Original subtitles

OK, recording on.

Obviously, many people can live in big cities

without being able to go hike in

the woods or hike in the mountains or anywhere

outside for a very long time.

You can live without plants, without sunlight,

without friends or family.

It's a difficult question.

What do humans really need to be happy, healthy and sane?

For centuries, humans have looked up and wondered

what life on Mars might be like.

Well, NASA scientists, setting their sights on a

manned expedition,

are already testing the limits of the human mind

to see if astronauts can even handle the trip.

Six scientists are living in

a Mars simulation habitat

for one year to study the effects of isolation.

The experiment will create guidelines for

future missions to the Red Planet.

The project is known as

the Hawaii Space Exploration

Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS, for short.

These are problems that we need to solve

before we can send

people on long duration space flights and crew cohesion,

that very question, how do you keep astronauts sane and happy?

We're going to go a long way towards solving that.

Bon Voyage! Enjoy Mars!

Okay, sorry.

Hi!

We're the Hi-Seas Four Mission crew.

We're currently simulating a one year mission

on the planet Mars.

Welcome to our Habitat.

Upstairs are the crew quarters.

It's pretty roomy for a 1200 square foot place.

OK, let's see what's going on in the airlock.

Hey!

It's our astrobiologist.

How is the beach?

It was cool. Warm.

Warm, yeah.

Alright, so, this is the C-Can.

We have a wide assortment of

freeze dried everything you could ever imagine.

Yay.

Yeah. Alright.

Our bathroom.

And the probably most important piece, the timer.

The timer.

So, don't take a 20 minute shower please.

Yeah, no.

Our showers are like, on the order of 30 seconds

to two minutes.

And that's the view from simulated Mars.

This is what we see. Every day.

Testing, testing.

One, two, three.

Camera.

Hi, I'm Christiane Heinicke, and I'm the Chief

Scientific Officer of HI-SEAS Mission Four.

And, as you can hear from my accent, I'm German.

When I heard about this project,

I thought it was a very cool project,

which is advancing space exploration.

But also, it's a personal challenge for me because

not everyone can endure the darkness,

can endure the isolation,

being around the same people all the time.

I was just curious if, you know,

if I have the right stuff to go to Mars.

Oh, yeah, and so far, I'm doing good.

Alert the media?

Sorry, what are you doing today, Martinez?

Making sure the mav is still upright.

The quiche is really, really good.

Very good.

I'd never shaved anybody before coming here.

I'd never grown a beard before coming here.

Fair enough.

We essentially started as six strangers.

NASA is testing our psychological and mental

well-being while we're here to learn

how a small crew gets along together

when separated from planet Earth.

The psychological aspect, how do we deal with that?

Surveys.

Surveys.

So many surveys.

So many surveys.

So many surveys.

I'll be right there to do mine.

I think this one's better than the forecast.

A quiet night? - Yeah.

I think so. - Yeah, those--

Zooming? Yeah.

Okay.

Voila.

She's official.

See? Yeah!

OK, high five.

Sure, well done.

We are science.

Everything about our perceptions and our communication

and how we work together as a group,

everything about us in our lives,

inside and out, is being studied.

Yep, that's it.

Turn this over? - Yep.

I originally had no intention

of running a marathon.

You look out the window and watch the sunlight change,

which when you don't have

most technology or Internet connection

is actually fascinating - and I just kept going.

Come on, run faster!

I think a big part of this for me is that I'm doing

graduate school for architecture and have chosen

to focus very exclusively on space architecture,

which is, kind of a less than typical thing.

What I'm working on is more of

the design side of space architecture.

You leave the ship to the guys, you can, sort of,

do the math and the engineering and work

much more on the human elements.

So, instead of going to school and reading some

lecture-y things and going through journals,

all that stuff, I actually am kind of getting to live it.

Tristan! Tristan!

Oh yeah I just got it. That's how I'm walking now.

Yay!

And it turns out, that treadmill's motherboard is

a little shot and everything is not measured so appropriately,

that at the pace I was running, I actually ran 32 miles.

