Four NASA astronauts have emerged from a 3D-printed habitat in Houston after spending 378 days cut off from the outside world.
The crew exited isolation on Saturday after completing a NASA exercise intended to prepare astronauts for a possible journey to Mars. They had lived inside the 1,700-square-foot (158-square-meter) structure at the US space agency’s Johnson Space Center since Oct. 19, 2025.
Their tasks during the simulated mission included growing crops in simulated Martian soil and communicating with NASA officials under delays recreating those inherent in interplanetary communications.
If the purpose is to “explore” Mars, it’s cheaper, faster, and much more efficient to continue to send robots, which are getting better and better. The one job AI should take from humans.
There’s no good reason to send fragile humans into such a hostile environment, beyond just saying we did it--a sort of pride.
Terraforming Mars is several hundred years away, and may not even be possible, without a geomagnetic field.
They stepped out and within 24hrs they agreed to go back in after another 796 days.
“Just seal us in this time, please and thank you”
“and like, can we get the audio delay to back the 1990s?”
Did they get to see our government sending masked kill squads into the streets and murdering civilians in cold blood and (checks notes) nothing fucking happening to them?
I’ve got some sad news for you. These isolated, mission-focused people tend to have uninformed takes on social issues for understandable reasons. And you know how uninformed takes trend…
well theyre just in time to see the ineffective response of the mass of electoralists, reformists, and assimilationists insisting we can just vote harder to unkill everyone they already slaughtered and prevent them from killing anyone else. because as everyone knows, ballets are bulletproof!
/s obv
Right, and what are you going to do instead of voting?
things that actually impact my surroundings. i know for most thats hard to fathom but you are capable of changing your environment.
Not a single actual thing listed by the way
try using your brain for starters
To what, read your mind? How does using one’s brain reveal what you specifically are doing?
Why do you think they volunteered?
Poop potatoes.
I’d rather not, thanks. Sounds like a painful thing to do.
;-)
That wink is a little unnerving
You’d rather I not indicate I was making a joke?
Hey man, you stretch that potathole as you damn well please, I don’t kink shame 👍
You’re the one making it sexual. So the only kink you’re not shaming is your own.
Maybe I’m too pessimistic of a thinker, but that was a bold choice putting 3 men and 1 woman in isolation like that.
Not that they would harm her, but a whole year and those are only people you see? Sexual tension would have to be at like 12/10.
Obviously NASA had eyes on the whole time, I’m sure they weren’t subjecting themselves to the same delay of information. It just seems to me there would have to be a better plan than hope they’ll keep it professional for a whole year…
You show amazing ignorance about how many people have lived without sex for a whole year without committing assault or any other gross tabboo, even despite having way more opportunities to do so.
Yeah, exactly the same thing…🙄
Again, a fascinating level of ignorance about how many people live with limited social access including just one possible sexual partner in an available proximity, and yet don’t commit violence.
Again, stupid comparison.
Holy projection, batman.
People are fully capable of exercising self discipline and professionalism.
I mean, yeah? Seems fairly obvious I’m basing things on what I think it would be like for me…was that supposed to be a gotcha or something?
I agree though. And especially astronauts. Maybe that’s the point though…I’m not self disciplined enough to be an astronaut.
Fair to say that 4 randos would struggle? Can we agree on that?
Fair to say that 4 randos would struggle?
Maybe, maybe not.
But these aren’t “randos” that we are talking about.
Did you miss the part where I said exactly that and agreed with you?
Coed cohorts perform better across many different disciplines. Astronauts are no different.
Also little direct information has ever come out about what coed astronauts get up to when in confined spaces like the ISS. But I think the implication has always been “it definitely happens but we won’t talk about it”
It definitely doesn’t happen on the ISS. In very short, the physics don’t work. Even if you could find the straps to have some stable position, a position away from the cameras that cover every inch of the station besides the bathrooms that barely fit one person, if you’re a man you’re simply not getting an erection, or you’re getting an erection that is too painful to use, and pretty much no in between; and that mostly depends on how healthy your heart was before you went up. The longer you spend in space, the less capable your cardiovascular system becomes.
On top of this, if, say, you didn’t need penetration or a male partner to get off, you’d still run into pretty intense headaches. People tend to strain and move and increase blood pressure, which is already higher in space. Best case scenario you get a bad headache from the extra strain, worst case you pop a blood vessel somewhere.
Also, you’re in space, under intense physical, emotional, and psychological stress, working 16 hour days, getting 1 day off a week, and acutely aware, more so than any other being at the time, how close you constantly come to dying painfully. Now Astronauts are currently chosen specifically to resist the effects of stress on the human body and mind; but that doesn’t mean they’re invincible™. We need only look at the astronaut that drove cross country while shitting in her diapers to confront her ex for getting a new girlfriend to see the line between ‘toughest brightest mind on earth,’ and ‘batshit insane psychotic break,’ is far thinner than we’d like to believe.
You’re part of the problem.
People who think men and women can’t be friends scare me
That’s not what I’m saying, and you are a fucking moron
What if one or more of the men was gay?
It’s not like NASA was not monitoring conditions, too.
All three men were gay and they put Viagra in the water supply, which was actually 50% lube.
Vault 753 style.
Doesn’t matter…I’m looking at this as a social dynamics thing not a “taking advantage” thing.
Like it would just be hard to be in isolation for that long without an outlet. And being that it’s only 4 people, there’s a very limited number of places for your sexual energy to be directed. I don’t know, maybe I’m overestimating human horniness.
It just seems like it would be worse with just 4 people and a year than say, a submarine deployment.
worse with just 4 people and a year than say, a submarine deployment.
What makes it worse?
Astronauts and NASA employees aren’t forbidden from masturbating.
And this guy too, by the way. It would make things easier for him
