Is this a real experiment?

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Europe names crew for Mars 'mission'
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The European Space Agency (ESA) on Friday named a Frenchman and a German who will join four Russians in an innovative 105-day isolation experiment to test whether humans can one day fly to Mars.
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From March 31, the six "crew" will be locked inside a special facility in Moscow that replicates conditions of a space trip to Mars.
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The simulation will be followed by a 520-day experiment, starting later this year, that would last as long as a real mission to Mars.
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The two Europeans are Oliver Knickel, 28, a mechanical engineer in the German army, and Cyrille Fournier, 40, a captain with Air France who flies A320 airliners, ESA said in a press release.
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The distance between Earth and Mars varies between 55 million kilometres (34 million miles) and more than 400 million kms (250 million miles).
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Using current rocket technology, a there-and-back trip to the Red Planet would take at least 18 months.
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But how is this an experiment? When old sailing ships were the space ships of their day, 20 or 30 hearty souls would go to sea for MONTHS on end without hitting port.
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Hell in 1979 I was at sea for 44 days once, 1 day in port and back into the Indian Ocean for another 21 days. Trust me, you were more isolated at sea THEN, than people on the Space Station are NOW. They have e-mail and internet access on the space station, and in this research module I'll wager, we had...NOTHING.
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Sour grapes?
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No, I just don't understand this as an "experiment" or test of something unknown, oooooooh aaaaaah oooooo!! .
The only thing such isolation does is cause some guys to switch hit. "...buggery on the high seas" as Cheech e' Chong would say. There are a couple other "squids" in our crowd, pony up the sea stories fellows. Leave out any buggery. Tell them, this ain't shit, is it? 105 days of isolation. Phhhht.
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Schteveo would go to Barsoom