Our Earth Day video has now gone live in Washington D.C. You can check it out through their events at this site:
http://www.earthday.org/blog/2015/04/21/earth-day-tell-your-story
At the end of the video, the crew challenges you to live like you’re on Mars* for the day. Try cutting down on your water & energy use, using re-usable products, and doing an energy audit on your home or office to understand how you are using energy in your every day life.
Happy Earth Day everyone!
Mars on Mars* 
I watched one of your videos in my AP Biology class for Earth Day, and it is an inspiring example of how people can learn to conserve resources, as they are quickly running out. I think it is phenomenal how you guys left your day to day lives to get an idea of what our future may become. I am not sure if I would be able to withstand the Mars simulation, especially the 6 minute showering per a week. Keep doing what you are doing!
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This video was very great and informative. Thanks to all of you for sharing this incredible piece of scientific knowledge with me. It’s outstanding that you fellas are all training to start a colony on Mars, and your opinion on our wastefulness of energy is very truthful. I’m watching from an AP Biology class for Earth Day. Imagine if everyone could save water like you guys do. Your efforts are the anything but infinitesimal.
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Hello, I watched your video because it is Earth Day and noticed how informative it is. Hope you keep up the work so that awareness can be spread on the subject of conservation. Good luck!
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I find it hard to believe that there is a project going on to imitate life on Mars. After watching your video, I am not confident that humanity as a whole could adapt to life on Mars, especially based on how wasteful we are as a society. If you told a typical American teenage girl that she was only allowed to have 6 minutes of shower time a week, you might lose an eardrum… I am slightly more confident in myself, but I have to admit, it would definitely be an adjustment. Props to you, I doubt that I could/would volunteer for that particular experiment. Good luck on the rest of your time on “Mars”!
~Sophie, 16 year old AP Biology Student from Virginia
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I watched your video about life on “”Mars”” in AP Bio for earth day, and it was really fascinating! I’d never really thought of how much energy I use daily, and I’m definitely going to now! I really love what you guys are doing, good luck on “”Mars””!
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Greetings Martians, Happy Earth day. I think it is amazing what you all are doing in Hawaii and I truly believe that you have the potential to save the world in the future. Thank you for all that you are doing.
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Your story is very inspiring and as a society, we are very wasteful. Thank you for your attempt to get the public to conserve energy!! I live on only renewable energy and I feel that the public should be more informed and be proactive before the supply of fossil fuels runs out.
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Your information about how wasteful are society is was very shocking. Especially the part about water consumption
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I think that what you are doing is really interesting. I don’t know if I could live without daily showers. I think it is a good idea to educate people on energy conservation because so many people, myself included, don’t understand how much energy they use daily. I will definitely try to use less energy daily. Good luck on Mars!
Grace N.
FCHS AP Biology
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Hello, I am also an AP Biology Student from Virginia, and watched your video on water conservation for Earth Day. I am going to deviate from my instructions to ask you about something regarding water conservation, which our class has been talking about for a while, and instead ask you how you deal with the isolation of this experiment. How much free time, or at least down time, is there during the day. What do you do with it?
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Hi Harrison,
This mission has actually been a very interesting juxtaposition of isolation and lack of privacy. Certainly we’re in an isolated location, and the communications is a bit slow and difficult. We’re simulating what communication would be like on Mars, so it takes 20 minutes for an e-mail to get from us to Earth, and then 20 minutes more to get a response back. We have voice messaging on a similar system. We can’t use the internet, as sites would time-out from Mars, so we can’t check the news or look up research questions when we have them. That said, we do still have e-mail and voice messaging, so even if it’s slow, you can still talk to your friends and family whenever you like. I used to live in Ghana, and communication there was actually much more difficult. I didn’t have internet where I was staying, so would go to an internet cafe once a week and try to do all my correspondence in an hour over a dial-up connection. Compared to that, keeping in touch with my family here is a piece of cake.
So while we’re cut off from the outside world, we are living in a small space together, the 6 of us. The walls are thin, and sound travels, so it’s important to be considerate of the other people in the Dome. I’m more of a morning person, and get up before everyone else. I try to do quiet things in the morning, and make coffee and tend to the garden as quietly as possible so as not to disturb crew members who are still sleeping. Some of the crew members are night-owls too, working late at coding or other research. So they’re very considerate of the people who fall asleep a bit earlier.
And as for free time, we’ve been trying to stay on course with what a regular work-week on Earth is like. For shorter missions to the ISS, I know that NASA pretty much schedules nearly every minute of an astronaut’s time. And for 6 months, with real time communication, that’s probably fine. Even here, with the 8 month mission, I could probably handle a more intense schedule. But for a 3 year mission, far from Earth, with about 1/3 of that time just traveling to Mars, you’re going to need some down-time and fun activities to keep you sane. So our crew tries to put in a regular work day, do a family dinner together in the evening, and then do some sort of social activity at night. This can be anything from board games, to tv or movies, to sometime darts or dancing or karaoke if we have a special thing to celebrate. Sometimes, like in the real world, we just have too much work, and people will continue to do research in the evenings. But we try to do something fun as a crew a few times a week to keep things happy and cohesive.
Thanks for your interest in our project, and you questions!
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Good morning, My name is Craig and I asked my students to comment on your video placed on line yesterday for Earth Day. Thank you so much for your time to respond to Harrison. Very interested in your project.
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The amount of water used by the average American is staggering. What you are doing is very useful to the scientific community. I hope to witness life on Mars in my lifetime.
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The video made me realize there are a lot of ways that people, Americans specifically, waste huge amounts of energy and resources. I have traveled outside of the United States and in European countries they do many things to conserve. They use much more gas efficient cars and there are windmills almost everywhere. Watching this video opened my eyes to all of the things that I could do help create a better life for generations to come and made me realize how unaware I am of all of the energy I am unaware that I am using. At the rate that the population is consuming resources, everyone should be conserving and monitoring what they are using.
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