It's kind of an interesting

forced environmental change, like,

everybody sort of reacts to the places they're at, you know,

people go to college

and put on their Freshman 15 or start grad school,

put on the Grad School 45, or more sometimes.

I mean, we always sort of change based on where we're at,

and up here, it's sort of--

You're losing weight.

Yeah, basically losing weight.

You have to work out every day

and you need to find something to fill

the hours because you can't really

browse online or go see your friends.

There's no drinks, no parties, no, you know,

place you can go get a crazy tan.

It's like almost forced into

the austere, vaguely monkish life.

Gonna get the potatoes done and out the way.

OK.

Turkey constituting and gravy going.

We'll figure that bit out last.

I made this turkey all by myself.

You did, I saw you add the water.

Yeah!

Ooh! I get my own little one.

Christiane, what is your favorite

part of the habitat?

So, that's the airlock

my favorite part of the Habitat.

One, because it's the brightest, well,

one of the brightest parts of the Habitat.

See? It's all bright.

And two, the other reason why I like it so much,

right now, there's a lamp in front of it.

But if we get to go on E.V.A., that is the door right

there through which we're leaving for E.V.A.'s.

Good, hold the face plate. - Yeah.

Good?

Alright, arms in first.

So battery goes in.

Putting weight on you. Mhm.

And black with black?

Yeah. Make sure you're connecting

the one that says battery.

OK.

So, top fan all the way and then slightly back.

Tristan, Christiane, Cyprien and I

are always exploring,

learning something new about this foreign landscape

that we knew nothing about when we got here.

Lava tubes are very important for Mars research

because, one hand,

they might provide shelter for the crew

from solar radiation events,

and they might also be the place where

you could find life that has survived on Mars.

Suddenly I noticed,

huh, it's quiet in here.

If it's quiet, that means there's no fan.

If there's no fan, that means there's no air.

I mean, it's not a fully functional suit,

but it's functional enough so that you don't

get any air into the suit if the fan is out.

So, I signaled Cyprien.

He immediately went to my backpack

and he tried to turn it off,

turn it back on again, didn't help.

He checked the cables, didn't help.

And then, we were like, well, if I don't have any air,

we have to go back to the Habitat immediately.

So, I was like, "OK, stay calm.

If you start panicking, well,

then you're using up your air even faster."

I mean, we were on Earth.

If I had passed out, I mean,

all Cyprien had to do was take the helmet off.

But then, the whole accomplishment

of surviving the dome

with these five other people would be for nothing.

Worse comes to worst, there is an emergency

phone where you could call Mission support,

who could always do something.

And if I want to leave, I mean, I can. Nothing's stopping me.

I could walk out the door any time I want,

but there are probably hundreds of people

and I'm sure something over a million

dollars making everything happen.

The more I suffer in there,

the more accurate all of the data will be.

NASA will use the data after it's been processed

and published for the actual mission to Mars,

and there's so few people in the whole of humanity

that are doing this kind of research.

If I even went and screwed around the data a little

bit somehow,

left or lied on my surveys,

That would end up having a huge impact negatively on

the whole of what people are trying to do with space travel.

It's winter. I think a lot of the people...

If you read accounts

of any expeditions,

if you think of mutiny and you know,

there must be something that makes it difficult for

people to be in isolation for a very long time.

If we want to send humans to Mars,

can we as a group manage surviving

essentially just the six of us for an entire year?

I'm a physician, but it's a childhood thing,

I've always wanted to be an astronaut.

For humans to travel in space

to Mars, to other planets,

to other stars and other planets around other stars

is interestingly us being the most human we can be.

Our bravest, our most innovative,

our boldest, our most courageous.

It really epitomizes who we are as a species.

I have been thinking about this since I was 18 years old,

what it would be like to do a real Mars mission.

I have imagined that and it's something I want.

It has to be something you really are driven to do.

The fact that I have two cats, a home in St.

Louis, a husband is almost irrelevant.

Family, that's not useful in space.

So, in this V.R, the sun is coming in from that side.

I want to be an astronaut for NASA

and a lot of the missions that NASA is

looking at doing in the future

are more long duration type missions.

So, six month stays on the International Space Station,

missions to asteroids, mission to Mars.

