In a Dome in Hawaii, a Mission to Mars
Chang, Kenneth. "In a Dome in Hawaii, a Mission to Mars." The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 Oct. 2014. Web. 22 Oct. 2014.
This article is about six people who volunteered to be “guinea pigs” for NASA. Their mission: to live with each other for eight months.Their base is a huge dome, situated on top of the Hawaiian volcano, Mauna Loa. With its 36 feet in diameter and two story building size, it does not go unseen. The goal of this mission is to examine how well a small group of people, isolated from all civilization, can get along and work together. For eight months, Martha Lenio, Jocelyn Dunn, Sophie Milam, Allen Mirkadyrov, Mr. Scheibelhut, and Zak Wilson will learn how to work together with limited resources. They all have a different backgrounds, entrepreneurs, engineers, graduate student and even war veterans. All of them think of this experiment as a great opportunity and are excited to start. But the experiment will only start in a few months, when the fact that they are shut away from everything hits them. Mr. Scheibelhut said he knows that there will be unpleasant times. “Eight months — you’re going to have real conflicts you’re going to have to work out,” he said. “Scientifically speaking, it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens.” And this is what it is all about. When astronauts are shut inside spaceships, the isolation can lead to depression and the mission can go out of control. Furthermore, something called the “third-quarter syndrome” can start to happen. When people are shut out from the world, they start going into routines which become more and more tedious every day, this is a bad thing to have while on a mission, because in the end the astronaut stops performing well and becomes unhealthy. “Right now, the psychological risks are still not completely understood and not completely corrected for,” said Kimberly Binsted, a professor of information and computer sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, “NASA is not going to go until we solve this.”
This mission is important and relevant to society because if we learn how to take care of the astronauts while they are on a spaceship then there will be less risks of them been unhealthy when they come back. However, this mission does not only apply to Mars missions, since the objective is to learn how humans support and live each other, this experiment can be applied to wars for example. During those times, soldiers are shut out from the world and have to live in small places with each others. If we know ways to make their time in those cramped spaces less a burden, then they will be be happier and able to perform better.
Overall, the article was well written because the writer used a clear and logical way of writing. The fact that he used many inputs from the people actually going through the experiment, helped explain the experiment and what was the feeling towards it. While reading we didn’t get the feeling of being overwhelmed because of the simplicity and organized way of the writing. In addition, there was a flow to the writing, the ideas did not come out suddenly, without any explanations. However, the way the paragraphs were formed was a little bit weird. Since each paragraphs were about two sentences long, it was a bit tough to understand. To make this better the writer could have put some paragraphs together.
This review written by Chloe Paris was a clean and informative. Through this review, I liked how Chloe did not add too much detail from the article that made it too confusing. She put enough information from it which made it easy to read and understand. Another aspect of her review that I enjoyed was how she used a quote which explained how people thought of this experiment especially the people that were being experimented on. This shows that people knew that they were taking a risk and that they knew what to expect. There would be up and downs and that they may not always get along. Lastly, the third aspect of her review that I thought was very important and very intelligent to put in, was her extra explanation of the life in a spaceship and her comparison towards war. It was very helpful for understanding how she explained what life was like during a space mission in a tight area for a very long period of time. This helped me get a better visual and a better understanding on the circumstances that they will have to go through. Even though her review was good overall there are a couple of things that she could work on. She should watch out for small grammatical errors. Sometimes her sentences were a little confusing and hard to understand. Another aspect to make her writing better could be the way she structures her sentences. This does go hand in hand with grammar. Grammar helps sentences sound clean and clear and not confusing. One thing that really stood out to me during this article was that the dome would be situated on top of a volcano. I did not understand why and I thought that it was very strange. Was it to show how high they were? How in danger they could be? How important it is to work together incase of an emergency? This really stood out to me. Overall I really enjoyed reading about the article Chloe chose and it was something new that I new heard of about before.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Chloe did a great job of reviewing this article. She was very clear about what the article was about and why it was important. One of the first things I noticed that Chloe did well, was include quotes that flowed well within the article. The one that I found to be the best fitting can be seen at the end of her first paragraph. Chloe did a fantastic job of including key details about NASA’ s experiment, and I was able to create a clear image in my mind about what it would be like. Finally. I also think that Chloe did a really good job on including what the author could work on, such as giving the location of the volcano in which the experiment will be conducted and what scientists predict the outcome will be.
ReplyDeleteI think that Chloe could have included a few more details about her thoughts on what this experiment will effect in everyday science and life. I felt that she gave a good base explanation but could have been a little more thorough. I also feel that Chloe could improve the way her sentences were structured. Sometimes a sentence would have the correct wording, but the order in which the words were in was somewhat confusing. This would make the sentence difficult to understand. Luckily, there were only one or two sentences that had this issue.
I think that it is very interesting that the experiment will be conducted in dome on top of a volcano. It makes me wonder why the location of this experiment was chosen to be here. Is it because it is isolated? Does the location induce a greater challenge?
ReplyDeleteChloe Paris wrote the review I decided to read. I believe she did a good job explaining what the experiment NAAS is performing. The quotes she imputed into the review also help you get a clear understanding of this article. Another thing she did well was her paragraph about the impact it has on the world because she clarified even more on how this is helping us. One thing that could of made this even better would be having more negatives on the article. Another thing she could have improved on is her spelling and grammar because there were a few mistakes. It really amazed me how groups of people are going in isolation for 8 months.