Elon Musk wants to build a city on Mars by 2050 – but a simulated mission shows that he may need to make much-needed adjustments.
The SpaceX CEO intends to send the first humans to Mars by the middle of the 20th century, using the Starship rocket currently being developed at the Texas plant. This is an unknown area for humans, and researchers warn that there could be unforeseen problems in Martian habitats such as cabin fever and isolation.
NASA has undertaken a series of “analogue missions” here on Earth to try to simulate these Mars missions, with the aim of discovering problems before humanity reaches the planet.
MaryLiz Bender attended one of these missions hosted by NASA Goddard. She is a musician and co-founder of the media studio Cosmic Perspective, and she spent 15 days in January 2021 at the remote HI-SEAS station in Hawaii. She tells Reverse that the mission revealed a number of issues that designers would have to resolve to make life on Mars more bearable. One big one was the need to re-imagine the common space, a place she found essential for life on ‘Mars’.
“Let us not do our cities again as we do now,” Bender said.
The most surprising point may seem like a relatively small solution, but according to Bender, it will make a big difference: the soundproof living quarters.
Want to find out how Bender suffered brutal power outages, what life really is like on Mars and what Musk has yet to change? Read the full interview, in MUSK READ +.
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“I wanted to record my song for a song,” Bender says. Reverse. ‘But every time I turn on the microphone, there will be noise from other people. And of course they would hear me if I started singing. So it’s crazy. You really do not have the freedom to express yourself as you usually do in your own home. ”
In the relatively small habitat, it is a change that can make life more bearable. HI-SEAS, which stands for Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, consists of a 1,200-square-foot (111-square-meter) dome, with a habitable volume of approximately 13,000 cubic feet (approximately 370 cubic meters). ). There is enough space to accommodate six crew members, a laboratory, bathroom, kitchen, work area and a simulated airlock.
HI-SEAS is designed to simulate the feeling of a true Mars mission. It is about 2500 meters above sea level on Hawaii Island in the Mauna Loa mountain range. The visitors had the task of exploring the nearby lava tubes and exploring the life migrating through the corridors.
This is the kind of research that could reveal more about the lava tubes on Mars. But as Bender’s experience has revealed, these analogous astronaut missions can also reveal important information about mankind’s future to come to Mars.
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