And these are missions that take months or even years.

So, NASA is looking for the kind of people that have experience

being isolated for extended periods of time.

OK, is that toastie good or toastie bad?

That was toastie Australia.

OK, well, that is, 'cause

this is actually a beach in Australia.

So, I think at least in my case,

I'm the sort of person who's OK with

not feeling the sunshine on his face or the wind in his hair.

I'm OK with that.

It turns out I feel quite at home and quite comfortable

in very cold mechanical environment.

Thank you for brunch.

No, no worries.

From a medical perspective,

any time people step out the door

even to do simple things,

I'm worried. That's just part of my job.

I worry professionally.

Humans, if they're going to make it to Mars in one piece,

they've done a great job already.

But the real trick of it is to stay alive and come back alive.

People are scrabbling down rocks.

You're wearing a suit.

Can't see well, it's very slippery.

This is real danger.

Real need to follow protocols

to ensure of everybody's safety.

So, four of us really like to have fun

and we like to go out

and do all different crazy things

you can do out here without,

like, being dangerous because you can't really

hurt yourself when you're out there anyways.

Caramel and I and the Europeans

very much enjoy going outside,

running around the rocks.

We'd have E.V.A. 's with something of an objective,

but it was more us just like exploring and having

a good time getting out of the dome.

Alright same thing as before.

Down and to the side.

So, NASA talked about the knowledge gaps that

exist, that we have to solve before we,

any of us can go to Mars or actually...

We're up there to survive and do the work,

get the data, prepare for the mission to space.

That's just the way priorities have to be.

Both Shey and Anjay want to join NASA

and become an astronaut,

and they were extraordinarily rigid in what they

were perceiving as the right thing to do.

The by-the-book thing to do.

This is how NASA does it. This is the only way.

This is a hard fact.

You want less partial pressure to go through

cause you don't like it when things catch on fire.

Like you could totally get hurt out there.

You get a couple of little cuts or whatever.

But there's being safe and then there's Shey and Anjay,

who would not leave the dome to do anything

except the absolute mandatory tasks.

Draw a line, draw a line down the middle

from the little notch in their neck.

How was it?

We can see a change in how people behave

because in the beginning, you know,

people don't really know each other and they're--

they're at their best,

they show their best side,

but you cannot do that for many months.

Yeah, so, as time goes by,

people reveal themselves more and more.

I would not object to that.

Forward.

People might be out there in those suits,

two teams of two people for four hours,

and so I'm just like drinking coffee,

hanging out at my desk in the living room.

I'm just like,

"Got all this time to myself, nobody's around,

This is the best thing I ever."

Everybody on Earth sort of is like, "Oh,

dinners must be everybody's favorite time,

you finally get to be social and talk to everyone,

get your quota of human interaction."

That is not the actual case.

You're very isolated from everybody else,

but the people you're with are always right there.

There's no soundproofing, you hear everything.

I'm waiting a little bit because they're very loud.

Can you be a bit quieter?

I'm teaching myself here how to play the harmonica.

How does everybody tell?

Right.

How do you and your fellow crew members define personal space

and recognize each other's boundaries

in such tight quarters?

Boundaries, which boundaries?

apparatus,

Let me ask them to be a little bit quiet.

Um, guys, can you tone it down a little bit?

We're recording.

You can see into almost

every other spot from any spot, especially in the living room.

You can look up and see which rooms have their door closed.

Even if the light is on, you can see into the kitchen,

half the c-can, down into the bio lab.

You're always just a little tense or watching

what you say or psychologically wound up.

I wouldn't mind if friends and family sent

a few more e-mails or video messages.

We're actually up here in isolation and confinement.

There is very little news.

There's no real contact with the outside world.

Starts to get to you a little bit.

I like being isolated

and not being connected to the real world.

It's nice to not hear about another school shooting

or another tragedy that's happened.

We get news probably once a week from mission support.

They give us a big batch of news that's happened.

Other than that really the only thing you find out is from

friends and family when they send you e-mails and they say,

"Oh yeah like, the farm down the road

is now becoming a bunch of condos."

