In the merry-go-round of life, a year can race by. But confine yourself to a small dome on rocky terrain 8,200 feet above sea level, and you might learn to appreciate the finer points of life a little more. This is how six scientists must have felt when they returned to “Earth” on Sunday after spending a year in near-isolation in a simulated habitat on Mars on the slopes of a volcano in Hawaii.
They said the things they had missed most were pizzas and privacy, but they also may have been surprised by how much the world had turned in their absence: a sometime TV star, for instance, had become the Republican party’s presidential candidate, the clumsy portmanteau “Brexit” had become a universally understood word and, remarkably, their Nasa workmates had found evidence of water flowing on their destination planet.
It’s often said that travel broadens the mind, but what happens when your journey never leaves home? Possibly, only the six Mars men and women have the answer to that.