Old constellations in the new confusion

Friends and family gathered at a hangar in the car park of Moscow's Institute for Medical and Biological Problems to welcome back the six-man crew, breaking into applause as they emerged one by one.
Blue jumpsuits hung baggily from the men's thinned frames and sagged around their skeletal wrists as they waved hello to the friends and family who awaited their "return to Earth".

The unprecedented experiment saw the six men locked up in June 2010 as Russia and the European Space Agency sought to come as close as possible to recreating the long, isolated voyage to the red planet. The crew was free to communicate with "mission control", as well as with family and friends – but with 20-minute gaps to recreate conditions in space. Their physical and psychological health was closely monitored, and they were put through stress tests such as a total communication blackout.
The crew has now been taken to a Moscow hospital for a three-day quarantine. They will be shown to the public at a press conference on Tuesday. Psychologists are hoping the men will easily reintegrate into society, and doctors will check that their immune systems haven't been compromised after 18 months "away".

But seen from out here everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man's ego. I feel lonely.

Little information has been released about the psychological effects of space travel, both on the astronauts and the public at large. Over the years NASA spokesmen have even denied that the astronauts dream at all during their space flights. But it is clear from the subsequently troubled careers of many of the astronauts (Armstrong, probably the only man for whom the 20th century will be remembered 50,000 years from now, refuses to discuss the moon landing) that they suffered severe psychological damage. What did they dream about, how were their imaginations affected, their emotions and need for privacy, their perception of time and death?

The Russian astronaut Col. Komarov was the first man to die in space, though earlier fatalities have been rumoured. Komarov is reported to have panicked when his space-craft began to tumble uncontrollably, but the transcripts of his final transmissions have never been released.

The last man, alone with God.

During the Apollo flights I half-hoped that one of the spacecraft would return with an extra crew-man on board, wholly accepted by the others, who would shield him from the prying world. Watching the astronauts being interviewed together, one almost senses that they constitute a secret fraternity, and may be guarding some vital insight into the nature of time and space which it would be pointless to reveal to the rest of us. Unless the space programme resumes, the secret may die with them.

And is it getting easy not to care
Despite the many rings around your name
It isn’t funny and it isn’t fair
You’ve travelled all this way and it’s the same

But you are, my love, the astronaut
Flying in the face of science
I will gladly stay an afterthought
Just bring back some nice reminders

Each of the six also each received bouquets of flowers from young Russian women upon emerging. It was their first sight of a woman for 18 months.
Russian scientists chose an all-male crew after an attempt at a similar experiment in 2000 went horribly wrong when a Russian astronaut tried to forcibly french kiss Canadian Judith Lapierre. Scientists have yet to report any conflicts inside Mars500.

Imagine me needing someone. Back on Earth I never did. Oh, there were women. Lots of women. Lots of love-making but no love. You see, that was the kind of world we'd made. So I left, because there was no one to hold me there.

I looked and looked but I didn't see God.