Scientists Ask: How Will a Manned Mars Mission Effect the Human Psyche?

Not surprisingly, coverage of the Mars lander that successfully touched down on Mars’ surface last week, and its apparent discovery of ice underneath its landing site, has sent the media in to a Mars craze. Not to be left out, we’ve decided to follow CNN’s lead and take a look at another aspect of humanities journey to Mars; the brain.

Long before we ever set foot on Mars, there will be a veritable backlog of psychological and scientific tests conducted on the human capacity to survive such a journey. Mars isn’t next door, like our Moon is, and so journeys are not going to be taking place several times a year. A journey of more like 2 years, and that’s just to get there, is expected, and not exactly in living conditions you’d care to experience.

The level of how much we would care is often being put to the test, in recreations across the planet. Dr. Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, a 7,000-member multinational group determined to reach what it calls the New World, has been leading expeditions out to the barren Arctic or Utah deserts with teams of volunteers, to shack up in tiny sardine-can like conditions.

These expeditions can last for days at a time, and even in such a short time Zubrin notices differences in temperament. "Some of these crews have worked out very well," said Zubrin. "Others were at each other's throats."

The European Space Agency and the Russian Institute of Biomedial Problems are also joining the race to see how humans will deal with such enclosed spaces for such times. However they’re going all out, with a joint 520 day mockup of an expedition to Mars. 12 Volunteers will be locked away in extreme isolation, with no contact with the outside world – except realistic calls with mission control, 44 minute delays included.

"When you go to Mars, all bets are off," said Dr. Nick Kanas, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied astronaut psychology. "We don't know what is going to happen."

Unlike for the women and men on the International Space Station, if you’re feeling lonely or a bit homesick, there’s not going to be a scheduled shuttle mission to provide you with those homemade cookies that your wife makes so well or hand written notes from your kids. This is common practice for those on board the ISS, but will be nonexistent for anyone traveling to Mars.

There is another problem that humanity has never encountered, a problem coined by Kansas as the “Earth out of view” phenomenon. "Nobody in the history of mankind has ever experienced the Earth as a pale, insignificant blue dot in the sky," he said. "What that might do to a crew member, nobody knows."

And it is a question that sparks a lot of additional questions. What was it like for those early explorers that new that they could be leaving their lands behind forever? What was the feeling when they begun to see star constellations that were not their own?

Of course, another question is a morbid question, but a necessary question for some people to ask. "Do you follow the the sea tradition where people are buried at sea?" Walter Sipes, a NASA psychologist at Johnson Space Center in Houston, asked. "If someone dies, are they buried in space?"

Posted by Josh Hill.

Related Galaxy posts:

Twittering From Mars -NASA's Tiny URL
Twittering from Mars: The Phoenix on Ice
Space Euphoria: Do Our Brains Change When We Travel in Outer Space?

"The Great Silence" -A Galaxy Insight
Babelfish -Universal Translator Will Allow ET to Speak English
The 1.5 Gigayear Technology Gap Advanced Civilizations in the Universe -A Galaxy Insight
GAIA -Mapping the Family Tree of the Milky Way
The "Hubble Effect" -A Galaxy Insight
Stanley Kubrick & the Mythology of Extraterrestrial Life -A Galaxy Insight
James Cameron & Arthur C Clarke on 2001 A Space Odyssey
New Technologies & the Search for Extraterrestrial Life -A Galaxy Insight
NASA's "New Worlds Observer" Will be Able to Spot Oceans, Continents and Clouds on Small Rocky Planets
MIT Asks: How Would Extraterrestrial Astronomers Study Earth?
Harvard-Smithsonian Scientists Zero In On Key Sign of Habitable Worlds
Space Colonization -Our Future or Fantasy?

 

Source link:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/06/02/space.psych/index.html?eref=edition_technology

Comments

[W. Nat]

The official remedy: subject isolated individuals to reruns of shows that go along the lines of -

*ahem*

"TO BOLDLY GO WHERE..."

You get the idea :-)

[Tubbs]

Well if you're struggling to find anyone, I'm available any time! :D

[MikeyG]

How many songs on an Ipod will I need for the journey? better pack a few extra ear buds

[jer35mx]

Maybe the person of the ipod is right, we have the videogamers, the ipod listeners, people that are used to live in their worlds without social contact, I think they are, no joke, more evolutionary adapted to the life in the space; je, of course I don't know how they would be supplied with the newest of their items.

[Michael]

I cant imagine what that distance would do to my Warcraft latency. ::grin::

But seriously...

You need geeks. People who were raised on science fiction. People who understand that this lump of carbon based sludge that our brain inhabits is nothing more than an expendable tool. People who understand that an interplanetary journey may require an individual to knowingly and voluntarily sacrifice his or her own existence so that the mission may continue. People who have the force of will over their own psyche to keep functioning even if, for example, disaster makes it a one-way mission. People who have developed their will in the absence of religion, the need for an external force to be their ultimate salvation.

You will only find people who grew up with Asimov, Clarke, and most especially Heinlein as their beacons will have the mindset needed to make this kind of trip.