Excellent status report and description of IMBP 'Mars-500' isolation project

Excellent status report and description of IMBP 'Mars-500' isolation project


August 6, 2007 // Red Planet?
By Shaun Walker // Russia Profile


Monkeys Gone to Heaven

http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.ph...=a118640764 3

On Saturday, NASA's Phoenix probe took off from Cape Canaveral
in Florida on a nine-month journey to Mars. But here in Moscow, the early
preparations are underway for a far more ambitious voyage to the Red
Planet - nearly 40 years after men first walked on the moon, the Russians
have started a program that hopes to pave the way for a human journey to
Mars.

The preliminary project, entitled Mars 500, will not be taking
place light years away from earth, however, but in Polezhaevskaya, a suburb
of northern Moscow. In what at first sounds rather like a reality television
program, six volunteers will spend nearly eighteen months in a sealed
container specifically built to simulate conditions of a voyage to Mars.

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Jim Oberg wrote:
...
The preliminary project, entitled Mars 500, will not be taking
place light years away from earth, however, ...
...

Glad to hear it. But I'm sure that in order to prepare for such a daring
endeavor as a manned flight to Mars a preliminary project "taking place light
years away from earth" is absolutely necessary at some stage ))

Andrey Tarasevich wrote:
Jim Oberg wrote:
...
The preliminary project, entitled Mars 500, will not be taking
place light years away from earth, however, ...
...
Glad to hear it. But I'm sure that in order to prepare for such a daring
endeavor as a manned flight to Mars a preliminary project "taking place light
years away from earth" is absolutely necessary at some stage ))
..
I suppose the writer of the quoted article thought that "light-years
away from Earth" was just a generic phrase for in outer space - so it
would apply to, say, a manned Moon landing, or a space probe orbiting
Mars, the sort of things that might be considered more typical
preparations for going to Mars than simply a test of people being
isolated for 500 days on Earth.

But then, if Alpha Centauri had a planet with *air* on it, and
friendly people, then visiting that planet might be "easier" than
going to Mars - if we could get there, that is!

John Savard