MARS HABITAT- ARCHITECTURE

Srishti Dokras B Arch IDEAS,India and Dr,. Uday Dokras Ph D

Sweden

Introduction: As one of our closest and most familiar neighbors, the Red Planet has served as
the source of legends since the first storytellers slept under the stars. With its 24.6-hour day and
snowy polar caps, Mars is really the only place that looks promising for life — whether alien or
an outpost for humans. In modern times, that makes it a perfect slate for allegories about human
behavior, from the sci-fi author and space visionary  Ray Bradbury's critiques of American
culture to Edgar Rice Burrough’s sci-fi book Princess of Mars -now made into the most
expensive Hollowood film titled. “JOHN CARTER-MARS;” for scientists, dreams of life on
Mars persist inspite of the fact that the Curiosity rover landed on Sunday, Aug. 5, at 10:30 p.m.
PDT (1:30 a.m. EDT, 0530 GMT), 2012, determined that there wasn’t any.

.Figuring out how we could we be comfortable living on the red planet is a challenge but with
increasing discussion about how to send people to Mars with the ultimate aim of colonising the
planet, how to replace the sensation of the sunshine on your face or the grass beneath your feet.
But There’s no life on Mars – yet. Yes yet. We could be the next life on the red planet The
prospect of humans going to the Red Planet could finally be leaving the realms of science-
fiction:
1. NASA plans a manned Mars mission by the mid-2030s;
2. Elon Musk’s Space X aims to get there in 2024.

Climate: Mars is not just about the journey, though. Given the challenging travel windows
(Earth and Mars align once every two years; a one-way trip takes six to nine months), any visitor
to Mars is going to be staying there for some time. Conditions are hardly hospitable, either.
Mars’ gravity is 38 per cent that of Earth’s, there is virtually no atmosphere, so air pressure is
negligible, solar radiation levels are dangerously high, and the daily temperature fluctuation can
be as high as 150 degrees centigrade. Meteor impacts are also common.

Habitat Architecture to suit Mars: These radically different parameters are generating radical
new kinds of architecture and design. ‘Moving To Mars’, a new exhibition at London’s Design
Museum this October, promises to be a major showcase for these new Martian arts; while US
firm AI Spacefactory is creating a 3D printed experience of Mars life in the woods of upstate
New York, completing this autumn to launch to the public in March 2020.

Work by- Galina Balashova,Soviet space architect

It is not just a design challenge; building on Mars is also a construction challenge. Transporting
building materials 56 million km is out of the question. There is little choice but to work with the
material available: Martian rock, known as regolith. The current thinking is to send autonomous
robots in advance to process this regolith into a material suitable for 3D printing, then to
construct habitats remotely, ready for the first human arrivals. Again, this is no longer as sci-fi as
it sounds.

For the past three years NASA has been running a 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, testing
competing designs and materials, and moving the technology forwards – to the extent that new
‘interplanetary’ architecture practices are emerging, combining old-school design skills and
space-tech expertise. A panel of specialists worked alongside a visualization team to predict how
future Martian homes are likely to look, with interior and exterior images released for a variety
of futuristic residential builds.

Dwelling Designs: The team produced particulars for three distinct dwellings; an apartment
aimed at young professionals, a family home and a luxury mansion.
Key considerations include light and how to protect the living area of homes from cosmic rays
and hazardous levels of radiation, as well as insulation from the cold and protection from severe
dust storms.

(Image: National Geographic / SWNS.com)

The drawings have been produced after research revealed one in ten Brits would move to Mars
tomorrow, with a sense of adventure, enjoying more space and escaping human dangers on earth
among the top reasons for swapping planets.

Stephen Petranek, author of the book How We’ll Live on Mars, which the National Geographic
series MARS is based on, said: “It’s exciting to think that humans will be living on Mars far
sooner than most people think.The second series of MARS considers how a community might be
built and sustained on the Red Planet in the 2040s, and what the challenges will be both from a
practical and a human standpoint.”

