We thought the Hundred Year Starship initiative to strand aged astronauts on Mars by 2030 was depressing, and in comparison the European Space Agency's Mars-500 project is little more than a walk in the park (a very small, confined, and extremely monotonous park). Essentially Bio-Dome re-written to simulate travel to Mars and back (without that lovable scamp Pauly Shore), the project bills itself as "the first full duration simulation of a manned flight to Mars," with astronauts conducting a 640-day voyage to the red planet and back -- all without leaving the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP). Members of the crew "landed" on Mars on February 12th of this year,
