Could you spend 500+ days inside a sealed isolation facility?

Food. The biggest challenge would be food. On day 60, I’d get a craving for, I don’t know, tacos. We wouldn’t have any tacos. I’d really want tacos. I’d start obsessing about tacos. There would still be 440 days left. Four hundred and forty days to obsess about tacos.

Seriously—the food thing would bug me a lot. I think, aside from lack of options when it comes to food, I’d generally be good with it. I mean, as long as I generally liked the other people, but could get away from them when I really needed to.

Edited to add: If my fiance was not among the people in there, I wouldn’t make it. I’d go nuts and get super depressed. It actually took me reading through the question again to think, “But wait, what if Qingu—or the other people you talk to online—weren’t available online? Wait, what if there was no online? What if there was no Qingu at all?” And then I realized, no. Not doable at all for me.

Let me be clear on this
No
I need someone who I can berate and mock

I couldn’t do it. Not having the chance to go outside would make me severely depressed.

I could do it, but it’s not something I would volunteer to do.
It’s a bit much to ask someone to take 1.5 years of their life to live an experiment.

Yeah, I could do it. I can sing, and draw and dance and play all alone if need be. I’ve gone decently long periods without human contact before. I don’t think it would be easy, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing.

Besides, if I was one of the people that actually do go on the mission – not these volunteers… it’d kind of be worth it. Don’t you think?

I mean, Mars.

Yeah, I think I could. I don’t require lots and lots of human interaction to feel satisfied and could get along quite nicely spending time by myself, if I didn’t get along with some of the people in there with me. I always kind of wanted to do one of those biodome experiments that were the rage in the 90’s.

Boredom probably wouldn’t be a problem if I had enough reading and writing material. Kind of depends on what else we could have, like movies or videos, board games, internet.

EmpressPixie has a good point, I think I might crave some random food I wasn’t able to have. And then obsess about it every day. :P

Probably, but I couldn’t promise to be sane when I came out.

Not only do I think I could do it, I think I could do it without a problem. Just make sure there is a workout facility and something to read, and I’d be perfectly fine for the duration.

The past few years of my life have practically been an isolation experiment.

if i had access to internet, it would be no problem at all. and if my objective where to go to mars i could do it right now with nothing to aid me. hell, i would gladly die if it means i could set foot on another planet.

Probably, but let me tell you. 72 days of living at McMurdo Station can drive a person crazy. And I can go outside. And there are more that 6 people here. And most people are here for 6 – 14 months. It isn’t the boredom that gets to you after a while. Most people who do these sorts of things can handle being bored, or at least come up with ways to combat the boredom. The problem is the monotony. Day after day after day of waking up, eating, working, eating, working, eating, going to bed gets to you after a while. When you lack the stimulation we are all so used to (movies, shopping, family, pets, computers, walking outside, etc.), you can start to get really depressed.

I think it is like @asmonet said, if I was actually going to Mars, then hell yes, I could do it. Simply for the trip to Mars. But lock me in some room for almost two years (and later on they say they want to do it for 900 days…ugh), and I don’t think I’d sign on for that.

No problem. It is no worse than long ocean voyages on a small yacht. I enjoy that type of solitude.

I could easily do it if I had beer and the Internet.

——more information——

….“Following on from the successful 105-day precursor study completed in July, ESA is now looking for two candidates and two backups for the full 520-day study, which is due to get underway before mid-2010 after four months of training.

The crew will follow a programme designed to simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration phase and 240 days travelling back to Earth. For the ‘surface exploration’, half of the crew will move to the facility’s martian simulation module and the hatch to the rest of the facility will be closed.

Mars500 facility at IMBP

The isolation facility at IBMP in Moscow, Russia

Candidates should be aged 20–50, motivated, in good health and no taller than 185 cm. They should speak one of the working languages: English and Russian. Candidates must have a background and work experience in medicine, biology, life support systems engineering, computer engineering, electronic engineering or mechanical engineering.

Selection will be based on education, professional experience, medical fitness and social habits. Following an initial assessment, potential candidates will have to submit results from medical tests and will then be invited for interview, to be screened in a process similar to that used in astronaut selection.

Two Europeans were crewmembers for the 105-day study
The candidates’ nationality and residence is restricted to ESA Member States participating in ELIPS (Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada).

The Call for Candidates and related documents are available

Completed and signed application forms should be sent to Mars500@esa.int. The deadline for applications is 5 November 2009.

Where do I sign up?! I’m in.

What do they pay?

@Les, but what does tauntaun taste like?

500 days knowing that death was a micrometeorite puncture away? 500 days with no bath (or very, very few baths)? 250 days spent not only with no water, but also with grit in every crevice of your body? 500 days with canned air that smells of every noxious body smell there is, and no scrubbing it clean?

Shit, an isolation chamber on earth will be a cakewalk by comparison. I wonder how realistic they want to make it?

Nope. Not for me!

I just watched this show on NatlGeo called Alone In The Woods. The guy taping it wanted to spend 3mos alone in the wild. He wound up missing human company so badly that he only made it 50 days. He wound up crying several times and generally showing signs of depression by around day 30 of no human contact.

No, I do not think I could make it for 500 days without human contact. I don’t think I could make it a week without my animals. I haven’t a clue how I’d ever make it that long without contact to my son or husband, either.

I wouldn’t be able to do it. Yeah, I talk to stuffed animals, but that would be horrible after a while. I would go crazy. I say if you can do it, go for it, more power to you.

I could do it if I had lots and lots of books, and decent food. It would be very nice if there were also internet access.

Since you say there would be other people there with me, I would also need a place to go and get away from them periodically.

No, I don’t think I would be able to do it. Just thinking about it makes me shudder.

I love my life and the people in it far to much to spend long periods of time away :( However, if my boyfriend was there with me I could do it. Not saying it would be easy, but in each other’s presence there is not much we cannot do <3 – LB