Science

GAAAHH! Get Me the Frig Out of Here!

That's what I'd be yelling within 20 minutes of departure on this (simulated) mission:

MOSCOW — After 233 days in a locked steel capsule, six researchers on a 520-day mock flight to Mars are all feeling strong and ready to "land" on the Red Planet, the mission director said Friday.

The all-male crew of three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian-Colombian has been inside windowless capsules at a Moscow research center since June. Their mission aims to help real space crews in the future cope with the confinement and stress of interplanetary travel.

233 days inside a steel tube. Just the thought of such an endeavor makes me almost hyperventilate. Now imagine doing so in outer space where the risk of brutal, excruciating death is exponentially greater.

(Breathing. Breathing. Trying not to pass out.)

(via Sam Johnson)