And all sorts of other crazy things that,

you're like, "I don't want to know about that."

There's so much grass.

Oh, my gosh, look at this guy.

These are the only chives that have survived

and only chives that have been able to start.

And so, now we will have--

This guy's growing good.

Yeah.

Christiane has got a pea, that has a flower on it.

Aw.

And you can see her little flower.

Yeah. - So pretty.

So, growing plants is really important both for

a nutrient aspect as well as mental health.

Because I'd say that growing plants definitely helps keep

some of us more sane than we would be otherwise.

Pretty much anywhere you can put plants, we have put them.

We have them under the stairs and in our bedrooms

and in the c-can.

Let's see.

So, we've got this Nalgene bottle that Carmel put by

the toilet and she demands that all the boys pee in it.

Cause I use the pee to water the plants.

It makes me so happy.

This is my tomato

and the tomato was about this big and it was dying,

and now it's growing, and it's happy,

and it's very healthy,

and it's very-- it makes me happy

to watch plants grow because

it's nature in the Hab and it smells

it smells like a tomato.

Let's let the camera smell.

You know,

I wonder what the psychology is behind

why plants make people happy.

It probably has to do with a connection to nature

and a meaning in your life,

and I don't know enough about it, but...

Camera is on.

Alright.

So, we're going to harvest some radish greens.

I will give everybody two today.

It has a purpose.

These the radish greens?

Yes.

Awesome.

Wow, those are so good.

It's OK.

Whoever made the radish greens, good job.

The sun and the light and water and the rock.

Delicious. How long did they take?

About three months.

Wow.

So, every three months

we get a bowl with about six leaves in it?

We try very, very hard to

conserve as much water as we can.

I think our average is something like five

to seven gallons per person per day.

So, when you compare that to the typical 80 to 100 gallons

of water used by most people a day, it's ridiculous.

There's no perfect solution for this problem.

I'm kinda worried that when I get out of here,

I'll go back to my old place and start annoying my

roommates with constant bickering about washing

suds off of plates and taking 15-minute showers

when you can do it totally fine in 50 seconds.

We only had so much water and we would seriously

jeopardize the data if we went over.

Why don't you just-- keep up and try it, right?

OK.

So, we're making some fresh cream cheese,

and starting from scratch.

We had some dry cultures

that we started the mission with that we can bring along with us,

and we've just kept them going throughout.

Do you want me to just, like,

chat at you and you can pontificate?

Into the camera. Don't look at me.

Sorry.

Until Mr. Loud Face downstairs shuts up.

No, I'll just finish and then bedone.

OK. - OK.

What's the next one? Uh...

What has surprised you about your experience

living in the dome,

aside from the fact that you have not yet killed anyone?

I honestly think that if they actually

got to Mars and they had their like,

little line of tiny tin can habitats,

the number one cause of death would be eople

airlocking other people for being annoying.

Like,

that's what's going to happen if they survive

the radiation and the pressure

and the trip and everything and managed to get there,

they'll just kill each other.

Yeah, there's little things that start to bother you

that in normal life you can just walk away from.

If you have a co-worker at home that chews food

in a weird way or they walk really loudly

or they snap their fingers when they're

walking or whatever it is that they do,

you can just ignore it or you can walk away

from it and know at the end of the day

you can go home and you never have to see

them until you see them the next day.

But here you see them all day, every day,

and you never, ever, ever get a break from them.

And eventually it comes to the point where you can't

live with it anymore because it's so goddamn annoying.

And you're like, "I cannot take this anymore."

Like, do your fucking dishes.

Sorry.

And we do get to go outside on E.V.A., which is nice,

but that's only twice a week and for only a couple hours,

whereas I would just love to be outside all day,

every day for the rest of my life, which is

what I plan on doing now.

Um...

Yeah, I like being outside.

It's just weird that I chose to live inside for a year.

Who's the 1,000 pound goblin stomping around outside?

Maybe we can put more pillows and stuff here.

That's not gonna block out his voice.

It's doing something at least...

Oh, it did nothing.

Did nothing. - Okay, next question.

What do you enjoy about dome life?

Hm...

Um...

