Most scientists agree that man’s dream of setting foot on Mars is probably at least 20 years off. The technology just isn’t there yet. In fact, President Obama made an announcement last month, stating that it may be the 2030s before man even orbits the planet. But a small international crew of space cadets isn’t letting little things like technological shortcomings get in the way of their Mars mission.

The Mars 500 experiment was begun last June in Moscow, at the Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, and is a collaboration between the Russian Federal Space Agency, European Space Agency, and China’s space training center. The mission began with the 6-man crew boarding a simulated spacecraft within the research center, and for the past 250 days they have lived in isolation. They’ve eaten dried foods and lived in tiny living compartments, in efforts to simulate the claustrophobia of a real journey to Mars. About the only thing missing from the experience is a lack of gravity.

Yesterday, half of the crew finally got to step out onto the “surface” of the red planet, which was, in fact, a room filled with sand that had been next door to them for the better part of a year. They’ve already planted their flags, and they’ll spend the next couple of weeks performing fake experiments and taking fake samples from the “soil” before again boarding their “ship” and making the journey “back” to Earth. The conglomeration of space agencies insist that all of this makes for very important research, which will later help train cadets who will perform real missions to Mars.

How surreal must this be for these guys? How do you even get into the mind-set of “being” on Mars, when some part of your logical mind knows you’ve never left Earth? How do you even get to the point where this becomes real? It seems to me that these people just signed up for a year and a half of misery, without having anything spectacular to show for it. You’ve been “on a mission to Mars,” but… not really. It was all fake, a psychological experiment. You can’t even use that anecdote to pick up people in bars.

I mean, I’m sure the research is valid and will probably very valuable in the long run, but I can’t help but wonder if these space agencies couldn’t have saved themselves some money by studying agoraphobes instead.

Image: Getty/The Independent

Tags: mission to Mars, fake mission to Mars, virtual mission to Mars, Mars 500 experiment, Mars 500, space cadets pretend to fly to Mars, Russian Federal Space Agency, European Space Agency, China’s space training center, simulated mission to Mars, Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, Russia China and Europe study fake mission to Mars

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