Humanity’s drive to explore has taken us across the solar system, with astronaut boots, various landers and rovers’ wheels exploring the surfaces of several different planetary bodies. These environments are generally hostile to human and equipment health, so designing and executing these missions requires a lot of planning, testing and technological development.

You may have heard about the extensive testing facilities for spacecraft and equipment, but how do scientists prepare for the human aspect of space exploration?

One way to test out techniques and identify situations that may arise during a real mission is using a simulation, which in this field is more commonly known as an analog. Researchers choose and design analog missions and environments to replicate elements of a real mission, using what is available here on Earth.

These missions are conducted in extreme environments on Earth that are comparable to the Moon or Mars, in habitats designed to replicate living quarters, or a combination of both. Researchers can use analogs to study crew performance and procedures, or to test instruments under development for use in space.

For example, operating a drill or wrench may seem easy here on Earth, but try doing the same task in thick gloves on a bulky, pressurized space suit in lower gravity. Suddenly, things aren’t so straightforward. Testing these scenarios on Earth allows researchers to identify necessary changes before launch. The analogs can also train crew members who will one day undertake the actual mission.

I’m a planetary scientist, which means I study the geology of other planets. Currently, I study environments on Earth that are similar to other planets to improve our understanding of their counterparts elsewhere in the solar system. I participated as a volunteer in one of these analog missions as an “analog astronaut,” serving as the crew geologist and applying my prior research findings from studying the surfaces of the Moon and Mars.

These analog missions vary in setting, length and intensity, but all aim to learn more about the human factors involved in space exploration.

Where do we send them?

Analog missions are designed to simulate the crew’s experience in a given mission plan. In some cases, they simulate surface operations on the Moon or Mars for up to a year. Others might replicate the experience of being in transit to Mars for a period of time, followed by the crew “landing” and exploring the surface.

NASA uses several analog mission facilities spread across the world. For example, the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah is located in an environment chosen to imitate conditions on Mars, while analog missions at Aquarius, an undersea research station off the coast of Florida, help scientists learn about crew behavior and psychology in a confined habitat located in a hostile environment.

Some natural environments are commonly used for analog operations, such as volcanic terrains in the western U.S., human-made craters in Nevada, the natural meteor crater in Arizona and research stations in Antarctica. These locations mirror the geologic settings the crews are likely to encounter on future missions, and so training in these locations helps them execute the actual missions.

I participated in a simulated 28-day lunar surface mission at a facility called Hi-SEAS as part of a study on crew dynamics and psychology in extreme isolation. The facility is located on Mauna Loa, a volcano on the big island of Hawaii. This habitat has been used for a variety of studies, as the volcanic terrain is reminiscent of both the Moon and parts of Mars, and the isolated location simulates being in space.

Analog mission crews

Most missions require applicants to hold relevant degrees. They must undergo physical health and psychiatric evaluations, with the goal being to select individuals with similar backgrounds to those in the astronaut corps. The ideal crew is typically made up of participants who work and live well with others, and can stay cool under stress.

Crews also include at least one person with medical training for emergencies, as well as a variety of scientists and engineers to operate the habitat’s life support systems.

The experiences of each crew varies, depending on the mission design, location and makeup of the crew. My mission was designed so that the six crew members would not have any information about our crewmates until we arrived in Hawaii for training. In addition to geology expertise, I also have some medical training as a Wilderness First Responder, so I was there to assist with any medical issues.

Daily life on an analog mission

Once in Hawaii, the crew spent three days learning how to operate the habitat systems, including the hydroponic garden and solar panels. We practiced emergency procedures and were taught how to perform other tasks.

After that orientation, we were deployed to the habitat for 28 days. We turned in our phones to mission control and could only access the internet to check emails or use a few preapproved websites required for our daily duties. Our days were scheduled with tasks from wake up, about 6:30 a.m., to lights out, about 10 p.m.

The tasks included a variety of exercises to assess individual and group performance. They included individual assessments – similar to a daily IQ test – and group computer-based tasks, such as team 3D Tetris. The researchers remotely monitored our interactions during these activities, and the results were analyzed as the mission progressed. They used our fluctuating performance on these activities as a proxy for estimating stress levels, group cohesion and individual well-being.

Additionally, we went on two-to-three-hour extra-vehicular activities, or excursions outside the habitat, on alternating days. During these expeditions, we conducted geologic investigations on the volcano. On our “off days,” we spent two hours exercising in the habitat. We had to be fully suited in a mock spacesuit any time we went outside, and we had to be careful about the airlock procedures. We were never outdoors alone.

We could only eat freeze-dried and powdered foods, aside from what we were able to grow in the hydroponic system. We had no additional food delivered during our stay. Water was also rationed, meaning we had to find innovative ways to maintain personal hygiene. For example, a bucket shower one or two times per week was allowed, supplemented by “wilderness wipe” baths. As someone with a lot of very curly hair, I was happy to figure out a method for managing it using less than two liters of water per week. We were also permitted to do laundry once during our stay, as a group. Sorting through your crewmates’ wet clothes was certainly one way to bond.

Though physically demanding at times, the workload was not unreasonable. We were kept busy all day, as certain everyday tasks, such as cooking, required more effort than they might need in our normal lives. Preparing nutritionally balanced and palatable meals while rationing our very limited resources was hard, but it also provided opportunities to get creative with recipes and ingredients. We even managed to bake a cake for a crew member’s birthday, using peanut butter protein and cocoa powders to flavor it.

After dinner each night, we shared the pre-saved movies and shows we had each brought with us into the habitat, as we could not access the internet. Those of us who had brought physical copies of books into the habitat would trade those as well. One crew member managed to acquire a downloadable form of the daily Wordle, so we could still compete with our friends back home. We also played board games, and all of these activities helped us get to know each other.

