Training in Russia. For 30 years no manned spacecraft has been sent beyond the coffee orbit around the globe.
Beyond a pile of asphalt debris, down a weedy path behind the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems in Moscow, lies the jewel hidden in the crown of the Russian space program and the key to a future flight to Mars: three battered space chambers (capsules), made of stainless steel, connected to each other by cables and pipes Corrugated metal.
After no manned spacecraft had been launched beyond the Earth's orbit for about thirty years, last year President George Bush announced that the United States would once again send astronauts to the moon by 2020, and from there to Mars. A mission of this magnitude will most likely be international, and Bush's announcement spurred the Russian astronauts, who decided to conduct a pioneering simulation of a flight to Mars using their space chambers, at a cost of about 10 billion dollars.
Since the 60s, Russia has been the undisputed world leader when it comes to simulations of life in isolation, conducted to test the physical and psychological stresses that astronauts have to deal with on long space flights. In the spring of 2006, it will ventilate its aging equipment to confine six volunteers in an "experimental ground complex" for a simulated 500-day flight to Mars.
The real record stands at 438 days on the Mir space station
The control center on the Mir space station. Traveling to Mars is much more complicated The Guardian is the first foreign newspaper to be allowed to visit the research hangar where the space cells are located and to see the cells, which were built in 1970, when they were renovated and upgraded in preparation for simulating the flight to Mars. "We want them to be as similar to the original as possible," explained the technical director of the project, Yevgeny Demin.
The interior of the cells is dimly lit and evokes a claustrophobic feeling. There are no windows. Along one of the walls are bunk beds, and opposite them are shelves on which life support systems will be placed, such as a recycling unit that will turn the cosmonauts' waste into food, oxygen and water. A hatch leads to the two additional space cells: a cell with a greenhouse for growing plants and a medical cell. Two additional subsystems (Module), one of which simulates the conditions on the surface of Mars, will be added later, and in total the space of the entire system will have a volume of 550 cubic meters.
A round trip to Mars, which is at least 56 million kilometers from Earth, may take a year and a half to three years, including a stay on the planet and its exploration. Astronauts have already spent long periods in space stations in the coffee orbit around the Earth - Russian Valery Poliakov holds the record of 438 days in the Mir space station in 1994-1995. But traveling to Mars involves many problems, which make it much more complex than the relatively comfortable stay at the space stations around the Earth.
The astronauts would be trapped in a spacecraft that would be constantly bombarded by radiation from the sun; Their muscles and bones will thin out due to the lack of weight; And they will be forced to make decisions without immediate assistance from Earth: near the end of the journey to Mars, the transmission from the control center will reach the spacecraft with a delay of twenty minutes or more, says Viktor Baranov, deputy director of the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems.
"Now, when we have cosmonauts in near space, we can talk to them, send them supplies and medicine, or bring them back in a rescue vehicle within a few hours. If they get hit by an asteroid or if one of them gets an infection in their appendix on the way to Mars, they will have to rely on themselves," he said.
The last time it ended in beatings
Astronaut in space. "Isolation was the worst" in the simulation that will be done in Moscow, scientific, medical and psychological aspects will be tested. The team of volunteers, all men, has not yet been recruited, and the institute officials say they have already started accepting applications. The communication of the "cosmonauts" with the control center will be done under conditions that simulate real conditions, meaning that the delay in receiving the transmissions will increase as the "flight" continues. The volunteers' meals will be supplemented by plants that they will grow themselves. Since in the virtual flight it will not be possible to simulate conditions of weightlessness - this is only possible on Earth for a short time - separate experiments will be conducted, in which the long-term effect of the lack of gravity on the volunteers will be tested.
Damin, the technical director, says that one of the volunteers must be a doctor, who will practice remote medicine - treatment that relies on the databases in the "spacecraft" and expert advice that will be sent to him by radio. "If they are on the flight and one of them breaks an arm, they will have to solve the problem on their own," Damin said.
In the longest confinement experiment to date, held in 1999 and lasting 240 days, a fist fight broke out between two Russian "cosmonauts". It was on New Year's Eve, and the teams - who were simulating multinational cooperation on the International Space Station - were allowed to drink vodka and wine. After the beatings ended, one of the drunken Russians dragged a Canadian crew member away from the cameras and tried to force his tongue into her mouth.
"There was a complete shortness in the media," recalls Heydar Khobihuzhin, 53, an employee at the institute who was one of the volunteers in the experiment. "We had to close the hatch between us and the other teams for a month."
One of the volunteers then withdrew from the experiment, but the others calmed down after a "deputy from Earth", with the participation of the doctor and veteran cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, arrived in the spacecraft to mediate between the hawks. The researchers at the control center, for their part, were happy about the opportunity to examine how conflicts develop during a prolonged flight into space. But it was clear to everyone that such a commotion on a flight to Mars could be fatal.
The volunteers for the simulation experiments conducted over the years, many of them working in research institutes who knew they would never become cosmonauts, considered their participation in the experiments a badge of honor. "I loved it. It was the most important thing in my life," admitted Yevgeny Kiriosin, 55, an engineer who later received the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for his efforts. "But the isolation was the worst of all. After months when you are only with your experiment partners, the slightest teasing can make you extremely angry."
"From the psychological point of view, the real question is not whether people go out of their minds when they live in a tin box. They don't go crazy," said Dr. Robert Zubrin, president of the "Mars Company", which performs simulations of a stay on the planet at a research station in the Arctic Circle. The question is whether they can withstand the workload that will be imposed on them when they reach Mars and begin the difficult program of space exploration."
