How long before you go insane in a space capsule?

[jpinard]

Getting stuck in small rooms while being sick always makes me wonder how well I'd do if stuck in even smaller confines in a hostile environment like that of outer space. Curious of your thoughts too, so here's the scenario:

* Spaceship is setup like the Apollo Missions. Two capsules end-to-end you can move between but they are very small.

* Biding time while on your way to investigate Jupiter/Saturn would be amazing - so lets make it wuch more challenging. You've just passed Pluto and it looks damn boring ahead.

* All resources are recycled and you are trickle-fed by IV nutrition.

* Entertainment is only what's been stored on your low powered computers. Once a year you can replace a few small games.

[Not One Of Us]

Since when can you make that many god damned poll options?

[jpinard]

Since when can you make that many god damned poll options?

heehee!!! That wall of text is awful isn't it? I also wrote 1 months plural - I suck!

[Bad Neighbor]

I'm claustrophobic, and I am assuming the stored computer games don't suck.

[Tim James]

Probably about 9 years.

[Shadari]

I'm already insane, so there ya go. But wait, don't experts assert that if you think you're sane you're actually insane, and vice versa? In that case, I'm sane and always will be! Muhahaha!

[Demon G Sides]

Ability to switch games would keep me sane fora very very long time. I can replay a game really easily.

[Strato]

3 months. As far as games go, I reckon I could keep on replaying: X-Com (Enemy Unknown), Jagged Alliance 2 and Civ IV. The computers will be powerful enough to power Civ IV right? If not, then I'll settle for Civ II.

3 months was easy because at my old job involved 3 month rotations stuck in a remote mining town which was a veritable hell for me (effectively, go to work, go to sleep, nothing else). It was always interesting getting out of there, going to a big metropolitan CD/DVD/Games store, spending too much money, whilst simultanously being reminded that good looking females exist in this world.

[Not One Of Us]

Splendid isolation.

[krayzkrok]

3 months was easy because at my old job involved 3 month rotations stuck in a remote mining town which was a veritable hell for me (effectively, go to work, go to sleep, nothing else).

You survived three months in Coober Pedy?

[fire]

One week. I was out and about 2 days after having my kid, despite doctor's orders to stay at home.

[W Wiley]

Would I have access to Blue Dreamers?

[Pogo]

I put two months. I'm a very very patient person who has no problem shutting off his brain, and the knowledge that I'm going somewhere important for science would be comforting, but I think I'd flip the fuck out after two months.

[Jojo]

I chose 1 week, but really that's stretching it, I'm pretty sure it would be more like 3 days. If my computers have some teaching material on them too, so I can try learning stuff like new languages as well as playing games, then maybe the week would pass without incident.

[Brad Grenz]

I think it would make a big difference to me knowing there was no hope for escape on a long term mission. If it was just orbiting the Earth I think I'd do okay for a few weeks, but if I'm on a long term mission to the outer planets with now way back and no way to get there faster, my claustrophobia will kick in much sooner. Maybe a couple days in that situation.

[Rumpy]

I'd say, less than a week, but more than a day. They were really tried with Apollo 13 and the problems it had. I saw a documentary on the National Geographic Channel about it called Critical Situation, and in it, Jim Lovell said he had to ask Mission Control to go over the calculations for the final burn and make sure he had them right, because he wasn't sure of his mental capacity, and that was only a few days of being in the capsule. Remember, in a space capsule, you only have a very limited amount of oxygen.

[Morberis]

I answered 6 months, because when I hear low powered computers meant to be used in an almost closed system out past Pluto I'm thinking Pong era games on a pc only slightly more powerful than my watch.

I think a kindle like device with a ton of books that consumes almost no power would do me better than even a game ever could. Which is probably what would do me in, rampant escapism caused by a lack of anything to do or see could eventually make me go off the deep end.

6 months is being very optimistic.

[Gendal]

I'd probably enjoy it with a broadband internet connection.

[Strato]

You survived three months in Coober Pedy?

No, Nhulunbuy/Gove during the wet 3 years in a row. Not much to do in that town that time of year except go to work and go home.



I have to say as well that small spaces wouldn't worry me when as far as a spaceship setting goes. In fact, I'd probably constantly find myself reorganising the little areas just to make it feel homely.

Also, what would you define insanity as being. I do have this fairly vivid imagination, so, there is a chance that Space Command would consider me insane with my possible ramblings which are really just fictional scenarios that I think of to keep my brain active, and stupidly share with other people... Yeah, I'll still stick with three months. I remember this time going for a walk along the beach in Gove at the end of my rotation I saw all these little holes in the sand from the local crab population. Subsequently, I ruminated on this sight and rang the boss the next day to tell him that maybe, just maybe it is possible that the little holes are like some sort of intergalactic message, or alphabet, and that the earth will soon be overrun with crab people.

[arctangent]

In space no one can hear you scream.

[Hans Lauring]

Why low powered computers?

