A manned mission to Mars would take roughly 500 days, so six trailblazers have volunteered to spend a year and a half cooped up to see what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real:
The three Russians, two Europeans and one Chinese national will be sealed away for one-and-a-half years inside a 180-square-metre (1,000-square-feet) spaceship module on the outskirts of Moscow starting on June 3.
“It will be trying for all of us. We cannot see our family, we cannot see our friends, but I think it is all a glorious time in our lives,” enthused Chinese participant Wang Yue, who is the youngest volunteer at age 27.
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The Mars-500 team’s contact with the outside will also be delayed and often disrupted to mimic a real situation, preventing chats with friends and family and leaving the crew to fend for themselves in a crisis.To stave off the blues and break up daily routines, the crewmen can only count on each other, Charles told AFP.
I would think you could just send a half-dozen 18-year-old computer science majors on this pseudo-mission, and they could pursue their degrees just fine via correspondence courses — no opportunity cost.