 No one ever said space was graceful. No, it really isn't. Okay, you're almost there. A human mission to Mars won't be quick. A full trip to the red planet could potentially last up to two and a half years. That means Martian crew members will be spending a lot of time together, isolated from Earth. So NASA wants to know what kind of traits a person will need to be an ideal Mars astronaut. The best way to figure that out? Send people to Mars before you send people to Mars. It's taken us about an hour to get to the meeting place, where we're meeting the people from high seas, and then it's going to take us another hour to get to the high seas habitat. And our ears are definitely popping as we get higher and higher. We're on our way to high seas, an analog Mars habitat run by the University of Hawaii and funded by NASA. It's located on the state's Big Island, and getting there does feel a bit like traveling to Mars. There are plenty of remote locations on Earth, so why pick Hawaii? Well, it has to do with the terrain, not the beaches or green valleys, though. High seas is located on the side of an active volcano, Mauna Loa. What's great about the geology out here is it's actually pretty similar to what we might find on Mars, thanks to past volcanic activity on the planet. This area, we're about 7,000 feet on Mauna Loa right now, is very, very similar to the surface of a young Mars. And since Mars hasn't had much in the way of erosion over the years, it's not all that different from the surface of current Mars. What are some of the things that you are specifically testing for, you know, the data that you're collecting, and how are you giving that to NASA and translating that for them? One of the focuses, what NASA's funding us to do here, is to really look at crew dynamics. How do you pick a crew? How do you pick individuals? How do you put them together into a crew so that they'll work really well over these long-duration missions? Because as I'm sure you've seen maybe on a camping trip, there's some groups that work really well over a long weekend, but maybe you wouldn't want to spend two and a half years with. Not even just a camping trip, just on a weekend in my apartment. But I digress. So, welcome to the Habitat. Home sweet home. So this area is the reconfigurable area, so they can move things around here. It's where they do most of their work. It's where they exercise. It's where they socialize. Really a lot of stuff happens in this area. A typical day in the Habitat consists of analyzing samples, writing reports, fieldwork, what Mars astronauts would probably do. Each person has their own bedroom, though it's not very big. There's also cooking with mostly non-perishable items and just general free time to fill, like reading books or watching movies. It didn't look like a very glamorous life, though, so I decided to ask someone who'd lived it. Meet Annie Meyer. She's a research test engineer at NASA who spent four months at high seas back in 2014. The crew was an international crew from all over the world. We were from all different upbringings and we all met fundamental credentials to be on the mission. But I would say just like any family that's locked up in a house too long, you have some disagreements or different approaches of how you solve a problem. And so if things ever did become an issue, we were pretty good about trying to immediately extinguish an issue right away and talking about it. Because you can't just walk out the front door and go for a walk, you know? It would be bad for you. Yeah, so we could only take showers. We had about, what was it, ten minutes of shower water per crew member per week. And we were working out... I'm sorry, per week? Yeah. So we were working out every day, simulating reduced gravity, so a couple hours of sweating and working out. Or if you went, you put on that big spacesuit and you got all sweaty, you know? Right. You can't take a very long shower. So I definitely missed, you know, modern plumbing, but you made it work. Speaking of modern plumbing, the toilets also don't have any. Have you seen the movie The Martian? I have. You might remember that growing potatoes in compost was a fairly central part of the story. I do recall, yes. Well, our crews too have composting toilets. And the microbial community that lives in the toilet turns your deposit into nice clean compost. Oh, well that's lovely. So you're kind of living with it for a while. You are, and you're highly motivated to keep that microbial community happy and healthy. Making matters worse, all electronic communication in and out of the habitat is delayed by 20 minutes each way. That's roughly how long it would take for a radio signal to travel the distance from Mars to Earth, though timing will vary depending on the planet's orbits. So getting a reply from someone on Earth could take up to 40 minutes. Yeah, it was stressful. If things were going bad back home and you got an email, you know, you can't do anything about it. You know, everyone had their own personal lives continuing without them. Friends were celebrating milestones and you're here, you know, doing the simulated Mars mission. And if you want to go for a stroll, the only way to go outside the habitat is to suit up, just like you would have to on Mars. The thing is, Martian astronauts won't be spending that much time roaming around the surface. Mars's atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's, so it provides little protection from deep space radiation, either from incoming solar flares or cosmic rays stemming from outside the galaxy. So rather than leave the habitat all the time to get new samples, astronauts are going to want to send out recon missions first to study the landscape. The best way to do that? A radiation-hardened rover. And we've got just the thing. You want to minimize the amount of time that humans spend outside a protected habitat. So what you do is you send the rover out to scout the location, see what's around. If you have a special area that you're interested in, send the rover, take images, take soil samples, bring it back. And then once you've identified which are the key locations, you want to send humans there to follow up, then they're not going to be wasting time trying to find a location. It's already pre-identified by the rover. I had some fun cruising with the rover outside, but in reality, astronauts aren't going to be anywhere near the vehicle when they operate it. Oh, a little more. Do five more degrees. Those elusive Martians. It's a tedious process operating the rover from the control center. It involved typing in commands to inch the rover forward or tilt the cameras ever so slightly to get that perfect picture of a rock. I'm getting the hang of this. Good to hear you sound. That sounds like you are passing your driver's test. Oh, it's like being 16 all over again. So one thing I'm learning here is that you really need a lot of patience to accomplish any task on Mars. Yes, everything is done very slowly. There are certain time delays involved. The instrumentation you're carrying on board is delicate, it's expensive. So yeah, you don't want to rush things. Like I say, even though right now Helilani moves really slow, it's ten times faster than Curiosity. It just goes to show that Martian astronauts will be spending a lot of time inside, cooped up with not much room to roam around. And with the same people around you at all times. It's not going to be like a vacation. It's going to be an extreme environment that most can't handle. But that's why high seas exist, so that NASA can figure out what it will be like and to find the people who can handle it. Hey everyone, thanks so much for watching. 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