Illustrations by prune Gilly, 2020
With planet Earth running out of resources, it’s essential we begin thinking about what we’ll really do when the time comes. NASA has been sending mankind to outer space since 1961 exploring the Moon, Mars and everything else within our engineered-intelligence reach. NASA manned missions continue to provide the evidence needed in order to determine whether humans will be able to live in outer space in the future.
As astronauts continue to explore outer space, with missions become increasingly longer in duration, social stressors will continue to be experienced. Whilst we have been able to study and resolve physiological stressors such as exercise and astronaut health, we are yet to discover how to provide astronauts with the appropriate environment to reduce psychological stressors. Long duration manned missions pose a range of psychological stressors such as; lack of privacy and personal space, claustrophobia, overcrowding, lack of communication to friends and family and a lack of hostile environment (Marsh 2007). With a return trip to Mars potentially taking up to 8-12 months, it’s important these factors are considerate to ensure astronauts are provided with the best work environment.
The key to mitigating these psychological stressors is by providing astronauts with sustainable habitation they can call base camp. Extra-terrestrial exploration over the years has allowed scientists to determine the climate and environment on Mars, factors such as atmospheric considerations, radiation, altitude, soil composition and temperature. A permanent habitat will provide multi-national, multi-racial and multi-gender crew shelter for durations of up to two years (Huebner-Moths 1992). Bases like these will include facilities such as research laboratories, mission operations workstations, airlock chambers, storage, etc. Further, the base camp will incorporate facilities to support crew members which include individual quarters, recreation areas, exercise facilities, teleconferencing rooms, psychological retreat rooms, and health maintenance rooms (Ibid).
Exactly how space flight architects will be able to design for such climate has remained a challenge. Developments for habitat design have included 3D printing from rovers using synthetic materials and the possibility of “Martian brick technology.” However, issues arise with transportation of 3D printing materials. Multiple trips must be taken in order to get the rovers to Mars and provide continuous supply of synthetic materials for production of habitats, therefore these routes of building can take multiple years. Alternatively, early discoveries of how natural resources on mars can be used to produce “martin bricks” have been explored, and provide a more efficient and sustainable way of building on Mars. Building with readily available materials sourced on Mars mean astronauts do not need to outsource materials and allows for more habitats to be built on multiple areas of the planet’s surface allowing for expandability and replaceability if crews are required to move. Once habitats have been resolved, the idea of living on Mars will become more and more attainable. Factors such as asteroid mining and moon mining will allow crew to attain resources such as water and minerals able to be used to produce building materials, a potential economy and more.
Marsh, Melvin. Identification of Psychological Stressors for Long Duration Space Missions: Psychological Stressors Among Five Astronauts and Cosmonauts Department: Space Studies (2007), 2-4.
Huebner-Moths, Janis, Joseph P. Fieber, Patrick J. Rebholz, Kerry L. Paruleski, and Gary T. Moore. "Pax Permanent Martian Base: Space Architecture for the First Human Habitation on Mars." (1992), 3.
Ibid., 3.