Learn about who will go to Mars

The decision on whether who should go to Mars has been a long struggle. There were inevitable human failties, physical and mental that caused the delay of choosing the candidates. They would have to be specialized in areas such as aviation, medicine, science, and engineering.

Two serious physical problems have an engineering solution. One problem is radiation that is caused by peak solar radiation activity. Refuge in water tanks would a simple solution for this problem. The second problem is bone dimeralization in weightlessness and other problems weightlessness can bring. Unless some way is devised to stop it, or at least slow it down, a Mars spacecraft may have to be rotated to provide artificial gravity.

The possibility of mental illness, or at the least aberrant behavior, is equally alarming. A fundamental consideration is the size and composition of the crew. Sexual activity, or the absence of it, will loom large in the minds of the crew over a 3-year period unless, like the Chinese emporers we choose to create a cadre of eunuchs. A group of people in a locked up space with no one to talk to but themselves might cause unexpected things to happen, in worst cases murder.

In 1952 Wernher von Braun proposed 70 people for the Mars mission. 10 ships each with a crew of seven. But later pared it down to two ships and 12 people. However under the circumstances that human beings have failties, the variety of people has yet to be decided. Should they be married couples? Half men? All one sex? Or pick scientific and technical brains, and never mind the gender? These questions were yet to be answered. Perhaps by the space station.

A great American writer named O. Henry write that if you want to encourage muder, lock two men up for a couple of months in a small room. This formula for butchery must have pased through a lot of cosmonaut's minds during the months they spent with crewmates in the Salyut and Mir space station. Salyut was a very small box whose dimensions were 6 by 8 by 30 feet. Although no muders took place, these missions must have been terrible ordeals for the humans who participated in them. Inside these space stations, cosmonauts as well as astronuats have survived where there is not only no physical escape but hardly a nook or cranny for psychological relied. After a while, life begins to take ona all the variety of a dial tone. There is no privacy, quarters are cramped and unchanging, and the work, the experiments, the constant monitoring from Earth, and the unchanging parameters of daily life gradually become exhauting. There is no one to talk to except your crewmates and the pushy technicians in mission control barking their orders, people who have no idea what you're going through. Soon even a crewmate's most innocent behavior begins to take on sinister overtones, and simple aggravation escalates to muderous intent. Working together in space takes precision, concentration, and teamwork and if two competitive personalities come together under these circumstances the results could be deadly.

The theory of complementaries was against the conventional wisdom that people who are alike, who share similar values and appriches to problems, will work best together. Complementaries actually had very little in common, yet researchers found that rather than their differences being a source of conflict, these differences only made them more compatible. They didn't argue about everything. On the contrary, they tended to devide duties rather naturally according to what they like and dislike and they balanced one another under difficult crcumstance. Rather than combat one another on the perfect way to attack a problem, they simply attacked different problems.

Although the Soviets studied their cosmonauts in space stations, the Americans studied their astronauts in earth stations in south pole. To them it wasn't so bad at first. There were some beautiful sights there. Often great auroral ribbons of light start will ripple across the sky. However, under the unrelenting night and endless isolation, cracks develop in the psyche. People begin to feel like prisoners. Some grew muderous or suicidal and a few have been known to take a stroll outside and never returned. Under these stresses people begin to collect data incorrectly. THey take longer to do their work and sometimes they don't hear or see what they should, their stomachs and joinsts ache, concentration wanes, they can't sleep, they grow increasingly irritable, aggressive, withdrawn, and anxious.

Psycologists call this mental retreat "general adaption syndrome," something that happens even to the most well-adjusted people, and they find that Antartctic bases make marvelous places to study what may well happen to astronauts on a journey to Mar. That trip will require coping with long periods of isolation and sensory deprivation, and will call on the crew to work with one another under the most claustrophobic and aggravating circumstances very far from home and family.

Those who lived in isolation have done many creative things we find facinating. They sometimes shaved their heads or had short hair cuts and some had long hair that sometimes touched their hip. Some groups mated huskies and held mock weddings. Other mount elaborate productions, complete with men and women. Other groups have been exhausted by the Disney, Western and pornographic movies and have spliced them all together to make their own production. THey even made their own language or some sort of language and by the time the recovery crew arrived, they couldn't understand what others were saying.

The astronauts and scientist who go to Mars will clearly have to be intrepid, well trained, smart, and above all flexible. Psychologists have found that the people who perform best under duress are easygoing men and women deeply dedicated to their work, motivated, self-confident, and able to survive without the company of other humans. THeir studies show that the ideal astronaut would be someone not too intense, not too dominant, not too emotional, and not too introspective.

But in the larger picture the endeavor also requires true leaders, people with enough ambition, ego, and passion to have risen to the top of their fields and survivied the difficult astronaut selection process. A person who has accomplished these feats and is easygoing, is a very difficult person to find. On top of this, the Mars mission would require specialists with very specific talents and skills in geology, biology, engineering, and management. It is more than likely many skills will have to be combined in a single person like a biologist/surgeon, or a pilot/engineering. Finding astronauts who are both highly skilled and highly compatible will be tough. The best geologist for the job, for example, might not be such an easy person to eget along with, but still might be the one who among all candidates could be counted on to come back with the goods.

8 people will be the minimum to be chosen for the Mars mission, and scientist argue that training 4 people by four people will be the best approach. They will be taken to Antartica where they would be observed. Scientists wish that in Mars mission, they make up a minisociety where they would work for their own benefits and get along with each other well without any disruptions.