I remember a talk by a NASA guy that a first try would be to land some people with limited supplies on the Antarctic and let them live autonomously for a few years. He said before we go to Mars we need the ability to do this easily.
Isn't this essentially what the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is doing? Albeit they're only isolated for 9 months at a time, not years, but still:
1. They have a small group of 50 people. Issues with crew psychology and relationships are mostly covered.
2. They live entirely indoors in small, manmade habitats. They're actually under the snow in much the same way that Martian hab units would be under regolith.
3. They are autonomous. It's completely up to them to survive the winter.
Yes, they're not doing the full biosphere thing - they're surviving on rations brought in by airplane, and breathing the outside air after just heating it - but that's pretty close.
I also think of people on strategic submarine ballistic missile nuclear boomers. They're shockingly big boats, but the crews are in a limited space with a limited air supply and no views of the outside for 70 days at a time. I would be unsurprised if the public information on their maximum deployment times for crews (said to rotate out every 10 weeks) has been exceeded, and I'm sure the navy has studies on it. Also living off rations, but similar.
It's probably more conceivable and informative to try to grow rations in a lab using the constraints that would be placed on martian astronauts than to convince a crew to do the Amundsen-Scott experience or SSBN experience, but with also growing your own food.
Though I imagine after 8 months of Antarctic winter, a salad would sound pretty good...
I wonder how well the South Pole station would do if they got a only very limited supplies to start with, had to wear pressure suits outside, couldn't afford any air leaks and didn't get supplies for several years.
I'm not sure who down-voted you, but it's an interesting question. However, the South Pole station afaik isn't equipped with the means necessary for self-sustainability, such as being able to recycle bio material. Anyone with more info on this?
Also, it would be nice if we could make a self-contained ecosystem work on Earth before sending one into space. People seem to think this is a solved problem, but actually all attempts so far have lost their equilibrium pretty quickly, most notably Biosphere 2.
Yes it might cost as much as ONE real mars mission. The value comes from being able to analyze and fix all of the problems that occur in the experiment here on earth in real time. On mars many fixes will require a costly second trip or at a minimum a non-trivial time delay in even getting additional expert information to the site.
You want to send the best version possible to mars and not do your survival learning there. Some will of course be unavoidable but much can still be learned here on earth.
The continental margin and ice shelves are where all the wildlife is. On the interior ice sheet plateau, there are pretty much no animals or plants. Water is, of course, plentiful, albeit in the wrong phase of matter.
Another "advantage" of interior Antarctica is that, in winter time, it is difficult-to-impossible to actually get in or out of it. The Amundsen-Scott research base is isolated for three months of the year, although two medevac flights have been done in winter.
> Water is, of course, plentiful, albeit in the wrong phase of matter.
Well, since they mention that water as ice is actually abundant[1], it's probably good for testing out strategies for harvesting and purifying water effectively and reliably at the same time they are dealing with the other problems.
1: From the article: Water is a mix of hydrogen and oxygen and is abundant in the form of ice mixed into the top meter of the Martian regolith. Around the equator and up to 60° latitude it varies in concentration from 2-18% but further north and south it’s in even higher concentrations, reaching 100% at the north pole.
Actually that makes Antartic a better place to try. If there is a problem they use the food, water, and air available for survival. Then you learn whatever lessons needed and try again until you get to the point where you can live for an arbitrary amount of time there. Once you solve that problem you can move to the Atacama desert.
Of course since we are on earth either way a rescue plan is at most a few days away (generally hours but bad weather might stop your efforts for days).
I think that was his point. Antarctic is easier but I don't think we could make it work when you are not allowed to hunt for animals. Atacama is probably more realistic.
The Mars Society has been doing a reduced version of this for several years now with different groups of volunteers. I think they use two different locations, with one being in a Antarctic like location.
