Commercial space travel is now literally months away, and it appears that a mission to Mars is not too far off either. Six men that have been locked in large steel piped tubes for 520 days emerged from isolation earlier today after a bid to simulate a mission to Mars. This is taking Survivor to the next level.

The crew of the international mock mission to Mars have today “returned” to Earth in Moscow, bringing one of the world’s most gruelling scientific experiments to a close.

Dubbed the Mars-500 project, the six men partook in an experiment to find out how the human body and mind would deal with a long haul spaceflight.

The experiment took place at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow, and the men had the option to quit whenever they wanted.

Boris Morukov, head of the Mars-500 project:

It’s not even the first step, we’ve only lifted our foot to take that step. Before we decide on the equipment that we used in the flight to Mars, we first need to have an understanding of the limits of the human body, its psychological and physiological capacities.

Research in human capacities should go before the design of a spacecraft, though our scientists are quite active in designing new vehicles.

Like a massive game of Survivor, scientists wanted to see if the crew would be able to go all that time without severe psychological effects.

A shorter version of the same experiment was conducted in 2000, and was plagued by a few incidents: two crew members started fighting, and another tried to kiss a female member.

Yury Bubeyev, a psychologist and physiologist:

I was afraid of conflicts that could lead to an early termination of the experiment. We tried to consider all potential risks and to nip all tensions in the bud.

Fortunately, nothing similar happened this time.

The six men, including three Russians, Alexey Sitev, Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Sukhrob Kamolov, as well as European Romain Charles, Chinese participant Wang Yue, and South America Diego Urbina, deserve some serious high-fiving for their efforts.

Diego remarked of bookies that had been betting on what might happen:

We’re happy that somebody won probably a lot of money thanks to betting that nobody went crazy or nobody went out.

I’m sure they are all enjoying a few beers right now.

[Source: BBC]