Count To Twenty

Try this experiment (you'll need a partner in another room, house or city).

First, pick a starting time, then wait twenty minutes. Now phone your partner and after she says hello, wait twenty minutes, then respond.

Your partner should then wait for twenty minutes after your response, then wait another twenty minutes to begin a conversation.  Each response in the conversation should be separated by twenty minutes for the send and a pretend twenty minutes for the receive.

That is how a conversation between a person on Earth and a person on Mars would play out. The signal takes twenty minutes in each direction.

The effect of a twenty-minute delay in communication was one of many factors being studied during an 8-month isolation experiment that ended a couple of months ago. Six NASA volunteers lived in a 1200-square-foot structure near a volcano in Hawaii. Picture 6 people living together inside a two bedroom, one bath apartment for eight months, with no option to go outside without wearing a space suit, no open windows, no fresh food from a local farmer's market or grocery store (only freeze-dried food). And a twenty-minute delay in every communication from outside.

To be fair and more accurate, the delay could be less than twenty minutes. The range is between four minutes and twenty-two minutes. I don't know what factors determine the exact amount of time. Try my experiment using four minutes each way. It's still an issue. This particular experiment used twenty minutes for their timeline.

The experiment was designed to simulate a trip to Mars; it takes at least eight months just to get there. The volunteers wore sensors to study moods, played games to measure compatibility, stress and personal space issues and used virtual reality devices to 'escape' their surroundings if needed.

Could you do it?

Pack up some freeze-dried food, lock your doors and start counting.