What is it like waking up on Mars? None of us can say, precisely, of course, but it’s clear that within some sort of dome, it would be challenging, and on the outside of such an artificial habitat it would be deadly. 

To get a better idea of life on our neighboring planet, Sheyna Gifford, a medical doctor, is among a half-dozen faux-stronauts embedded for a year and a day in a dome on a Hawaiian island (and inside spacesuits when venturing outside of it). It’s a reasonable approximation for bubble life on Mars. though the spectre of death is not, absent a huge disaster, as ever-present as it would be were it not a simulation.

She’s written a wonderful Aeon essay about the first half of the adventure, which has been full of technical challenges, including an earthly one: a crush of media after the release of The Martian. Given her specialty, Gifford has insights into the improvised medical techniques required in “space.” One great line: “On sMars, where there is neither money nor anywhere to spend it, value is based almost solely on usefulness: of an object, a task, even a person.”

The opening:

I don’t quite remember what it’s like to wake up on Earth. Five months after ‘landing on Mars’, my day begins in a white dome in the middle of a red lava field, and I wonder: do we have enough power to turn on the heat? Will the weather let us suit up and check the greenhouses? Are my air fans going to work?

These thoughts circle in my brain as I pad downstairs for that first cup of something warm. The news that awaits me there will be in watts, percentage humidity and degrees Celsius, telling me what happened in and around our habitat overnight, and how much power we’re likely to have for the rest of today. I will hear water churning in the hydroponic systems, along with the hum of the lurid pink growing lights in the biology lab. I will see the same crewmates, kitchen and two-foot round porthole I’ve seen every morning for five months. That view of the jagged rocks beyond is a constant reminder that our world – this world we’re sharing for one year as a test run for life on Mars – is hostile and mysterious.

Let’s be clear: simulated Mars (or sMars) is technically your world.•