Alright there should be plenty

I saved a little bit, just in case

we lose this batch--

Alright remember to look at the camera.

There we go.

As possessed as you can do.

How does it feel to stay in touch with

family and friends only through delayed email?

It feels like they never write back,

and no one's keeping in touch.

So that's pretty much it.

Yeah.

I'll write them a big email and then I'll get

maybe a paragraph back, maybe once a month,

a couple of sentences and all except maybe two friends

who've just completely stopped writing.

So, it's not so much a delay as it is an ignore,

But I would presume that on a real Mars mission,

NASA would have like correspondance ninjas

forcing people to actually respond, hopefully.

But really, we have been totally forgotten up here,

by even family.

Yep.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

Hey Cash, happy birthday!

It's Auntie, and I just wanted to say that

I love you very much,

and that I hope you had a very happy birthday.

I want you to know that I think about you all the time.

And I've got pictures of you up on that wall,

and I've got your drawing pictures

up on my other wall with my plants that I'm growing.

Love you! Happy birthday.

When you remove TV and social media,

all your familial networks,

all the distractions of life,

for hours and hours every day, and it's just you,

and the only thing you can do is have yourself a company.

And I mean, I had five other people up there, but, you know,

sometimes you wouldn't share more than three or

four words with them over a couple of days.

It's just a horrible psychological nightmare.

It's really because the noodles are kind of, they're too long.

Have you heard?

- Start heading up that way... - Yep.

Alright, two cards please.

Beijing gets a second one.

You think that you can go there.

- Miami gets a third. - Uh oh.

Because that's another part of the habitat where

we are growing plants and cyanobacteria.

You know, there was room.

Now I have to do it again.

Okay, this is another part--

Having someone that you can talk to,

that you can vent to,

but also someone who is venting to you

so that you feel useful,

that you feel needed.

I felt like a sponge that had been compressed

for a long time and was suddenly released.

So I'm a French media now.

Do you have a girlfriend?

Alright, does it ever get boring and monotonous?

once our relationship

was public within the crew and she asked me,

"Do you know what you're doing?" I'm like, "Yes,

I know what I'm doing." So she was like, "I trust you."

NASA is kind of trying to keep the topic down,

you know, relationships, sex, those things, they don't happen.

That's kind of the official line.

You know, if we really want to think about sending humans

on missions that are two and a half years long,

it's totally idiotic to believe or to try to make people believe

that there's not going to be any kind of relationship.

Alright, ready to just give it up?

Yep.

Are there any plain ones here?

Sure.

Hey sweetie! By now you've gotten the photos I sent.

I hope you had a good day, and I love you a lot

and I will make another video for you tomorrow.

I just want to give you a quick goodnight video,

and I'll see you tomorrow, bye.

I have always liked the idea of being an astronaut,

but I didn't know what it meant to actually

commit yourself to being at work 24 hours a day,

seven days a week for months on end.

I thought I knew what it was like to always be

at work when I was working in the hospital,

arriving at 5am, going home at 8pm.

This is different.

I think the primary lesson in coming to Mars is that

pretty much all you need to survive and be happy:

water, food and someone to talk to the end of the day.

Certain.

Sorry, another question.

Stop it! You're making fun of me.

Not true.

Have you been reading the news?

What have you most kept up on?

So since we got here,

I've been reading the news quite frequently,

Um...

although less frequently than back at home.

So maybe several times a week or so.

Um...

I basically read everything that, you know,

comes through

to me, that makes it to my screen,

Um...

Um, too much um, I'm gonna try again.

What was the question?

Have you been reading the news?

What have you most kept up on?

So since I got here,

I've been following the news quite frequently,

although not as frequently

as I would have if I would have been at home,

Um...

What else? Damn it. I'm too tired, I can't focus.

I have...

What have you most kept...

I've been reading and whatever, whatever happens,

- Yep. - Okay, I will try again.

OK. OK...

Have you been reading the news?

What have you most kept up on?

So since...

Knock knock.

Yeah.

What else can I say?

One of the side experiments of HI-SEAS was

to test our cognitive development during

the mission because there's some suspicion

or some fear that people in isolation,

because there's a lack of stimuli,

that their cognitive abilities are declining.

