Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Could Live on Mars

Re:Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Coul... by raverbashing on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @02:17AM (#9574902)

Of course, the dynamics of video-game playing in zero-gravity should be interesting. (Do optical drives work in zero-g?)

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Re:Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Coul... by pmalynin on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @02:32AM (#9574926)

Yes, why wouldn't they work, they don't particularly rely on gravity to operate. But then the question is why use optical drives at all?

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Re:Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Coul... by raverbashing on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @04:56AM (#9575173)

Because mechanical parts (and the way they are controlled) sometimes are built to compensate for gravity, so the absence of it might change the way it functions.

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Re:Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Coul... by lmm on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @05:47AM (#9575309)

Optical drives work on their side or upside down, which suggests to me that they'd be fine.

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Re:Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Coul... by kaybe on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @07:32AM (#9575613)

But how long will they work compared to the right way up? I can imagine that running it on the side will have unequal distribution of forces and thus wear for example.

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Re:Six Men Spent 520 Days Locked in a Room to See If We Coul... by lmm on Wednesday May 20, 2015 @09:36AM (#9576170)

There are consumer products that have them mounted sideways (e.g. I think one of the xboxes?), so it seems like they're reliable enough for consumer electronics standards.

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