tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post7740124547837434289..comments2024-01-03T17:20:36.960-05:00Comments on Thoughts Arise: One-Way Mission to Mars - Science FailMarc Merlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-66723229243340129532011-02-04T17:49:10.109-05:002011-02-04T17:49:10.109-05:00Thanks, Pat,
I think you are correct in pointing ...Thanks, Pat,<br /><br />I think you are correct in pointing out that even with the funds and experience available to the U.S. Navy it's hard to engineer reliability into systems that endures for months, much less years. The same has been discovered with critical systems on the International Space Station (ISS).<br /><br />One issue that I will address in a subsequent essay has to do with how utterly unprepared we are to predict the psychological effects of the isolation of a small group of people in a very threatening environment for years, which is exactly what we will be called on to do if a "kick-start" one-way Mars mission is ever mounted.<br /><br />Your comments about that dimension of the problem <b>when I write about it</b> would be very welcome, since long-duration submarine voyages are one of the few data points we have. ISS and Antarctic stays being the only other ones that come to mind. I'll note in advance that those are both instances where participants look forward to return.<br /><br />Thanks,<br />MarcMarc Merlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01946231992925684244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5588126970544264673.post-87456465781261216092011-02-04T17:33:24.642-05:002011-02-04T17:33:24.642-05:00On the submarine, we went out for ten weeks at a t...On the submarine, we went out for ten weeks at a time. My sub always made it through the ten weeks but other subs frequently broken down and did not . We could have packed the sub with food and tried stayed out longer but we probably would have broken down within six months. We had lots of redundancy in our machines and spare parts and we would get real creative with what we had in order to keep the ship going but we were only delaying the inevitable. All machines break eventually.Pat Loughlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08180933908930418255noreply@blogger.com