I get that we can't shoot something the size of a mansion across the Solar System, but computers are really small and we could probably power quite a lot using some improved version of the nucular thingamajig used on Voyager.

Give me everything on Steam and App Store as well as every Kindle/iBook out there and I'd survive a year or more...

[Acid]

As long as I could entertain myself with games, books and movies, I could survive indefinitely. I'm a hermit.

[Pjerrot]

1 year. Because then I find out what games they are replacing: X-com, SimCity and Civilization are replaced with the Alone in the Dark series.

[Sean Hargraves]

I'm a misanthrope, so indefinitely as long as I'm alone. I wouldn't even need computer games or books. Just enough notebooks and pens/pencils to last me a lifetime.

I would go insane after about 3 months if there was at least one other person with me.

Those space/horror movies where one crewman goes insane and kills everyone else? I AM that crewman.

[Acid]

Those space/horror movies where one crewman goes insane and kills everyone else? I AM that crewman.
:worship:

[Skipper]

So you take away the joy of eating food, the joy of moving around, apparently no books, low-power so one would assume a lack of personal communication, but you throw me a bone with video games.

If I made it a month I would be lucky. I'm sure my body would make it a lot longer than that, but with so little to look forward to each day the computer games would not prevent depression and thoughts of despair.

[extarbags]

So is it not moving toward anything? Like you're just in the space capsule, drifting until you die? I don't know how long I'd last, but it would be a lot longer if I knew there was a set endpoint that I was moving toward. Not that long though, still. I could maybe last a month if I knew it was only going to last a month, but if it were going to last the rest of my life, I'd be lucky to make it a week.

[Zylon]

* Biding time while on your way to investigate Jupiter/Saturn would be amazing - so lets make it wuch more challenging. You've just passed Pluto and it looks damn boring ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the suicide mission, jp.

[jpinard]

So is it not moving toward anything? Like you're just in the space capsule, drifting until you die? I don't know how long I'd last, but it would be a lot longer if I knew there was a set endpoint that I was moving toward. Not that long though, still. I could maybe last a month if I knew it was only going to last a month, but if it were going to last the rest of my life, I'd be lucky to make it a week.

You're following in the path of Voyager, so you've passed Pluto and the next thing up is Kuiper Belt objects.

[extarbags]

You're following in the path of Voyager, so you've passed Pluto and the next thing up is Kuiper Belt objects.

What I mean is, there's no endpoint, right? I'm not going to someplace, I'm just going? Yeah, the hell with that.

Also, the Kuiper Belt seems to extend maybe fifteen au past Pluto, which would take, I dunno, twentyish years to clear, right? So even if there were a set mission in mind, there's no way it could be accomplished in a sane time frame, and there's no way I could hang on for decades anyway. It wouldn't even be amazing to drift past the cool-looking planets, because it would take so freaking long. Yeah, it would be mind-blowing at first, probably even for a few days, but we're talking years here. Even Saturn gets boring after a while.

This is why god invented cryosleep.

[Zylon]

This is reminding me of Cordwainer Smith's "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul" (http://www.planetary.org/solarsailcd/smith.htm)

The technician went on. "Now, we have already built in psychotic elements. You can't even expect to remain sane. So you'd better not worry about it. You'll have to be insane to manage the sails and to survive utterly alone and be out there even a month. And the trouble is, in that month you are going to know it's really forty years.

[MattN]

If I am able to communicate with earth and I get to enjoy 0 gravity in the ship I can probably last as long as my muscles and body can stand, if I am in isolation and I have to live in boring gravity I could probably last a few weeks.

[Tyjenks]

AS happened to me in a stuck elevator a month or so ago:

I can stay sane until I think to myself, "Good thing I am not claustrophobic" and then, I get claustrophobic.

[Ed Solomon]

Splendid isolation.

I don't need no one.

[dtolman]

So how low power we talking about here? It makes a difference :)

Zork I/Ancient Art of War era 8088 chips?
Civ I era 386?
Civ II era 486/Pentium?
Civ IV era from a few years ago?

[ElGuapo]

I mean how insane is insane?

I could see myself getting really claustrophobic, being super bored, self stimulation, clawing off my clothing, having panic attacks. . . but at some point your brain settles down, right? Say you have a massive panic attack and pound on the ship hull until your hands bleed. Then you'd catch your breath and calm down. Have there been long term studies of the kind of madness that comes from isolation in a confined space? I mean at some point would you go so stark raving mad you'd hurt yourself? Or blow the hatches, killing yourself? Or becoming just a gibbering mass and starve to death? I'd think if you had communication it would help a lot. There would be routine . . . going to sleep, waking, eating, exercise, checking systems, going to the bathroom, masturbation, entertainment. It's the breaks in routine that would let you survive longer. If there were something to see outside your window, or some crisis you had to deal with or problem to overcome. But if the routine was the same, day in and day out? I don't know, hard to answer. I felt like I was going slightly mad during the snowstorm this year, and that was only a few days.