Figurative - the channels are not literal or physical.
Answer:
The story speaks about how the astronauts cope with boredom in space.
Explanation:
The article "Danger! This Mission to Mars Could Bore You To Death" is written by Maggie Koerth-Baker. The article begins with six astronauts living on the slopes of volcano for a project named HI-SEAS.
They began with a pretending game of "What if we lived on Mars?" The astronauts are studying how people react on spending large amount of time in space. According to the article, it takes eight months on each way and the astronauts get to spend a large amount of time in the space and they must get bored of these long times.
The writer reveals that these chronic boredom times can be very dangerous as it makes the astronauts day dream and make them depressed also. So, they should engage themselves in various tasks to avoid getting bored as it involves the risk of life of other crew members as well.
