re: Arctic astronauts return from frontier
Well, you're wrong. It depends on what part of a Mars mission your simulating. For example if you where simulation the last 3 weeks of your stay on Mars it make perfect sense to run the sim for that long.
Where do you get 2 years the usual time frames for on surface is between about a month to about a year. It all depends on the orbital mechanics of the mission and the launch windows for return.
--Chris Vancil