Wanted: volunteers willing to spend 520 days in a sex-free barrel. Applicants need to be fluent in English and Russian. No TV but books and films available.
It might sound like another dysfunctional reality-TV series but Russia's space agency is sifting through thousands of applications from would-be astronauts prepared to simulate an epic and far-distant manned mission to Mars. Instead of setting foot on the Red Planet, the astronauts will reside in a cramped barrel-shaped spacecraft in central Moscow. The tiny modules are designed to replicate the psychological pressures of a long space voyage. The astronauts will be locked inside for a year and a half: 250 days to Mars, followed by a month on the surface, and 240 days to get back.
Mark Belakovsky, head of the Mars 500 project, said Thursday: "We want applicants who are healthy and professional. They have to be intellectually tough."
PHOTO: AFP
Belakovsky, of the Institute of Biomedical Problems, said male and female applicants had to be aged 25 to 50. Doctors would be preferred, he said.
"We've had applicants from Britain," he added. "If British firms would like to supply us with books, films, or food we would be happy to hear from them."
The institute and the European Space Agency (ESA) are separately considering applications for the mock voyage as well as two experiments in November and early 2008, also with crews of six.
ESA will select two of the six crew members. "So far, 4,600 people have applied. Most say that they've been interested in space flight since childhood but for personal reasons haven't got round to it," an ESA spokeswoman said.
Once the main study gets under way crew members will remain on board for the duration, barring emergencies. "They will have taken off, and that's it," Belakovsky said.
Astronauts will be exposed to all aspects of life in space, apart from radiation and weightlessness. Communicating with mission control will be subject to a 20-minute delay: the time taken to send a signal to Earth. Before they "land," three astronauts destined to "live" on Mars will spend a month in a separate module, lying on their backs with their heads lower than their feet to simulate zero gravity.
The crew will spend most of their time in a 150m3 living module, which has personal cabins, as well as a common room and kitchen. Volunteers will be paid for taking part in the study.
All food and water will be taken on board before the trip. Alcohol and smoking will be forbidden, and sex frowned upon. "It's not a reality show - it is a serious pioneering research experiment," Belakovsky said, adding that there would be moments of tension. "If you and your girlfriend were to shut yourselves in a room for three days, five days, a month - believe me, you would have a million problems. Either she would strangle you or you would strangle her."
Belakovsky conceded that a real manned mission to Mars was unlikely to get under way before the late 2020s. In 2004, US President George Bush described landing on Mars as a long-term goal of Nasa. The European Space Agency hopes to get humans there by 2035.
In the meantime, experts are unsure whether Mars, which has polar ice caps that make it the most Earth-like planet in the solar system, might harbor life. Several probes have failed to find proof.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist