An experiment of creating a science-fiction novel about people travelling to Mars, began on June 15, 2010. This project is a kind of contribution of Russian science fiction writers in support of the “Mars-500” experiment, which has a full simulation of a long flight to the Red Planet.
12 science fiction writers from Russia, Ukraine and Israel will take part in the project “The Road to Mars”. They are: Pavel Amnuel, Jaroslav Verov, Eugeny Garkushev, Alexander Gromov, Alexander Zorich, Alexey Kalugin, Dmitry Kolodan Sergei Lukyanenko, Igor Minakov, Anton Pervushin, Nikolai Romanov and Sergei Slusarenko. Vladimir Bondar will provide illustrations for the project.
The first fragment of the novel was published the day the project began. Its author is Pervushin. It is assumed that the writers will publish one fragment every week for 16 months, and nobody knows what kind of novel it will be at the end of this period.
Such a long period of time is not a coincidence: writers will spend as long time on their novel, as the last stage of “Mars-500” project lasts. Within the project, the crew of 6 people (three Russians, French, Italian and Chinese) will spend 520 days in isolated from the outside world space, which is in a special medical and technical complex.
This complex is designed for “simulating the conditions of the crew life and work as close as possible to those of real space objects”.
The Institute of Biomedical Problems RAS, organizer of the experiment, finds that in terms of development, Mars is the most promising planet of those that are in the solar system. The fact that Google Earth now has maps of the Martian surface proves, that the international community interest to the planet has increased in recent years.
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