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Ways to pass time on long missions

LABHOUSE

By LABHOUSE
in Science & Spaceflight

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LABHOUSE

LABHOUSE

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Just post a way astronauts could pass time on the way to Europa or to get their minds off the fact they will die before the ship lands and their great grand children will land instead.

Was originally just me posting about using sleeping pills to do it.

Edited by LABHOUSE
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Brethern

Brethern

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Sleeping pills don't work like that.

They normally make people drowsy, they don't knock you out. I can also assure you the few that would get knocked out by them wouldn't be astronauts in the first place.

Secondly giving then that amount of sleeping pills is a guaranteed way of ensuring that your mission is going to be a failure from the beginning. You need alert astronauts for all the problems that will happen.

The better option is giving them a good selection of games and other activities to keep them occupied.

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TythosEternal

TythosEternal

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Oculus Rift and Skyrim. They might make it through 50% of the content by the time they re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.

In all seriousness, there's a couple of reasons I don't think we'll need to worry about the in-transit problem. From our experience on the ISS, we can safely predict that there will be A LOT of daily activities for crew members to address: in addition to the maintenance and operation of a huge, highly-complex vehicle, there will likely be a large number of experiments and instruments to operate and oversee.

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Wanderfound

Wanderfound

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Several hours of exercise a day isn't it?

Yup. And even that only slows muscle and bone wastage, rather than preventing it.

Long term exposure to microgravity is seriously debilitating in a wide variety of ways, some of which don't become apparent until you leave the micro-G environment.

If we ever do send humans to Mars, the first thing that they're going to do when they get there is spend a week falling over and throwing up. Humans just aren't built to cope with space.

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Guest

Guest

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NASA should install NF* (NFE) mods, and it will be no problems with gaming computers on the way to Mars and beyond. :D

Also, NASA can force Blizzard (at gunpoint) to release portable server software for WOW classic (1.12.1). This will occupy astronauts on the way to Jupiter and back. :D

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TythosEternal

TythosEternal

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NASA should install NF* (NFE) mods, and it will be no problems with gaming computers on the way to Mars and beyond. :D

Also, NASA can force Blizzard (at gunpoint) to release portable server software for WOW classic (1.12.1). This will occupy astronauts on the way to Jupiter and back. :D

Back when the 50-60 grind took months, not days? LOL! Now you're going to make me start reminiscing... Of course you'd need at least 40 crew members, or you'll never make it through vanilla Nax.

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Idobox

Idobox

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Wow and other MMOs are a terrible idea. You don't want to play with the same 6 people all the time, and a ping of several days might be a problem to play with the rest of Earth.

The heat generated by a computer is not that much, compared to the life support system and stuff, and it will work perfectly in zero-G, as long as you have a fan.

If your astronauts have a lot of free time, then you clearly have too many of them. In any case, I would recommend playing Dead Space.

Or more seriously I would look into what people did to pass time on sailing ships. Fishing might not be an option though. Lots of reading, writing, drawing I imagine.

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crubs

crubs

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I was actually thinking about this. Specifically in the context of missions to Jupiter or Saturn that would take several years to complete a round trip.

First of all, I don't think zero-g is a healthy option for that long a time no matter what. Centrifuged living quarters seem necessary. Otherwise, I think that an ability to remotely download video-games and movies would be a way to pass time. I think that astronauts would need to be "plugged in" just for psychological stability. Being on a ship for six or more years can make it feel like you're in prison.

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astropapi1

astropapi1

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Shameful photos and videos which induce impure thoughts. :)

That would work for a short time. Computer games and YouTube after that.

I doubt I'd be that bored in weightless environment. I'd have the time of my life. I could do basic Newtonian experiments.

Didn't they have a huge problem because one of the ISS astronauts had... impure material on one of the laptops? Doesn't look like it's too far of a possibility. :P

Anyway, I think that mantaining a routine and having the astronauts do menial tasks would be the best option. If they're busy, they won't notice how much time has passed.

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Red Iron Crown

Red Iron Crown

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Some non-videogame suggestions:

Large library of books, music, and movies.

Educational materials, an astronaut could earn a(nother) degree on an interplanetary journey.

Craft materials. Being able to paint a picture, make a sculpture, or knit a sweater.

If the hab has a large open microgravity space, some sporting equipment.

Board games.

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Javster

Javster

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Some non-videogame suggestions:

Large library of books, music, and movies.

Educational materials, an astronaut could earn a(nother) degree on an interplanetary journey.

Craft materials. Being able to paint a picture, make a sculpture, or knit a sweater.

If the hab has a large open microgravity space, some sporting equipment.

Board games.

Can you paint, sculpt or knit in 0G?

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peadar1987

peadar1987

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What you're looking for is something that has minimal mass, so I reckon sculpting and painting are probably out. I'd say stuff will be mostly computer and tablet-based. The astronauts are probably going to be fairly busy exercising sciencing and doing routine maintenance, but I'd say in their free time, lots of movies, games, books on some sort of tablet. You could also use the same tablet to write and draw if you wanted. Maybe you could get some sort of musical instrument on board, but even that will probably fall foul of mass limits.

Still even without all that, I'd imagine you could find ways to entertain yourself for months in zero-G with a couple of table tennis balls (innuendo not intended!)

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LABHOUSE

LABHOUSE

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Well zero g is a great game (everything is a game eating, drinking, using surface tension forces and centrifugal force to do magic tricks, lifting a friend with a finger, sneeze and get blown away 6 or 7 metres) and well since most time on iss is experimenting the astronauts would likely want to just use the experiments on mars or Europa or just outside the magnetic field so not many experiments.

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&source=android-browser&hl=en-GB&q=playing+in+zero+gravity

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mangekyou-sama

mangekyou-sama

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Well zero g is a great game (everything is a game eating, drinking, using surface tension forces and centrifugal force to do magic tricks, lifting a friend with a finger, sneeze and get blown away 6 or 7 metres) and well since most time on iss is experimenting the astronauts would likely want to just use the experiments on mars or Europa or just outside the magnetic field so not many experiments.

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&source=android-browser&hl=en-GB&q=playing+in+zero+gravity

zero G beer pong? anyone?

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