topic: The Psychology of Voluntarily Isolated Co-Hab (on Mars)
“Hello mars-one.com, and thank you for pushing the frontier.
I am assuming you are sending human beings to Mars and not emotionally dead people or emotional fugitives leaving their pay to mother or religion. The Psychology of Voluntarily Isolated Co-Habitation is therefore vital to such a mission’s success.
Striving to locate your thoughts on the matter I can find no projections on your website for the chosen live-in-group’s success, once they reach Mars. My un-answered questions specifically deals with group and habitat-psychology, as I find this vital to the continuation of the project, not just for later family settlers to the planet, but absolutely also long-term for all of the human species:
Q1. Will normal human emotions be dealt with on a corporate level, by corporate means and with the consent of the participating Arenauts, possibly even chemically, or will you train for self-sufficiency alone in this department (also?) – ie. your group of 4 people on Mars need to deal with emotional issues, as if they are alone?
Suppressing human emotions chemically is possible, but we have no (as far as I am aware) known evidence of long-term co-habitation in isolated areas controlled by chemical means. Mars is a long way from Earth. The time lag may be noticable and compensated for, but the human isolation on Mars is without the precedented backup of known friends and allies. Humans need to be touched, emotionally and physically. Four people is too little for physical variation, and emotional touch with people on Earth, who can only be known as voices and never as physical touch, will be stressed to the max, once understanding sets in and there is really no coming back.
Q2. Trying to contain or control emotional instability in the co-hab, on scales from 1 to 100, what is your estimate of the effectiveness of
Q3. Assuming that group one and two have means to suppress or adequately deal with strong emotional behavior through mental and organizational other means, after two years of isolation from the homo sapiens collective
3.1 how do you project the behavior of group one towards group two, initially following arrival? 3.2 what will be the powerplay between the old and the new group? 3.3 which educations, apart from those needed for self-preservation, general and specific science at the core of the project and habitat-upholding, would you include as general knowledge for all and specific for some?
I assume from the FAQs and the vision of the mission that the second group two years later to the best of abilities will be composed of members of the training team from which group one was also chosen? The second group will thus have met and worked with the first, maybe even mated, loved, fought?
PS: I must commend you on the soap-like setting for the choosing of highly intelligent and qualified people for the mission. Anything to highten the level of our collectively accepted down-dumbing of merchandize and entertainment consumers. I would like to know, though, how you will avoid cultural commercial poisoning of the mission-script in the public choice of participants. All TV shows from BigBrother and on, if not before, make choosing their participants on a basis of expressivity the main ingredient for mixing an entertaining show. For a mission to succeed on Mars, be it however much sponsored by “the People” and to the people one must avail one self… the opposite must be the case. A Mars expedition consisting of 4 or 8 people cannot survive disruptive emotions forever. I DO suppose you are not just out to create the world’s most expensive TV-soap?
happy go-ahead for all, kenneth krabat”
