Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: LOCKED UP IN A TIN CAN

by Hazed

Big Brother may have come up with the idea of locking a bunch of people up in a house together to see what happens, all in the name of entertainment, but a new Russian experiment has a much more serious purpose: to simulate the conditions of a trip to Mars.

Six volunteers from Russia, France and Germany have been banged up in a small capsule, and those who survive more than 100 days will get a reward of $20,000. Meanwhile, the door won't be locked completely... if any of them want out, they will be freed early. So in that respect, it's not going to be just like a journey to the red planet, where there will be no getting out to walk home!

The mock spacecraft is set up to be as similar to a real spaceship as possible - with cramped conditions and no privacy. The volunteer astronauts will have the same work routine as real astronauts would, and will also face the same communications problems with mission control - a time delay of 20 minutes.

The experiment is being run jointly by the Institute for Medical-Biological Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the European Space Agency.

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