Living in a can for science

Wanted: Space pioneers (or agoraphobes) for 520-day Mars experiment

From the article:

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday called for applications for one of the most demanding human experiments in space history: a simulated trip to Mars in which six "astronauts" will spend 17 months in an isolation tank on Earth.

Their spaceship will comprise a series of interlocked modules in an research institute in Moscow, and once the doors are closed tight, the volunteers will be cut off from all contact with the outside world except by a delayed radio link.

They will face simulated emergencies, daily work routines and experiments, as well as boredom and, no doubt, personal friction from confinement in just 550 cubic metres (19,250 cubic feet), the equivalent of nine truck containers.

Communications with the simulated mission control and loved-ones will take up to 40 minutes, the time that a radio signal takes to cross the void between Earth and a spaceship on Mars. Food will comprise mainly the packaged stuff of the kind eaten aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The goal is to gain experience about the psychological challenges that a crew will face on a trip to Mars. ...

Viktor Baranov of Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems, where the experiment will take place, said his organisation had received about 150 applications, only 19 of which came from women.

"The problem is that it is very difficult to find healthy people for this kind of experiment," he said.

Well, that's understandable! Apart from the interest in the physical environmental of such sealed tank experiments, especially if recycling systems are involved, I remain a little skeptical that there is much more to be learned from them from a psychological perspective.

I mean, the fundamental difference is that the participants in the can know it is only an experiment. They don't have the consolation of a forthcoming walk on a new world to help them endure the isolation. Wouldn't that make all the difference in the real life trip to Mars?

The first trip to Mars is going to have take a vat full of antidepressants and other medication with them to deal with the distinct possibility of one of the astronauts breaking down. But surely that has happened on a nuclear submarine before. Can't they just extrapolate from that?