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tahanson43206

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Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,361

Arctic Research Station a Model for Mars Expedition

The article at the link below is about a large scale research expedition on Earth.

However, it seems to me the logistics involved, the personnel selection process, and many other aspects of planning would have a parallel in any significant expedition to Mars.

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/mosaic-w … 00961.html

Members of a Mars expedition might actually have ** less ** of a physical challenge, although the psychological challenge would surely be greater, but (apparently) not by a whole lot.

(th)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: Arctic Research Station a Model for Mars Expedition

http://fmars.marssociety.org/

Our crews at FMARS are required to conduct a sustained program of geological, microbiological and climatological field exploration in a cold and dangerous remote environment while operating under many of the same constraints that a human crew would face on Mars.  It is only under these conditions, where the crew is trying hard to get real scientific work done, while dealing with bulky equipment, cold, danger, discomfort, as well as isolation, that the real stresses of a human Mars mission can be encountered, and the methods for dealing with them mastered.  It is only under these conditions that all sorts of problems that Mars explorers will face can be driven into the open so they can be dealt with. Only by doing these missions can we make ourselves ready to go to Mars. Nothing like this has ever been done before. 

Dr. Robert Zubrin
President, The Mars Society

Just a small meal

We are 6 people living in the F-MARS, in the High Arctic, far from home.

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Arctic Research Station a Model for Mars Expedition

New research estimates that The Arctic may be warming four times faster than the rest of the world
https://interestingengineering.com/scie … id=1018250

The arctic portion of the Mars 160 mission concluded on September 3, 2017. Principal Investigators Dr. Shannon Rupert and Dr. Paul Sokoloff acquired permission for research on Inuit-owned land for the first time in FMARS history, allowing for more wide-reaching geology studies than have been done in the past
https://web.archive.org/web/20170905002 … s-arkansas

Mars in the Arctic
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Pr … the_Arctic

Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) is the first of two simulated Mars habitats (or Mars Analog Research Stations) located on Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada, which is owned and operated by the Mars Society. The station is a member of the EU-INTERACT, circumarctic network of currently 89 terrestrial field bases located in northern Europe, Russia, US, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Scotland

https://web.archive.org/web/20180307215 … eract.org/

,

https://web.archive.org/web/20220103202 … h-station/

Camp Century when things go wrong?

operated from 1959 until 1967. It consisted of 21 tunnels with a total length of 9,800 feet (3.0 km), and was powered by a nuclear reactor. Project Iceworm was aborted after it was realized that the ice sheet was not as stable as originally assessed, and that the missile basing concept would not be feasible. The reactor was removed and Camp Century later abandoned. However, hazardous waste remains buried under the ice and has become an environmental concern

"Arctic Underground Base Camp Century Greenland US Army"
https://archive.org/details/TheU.S.Army … sifiedFilm

Transition in ice sheet surface mass balance at Camp Century from net accumulation to net ablation is plausible within the next 75 years under one climate model, and after another 44 to 88 years the buried wastes could be exposed between 2135 and 2179.
https://doi.org/10.1002%2F2016GL069688

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-09-12 11:52:31)

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: Arctic Research Station a Model for Mars Expedition

From Pitt State to the North Pole: Teacher finds adventure and rewarding career
https://www.pittstate.edu/gorillaconnec … niche.html

Argentina, Chile and the Antarctic missions to build schools and hospitals at the South Pole to make their claims stronger?

Esperanza Base, Villa Las Estrellas and even having children born at the South Pole towns

The Russian economy before war and imperialism and the destruction of Ukraine
https://web.archive.org/web/20180325114 … rctic.html

NORILSK, Russia — Blessed with a cornucopia of precious metals buried beneath a desert of snow, but so bereft of sunlight that nights in winter never end, Norilsk, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, is a place of brutal extremes. It is Russia’s coldest and most polluted industrial city, and its richest — at least when measured by the value of its vast deposits of palladium, a rare mineral used in cellphones that sells for more than $1,000 an ounce

It is also dark. Starting about now, the sun stops rising, leaving Norilsk shrouded in the perpetual night of polar winter. This year that blackout began last Wednesday.

Built on the bones of slave prison laborers, Norilsk began as an outpost of Stalin’s Gulag, a place so harsh that, according to one estimate, of 650,000 prisoners who were sent here between 1935 and 1956, around 250,000 died from cold, starvation or overwork. But more than 80 years after Norilsk became part of the Gulag Archipelago, nobody really knows exactly how many people labored there in penal servitude or how many died.

The Norilsk camp system, known as Norillag, shut down in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev began to dismantle the worst excesses of Stalinism. The legacy of repressive control, though, lives on in tight restrictions on access to the city. All foreigners are barred from visiting without a permit from Russia’s Federal Security Service, the post-Soviet successor to the K.G.B

“Norilsk is a unique city, it was put here by force,” said Alexander Kharitonov, owner of a printing house in the city. “It is like a survivor. If it had not been for Norilsk, there would have been another principle of life in the Arctic: You came, you worked, you froze — and you left.”

The residents of Norilsk have stayed, turning what until the 1930s had been an Arctic wilderness inhabited only by a scattering of indigenous peoples into an industrial city dotted with smoke-belching chimneys amid crumbling Soviet-era apartment blocks and the ruins of former prison barracks.

The population dropped sharply after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, which sent the economy into a tailspin. It has risen again, along with Russia’s economic fortunes. Around 175,000 people now live year-round in Norilsk.

Beyond the city, which is 1,800 miles northeast of Moscow in northern Siberia, extends an endless, mostly uninhabited wilderness.