Could You Spend 501 Days With Your Spouse In Space?

(CNN) -- One man. One woman. Five hundred and one days in an RV-size space capsule. Will they still be speaking when they return? The Inspiration Mars Foundation is seeking to send two people — potentially a middle-aged married couple — to space in a capsule that would pass within 100 miles of Mars. Although no formal application process has begun, the Mars mission masterminds are already receiving résumés and technology ideas from interested people, said Jane Poynter, president of Paragon Space Development Corp., which is developing technologies for the mission that’s hoping to launch in 2018. Of course, the behavioral quirks and annoyances that you might easily brush aside on Earth would be magnified in a confined space over 501 days. Even in a healthy marital relationship, there can be such a thing as too much contact, Palinkas said. Nobody really knows the ideal size of a crew to travel this long, but Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, is skeptical about having just two people. If one of them is emotionally unavailable, the other is out of luck. (As for whether sex has ever been tried in space, “there are rumors but no official acknowledgment,” Suedfeld said.) “When both of you are under stress — and these two people would be under the same level of stress, the same kind of stress — each of them would want emotional support and be too focused on their own problems to give it to the other,” Suedfeld said. In his view, it’s better to have a team with some amount of diversity, where no one background or nationality predominates. The International Space Station usually has a crew of six these days, and that’s worked out well, he said. There are other challenges: If one person were to get sick, the remaining crew member would need to take over all tasks to keep the vehicle operational, Kring said. In Biosphere 2, which is much bigger than a space capsule, Poynter and MacCallum never got on each other’s nerves, she said; it was others who irked them, so the couple could “rally together.” But whether any given couple who goes to Mars would still want to be together after 501 days is anyone’s guess, experts say.

I’ll tell you who this is a problem for, and thats the chick. I could spend 501 days in space with my Old Lady no problem. My Manhattan apartment is probably the same size as a space capsule anyway. I’m basically doing it as is. The only problems I’ve encountered so far is that its hard to jerk off before I go to sleep and its awkward when I blow up the bathroom. I’d imagine those would be the same problems in space. Although I don’t even know if you can jerk off in space or smell poop so who knows. All I know is if you’re gonna put a couple in close quarters for 501 days the burden is always gonna fall on the chick. By day 25 that capsule is a frat boy dorm room. Hope you enjoy the next 480 babe!

Ah who am I kidding. I’d be making my space bed and doing my astronaut spacesuit laundry for 2 straight years. Cleaning space dishes even though all I ate was astronaut ice cream and the plate didn’t even get dirty. Lets call a spade a spade – 501 days living with your girlfriend in space is the same exact thing as 501 days living with your girlfriend on earth.