separated from home by 50 million miles of howling void and many months or even years of travel time. I'd be very interested to know how they controlled for this in their studies, if at all.
A better simulation would be to dump them on some remote artic ice sheet where they actually can't get back. Or on the moon :)
Edit: in terms of psychological data, I'd imagine that the long flights of some cosmonauts on Mir were a better case study.
Yes, but, at the same time, you know you're not /really/ going to be on freaking Mars in a few months! This gives you far less motivation to endure the hardships, I think.
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Under the rules of the experiment, a participant who wishes to, or for any reason must, leave the extended experimental isolation can do so, however, he must be deemed as dead during the mission.
I wonder if this is really a good idea. Clearly it won't be an option on the real mission.
You would think that would skew the data. Knowing that you can leave would surely have an effect on your psychological state.
Yeah. Knowing you have the option of getting out - and that earth is just a few metres away - must have a huge impact on the state of mind of the participants. It cannot compare to the feeling of isolation knowing that you are in a tiny tin can separated from home by 50 million miles of howling void and many months or even years of travel time. I'd be very interested to know how they controlled for this in their studies, if at all.
A better simulation would be to dump them on some remote artic ice sheet where they actually can't get back. Or on the moon :)
Edit: in terms of psychological data, I'd imagine that the long flights of some cosmonauts on Mir were a better case study.
Yes, but, at the same time, you know you're not /really/ going to be on freaking Mars in a few months! This gives you far less motivation to endure the hardships, I think.