Though different from our typical daily lives, the experience was one of a kind. We had the satisfaction of knowing that our efforts advanced space exploration in its own small way, one IQ test and slapdash cake at a time.

Jordan Bretzfelder, Postdoctoral Fellow, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It is that time again. Time to wonder: Why do we turn the clocks forward and backward twice a year? Academics, scientists, politicians, economists, employers, parents – and just about everyone else you will interact with this week – are likely debating a wide range of reasons for and against daylight saving time.

But the reason is right there in the name: It’s an effort to “save” daylight hours, which some express as an opportunity for people to “make more use of” time when it’s light outside.

But as an Indigenous person who studies environmental humanities, this sort of effort, and the debate about it, misses a key ecological perspective.

Biologically speaking, it is normal, and even critical, for nature to do more during the brighter months and to do less during the darker ones. Animals go into hibernation, plants into dormancy.

Humans are intimately interconnected with, interdependent on, and interrelated to nonhuman beings, rhythms and environments. Indigenous knowledges, which despite their complex, diverse and plural forms, amazingly cohere in reminding humans that we too are an equal part of nature. Like trees and flowers, we are beings who also need winter to rest and summer to bloom.

As far as we humans know, we are the only species that chooses to fight against our biological presets, regularly changing our clocks, miserably dragging ourselves into and out of bed at unnatural hours.

The reason, many scholars agree, is that capitalism teaches humans that they are separate from, and superior to, nature – like the point on top of a pyramid. That, and I argue, that capitalism wants people to work the same number of hours year-round, no matter the season. This mindset runs counter to the way Indigenous people have lived for thousands of years.

The nature of time and work

Indigenous views of the world are not the pyramids or lines of capitalism but the circles and cycles of life.

Concretely, time correlates with terrestrial and celestial changes. Historic records and oral interviews document that in traditional Indigenous cultures of the past, human activity was scheduled according to nature’s recurring patterns. So for example, a meeting might have been scheduled not at 4 p.m. on Thursday, but rather at the next full moon. Everyone knew well in advance when that would arise and could plan accordingly.

Such an acute sensitivity to nature’s calendar has symbolic meaning, too. To look up and see the Moon in the sky at night is to see the same Moon that someone once saw centuries ago and someone else will hopefully see centuries into the future. Time is interwoven with nature in a sense that far exceeds Western understanding. It embodies past, present and future all at once. Time is life.

In this Indigenous context, daylight saving time is nonsensical – if not outright comical. Time can’t be changed any more than a clock’s hands can grab the Sun and move its position in the sky. The Sun will continue to cycle at its gravitational will for generations – and economic systems – to come.

Like time, Indigenous approaches to work are also more expansive than the capitalist economy’s. They validate and value all life-sustaining activities as work. Taking care of oneself, of the sick, of the elderly, of the young, of the land, or even merely resting, for example, are equally valuable activities.

That’s because the objective of most Indigenous economies is not to increase an economist-invented measurement of production by working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Rather, their goal is to find and generate a holistic well-being for all.

Daylight saving time is exclusively designed for 9-to-5 workers. It attempts to boost economic activity by giving them, and them alone, more light. Think about it: Care workers, who are predominantly women, work beyond daylight hours year-round. Where is their temporal accommodation? Though likely not malicious or even purposeful, the political intervention of daylight saving time ignores the massive workforce that operates on the periphery of the mainstream economy. In some ways, it reinforces the discriminatory idea that only some workers are worthy of economic recognition and accommodation.

In this sense, daylight saving time raises the question: Does the economy really need that extra hour of sunshine and worker productivity? Traditional economic philosophies would likely answer no out of principle; they may see daylight saving time as trespassing the biophysical, ethical and sacred limits of the world ecology by encouraging cultures of overwork and overconsumption.

The working of time and nature

Since the invention of the clock, capitalism has increasingly treated time as an inanimate object largely independent of the environment.

While the rest of nature rises and slumbers to lunar and solar cycles, humans work and sleep to the resetting of their artificial clocks.

In their 2016 book “The Slow Professor,” humanities scholars Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber connect this objectification of time to an inhumane culture of work.

Modern workers, they write, are increasingly expected to treat time as a numerical asset that can be managed, measured and controlled. Time for rest and relaxation has no countable home in the capitalist economy of life.

There are certainly practical benefits to using time to measure and monitor economic activities – such as knowing the precise time a meeting is scheduled to start and end. But Berg’s and Seeber’s work reveals how that reasonable practicality has been subverted to hold workers captive within what I argue is an unsustainable, unnatural and exploitative environment. Work time and life time have blurred into one.

In capitalism, work is expected to grow infinitely, despite existing within a finite world inhabited by limited beings. At a time when human activity depletes the world’s ecology – rather than sustaining it as it once did – this around-the-clock approach to work is simply incompatible with nature.

In sum, daylight saving time reproduces the same destructive logic that has led humans and nonhumans into the present socio-ecological crises. Disobeying and dominating the laws, rhythms and shape of nature, as seen in the seasonal exploitation of human energy and labor via daylight saving time, perpetuates the unparalleled social and environmental decline uniquely characteristic to the current capitalist era.

Looking backward, progressing forward

Unlike the relatively recent inception of capitalism, Indigenous wisdom espouses a set of philosophies as old as time. It reminds humans that there are other ways of interacting with time, work and the environment – ways that existed before capitalism and that can exist afterward, too.

In my view, people might be better off if the discussion about changing the clocks in the fall and spring wasn’t about how much time we can “make use of” or how much daylight we might “save,” but rather about reducing the number of hours we are expected to be made useful – and profitable – to secure a more just and sustainable existence for all.

Rachelle Wilson Tollemar, Lecturer in Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.