We were picked for certain characteristics,

not being the kind of person who

panics about something very easily.

But there was always this nagging question

I was wondering about

is the stress level that we're experiencing,

is that like the normal stress level that you're supposed

to experience or is it already going beyond?

Should we worry about this, what we are experiencing,

is it normal or is it already so high that

we should take some action against it?

It creeps up on you.

Like the frog that you're putting into the water,

if it's boiling, then it jumps right out.

but if you gradually increase the temperature,

then it stays there until it's dead.

And it's just overwhelming.

It's just kind of frustrating because it was the middle

of the night in Paris.

It was evening in the beginning,

but then when I-- I was getting more news,

towards getting into the night and so I don't

have any way to contact my friends and family.

I could not pick up the phone, of course.

I could just send emails, which I know would arrive later on,

probably not being answered before the next day.

That's why I didn't know before the day after whether anyone

within my family and friends had been killed.

So we are reading mostly what people send us,

which is mostly what people expect us to want to know.

So most of the news we have here are space related,

like I knew quite well to...

news about space,

but I just learned that Paris was rioting because

of a new law which was presented already several weeks ago.

And that it's very hard to find gas.

It's very hard to take the train and so on.

And there are people mobilizing the streets.

There are violence against the cops and things like these.

And, well, I just heard about it weeks after.

It's going to be weird to come out and see everything.

OK, camera... running.

I think that...

Why do you care?

You will be dead anyway.

Yeah, but...

We had taken the pump apart,

moved all these tubes,

drained the solar water here,

trying to find out why we can't get the PSI on

everything above 20,

because we needed to be 30 or 40

to actually run all the water systems.

And for two weeks, we're like

trying to have people troubleshoot things.

You know, they're arguing about how to do this.

Should we leave the pump on?

And they're just back and forth, back and forth,

completely disagreeing about how it should be done.

People were very intense and emotional.

No one's had a shower or anything

and nothing's working at all.

OK.

Things that are popular right now, we're not aware of.

We're gonna go back out at the end of the mission

into a world full of jokes we've never heard,

music we've never listened to.

I love the outside.

I don't what else to say other than that.

The sky is burning.

The sky is burning?

- Have you seen this? Yes.

The door's gonna open.

I'm sure the sun will be blinding.

I'm sure the wind will feel great.

My husband is gonna be right there.

Irrespective of whatever else is in the way,

they better move.

They will need to part, so that I can pass.

I'm looking forward to that very much.

It will also be great to see friends and family again.

Be able to run outside, to swim.

I'm going to enjoy also some good wine and cheese too.

It is recording.

Goodbye.

Right, Oops, okay.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Come on. - They have returned!

Yeah, it's really surreal.

So I don't even know if--

I haven't felt this, though.

This is pretty great.

This is pretty great.

Little rain, little winds. Yeah.

Psychologically, how are you guys

feeling right now?

Is it very overwhelming? - Happy!

It's great to be out here

and have so many people out here also,

'cause we're used to just the four of us walking

around and never seeing another soul, so.

This all seems kind of illegal.

Yeah.

♪ What if I don't know the way ♪

♪ to get back to the way I was? ♪

♪ What if I don't wanna stay

♪ along the path uninterrupted? ♪

♪ Is there a prayer I could say ♪

♪ to click my heels and be above it? ♪

♪ Lost the habit

♪ Calling to get through

♪ Remedy calls

♪ I'm losing me for you

♪ All through the undertow

♪ I pursue the bay

♪ Ceaselessly swept out though ♪♪

♪ Swimming the other way

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Wanted to help it

♪ Fold it up in two

♪ Spaces for roses

♪ They forgot to hold

♪ Where is it taking me?

♪ I can only know, yeah

♪ After the tides recede

♪ And we are free to grow

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Lost the habit

♪ Calling to get through

♪ Remedy calls

♪ I'm losing me for you

♪ All through the undertow

♪ I pursue the bay

♪ Ceaselessly swept out though ♪♪

♪ Swimming the other way

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world

♪ Inner world