Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – A Springfield doctor sacrificed everything in his life for more than a year as medical officer in a Mars simulator. Dr. Nathan Jones, an emergency-room physician at Springfield Memorial Hospital, spent fourteen months inside the simulator at Johnson Space Center in Texas with three other people.

He couldn’t even go home for the weekend. “NASA wanted to simulate the mental fatigue and difficulties that could develop on a long-duration mission like this, and that is of utmost importance for this mission,” Jones said.

Jones, who spoke at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield Thursday, said now that he is back home, he is taking some of those lessons into the ER.

“Certainly, I think I learned quite a bit about leadership and communication and that sort of thing,” said Jones. “I intentionally, actually, studied some of those things while I was there.”

Jones says we could be traveling to Mars by the 2040’s.