Volunteer for the Mars Station's Dry Run

cfx666 writes "The Mars Society is seeking seven volunteers to participate as members of the crew of the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) during an extended simulation of human Mars exploration operations on Devon Island (May 1 through August 31, 2007). As currently planned, the crew will consist of four individuals chosen primarily for their skills as field scientists in areas including geology, geochemistry, microbiology, biochemistry, and paleontology. Two additional crew members will be chosen primarily for their skills in engineering areas. Ability of crew members to support both roles is considered a strong plus."

What target?

[andrewman327]

I wonder what extremely skilled individuals have an entire year to spare. It could be an interesting sabatical for a university professor but most people who are physically fit enough for such a mission probably have other jobs and families and such to attend to.

I also wonder what (if any) medical requirements they will have for the pretend crew. On the space shuttle one of the astronauts has to have an advanced medical license and they carry a first aid kit that would probably make your local ambulance company drool (I'm a rookie EMT so I'm very interested in this aspect).

This reminds me of the movie (Rocket Man? [imdb.com]) where they had isolation testing on the ground and the main charector almost drove everyone else to madness by singing loudly and off key.

Biosphere 2 Redux?

[ToxikFetus]

Wasn't this already tried in 1991 [wikipedia.org]? And wasn't the 1996 followup [imdb.com] only slightly less disasterous?

Paleontology?

[aapold]

Paleontology? What isn't NASA telling us?

I mean I know its not just the study of fossils [wikipedia.org], but still... given what we know this could well be someone with nothing to study up there.

Talk about a proverbial 5th (or 7th as the case may be) wheel on a team. I'm guessing this'd be the prime candidate to have some other duties...

Crap, I thought they wanted REAL volunteers!

[DigitalRaptor]

I thought they were looking for people willing to take a one-way trip to Mars for the good of exploration and humanity.

We could learn a whole lot by sending one person to mars, on a one-way trip, with supplies for 90 days or whatever.

The person would never be coming back, and would know that in advance, but I think you'd get people volunteering, even those terminally ill but still functional enough to survive.

P.S. I'm not volunteering.