(Image: National Geographic / SWNS.com)

“For this forward-thinking project, we’ve predicted what different homes on Mars might actually
look like, with options to suit a range of budgets.“There are plenty of elements to consider, from
ensuring an adequate shield to the harsh radiation Mars endures because its atmosphere is so
thin, to the need for homely touches reminiscent of Earth.“Ultimately, living on Mars must seem
more appealing and psychologically inviting than living on Earth or not enough people will want
to make a new life there.
“As we make these predictions now, we can only wonder what designs we will actually adopt as
hundreds of thousands of people eventually move to the Red Planet.”

The Mars apartment block features a number of living pods aimed at individuals and couples,
with tunnels leading to a central shared garden and work spaces.

It is protected from the sun’s rays by tinted glazing featuring coating technology developed to
filter out the radiation and rammed earth walls, designed to protect from the cold as well as
cosmic rays.

(Image: National Geographic / SWNS.com)

(Image: National Geographic / SWNS.com)
The family home is built within a protective cave, with a driveway leading to an inbuilt garage as
well as a conservatory-style veranda made from protective glass that offers a small indoor garden
area. The kind of natural light we would usually get from our windows on Earth is simulated via
LEDs and camera systems that can show the outside landscape in real-time to mimic windows,
and could even be programmed to provide other vistas.

(Image: National Geographic / SWNS.com)

(Image: National Geographic / SWNS.com)
For example parks, forests, rivers - familiar sights from Earth that our Martian residents might be
missing.The mansion is part of a crater community, offering show stopping vistas across the
cavity from three levels.

It boasts a huge living space with private indoor garden and multi-gym that allows for ‘outdoor’
activities such as sports to take place in an artificially-oxygenated environment as well as a car
port that can hold multiple vehicles.

According to the National Geographic research a fifth of Brits predict that it will be possible
to move to Mars within their lifetime, and there is a significant appetite to make an interplanetary
move. One in six revealed that with people struggling to get on the housing ladder on Earth,
buying property on Mars is looking like a more attractive prospect.
NASA subjects the Marsha model to a crushing test to assess its durability.Courtesy AI
Spacefactory

(Image: National Geographic / SWNS.com)

Brits revealed that the opportunity to enjoy a better quality of life, the desire to seek new
adventure and the need to flee human dangers on Earth such as war would be the most likely
factors to precipitate a move to Mars.

However, almost nine in ten predicted they would miss some aspects about life on Earth,
including their pets and even the British weather.
The epic action-adventure film “John Carter,” based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic, “A
Princess of Mars,” the first novel in Burroughs’ Barsoom series. In scoop for METALOCUS
readers bring the designs of the main architectural stages of the film. This year, 2012, marks the
100th anniversary of Burroughs’ character John Carter, the original hero featured in the series,
who has thrilled generations with his adventures on Mars.

Over generations, John Carter has become a heroic paradigm across all forms of pop culture.
From novels to comic books, artwork to animation, TV and now cinema, the character has
inspired some of the most creative minds of the last century.
 

"From Academy Award®–winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”—a

sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John
Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative
adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present.

The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is
inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic
proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the
captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter
rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his
hands."
The Moving to Mars exhibition, which opened on 18 th Octiber 2019 at London's Design
Museum, explores putting humans on the red planet as the final frontier for design"Surviving on
Mars could teach us how to live more sustainably on earth", says Design Museum's Moving
to Mars curator. Even though the show was structured into five parts: Imagining Mars, The
Voyage, Survival, Mars Futures and Down to Earth and explored themes including the role that
design plays in keeping astronauts safe during the voyage to Mars, and what working with its
limited resources could teach us about designing more sustainably on Earth it did not answer all
the questions.

Prompting the curator to state that "We don't advocate for Mars as a Planet B," "But we pose the
question of whether the rigours required in such an inhospitable environment – where we'll have
to recycle our oxygen, recycle our water and reuse our waste to survive – might force us to solve
those problems on Earth," he continued.
"Here, despite everything, we can all still get up and go through our day and not change
anything. You cannot do that if you're sending someone to Mars because they wouldn't last one
minute."

And from the time NASA's Curiosity Rover landed on Mars in August 2012, how survival
on Mars might become possible is explored through more than 200 exhibits which consist of a
combination of original artefacts from the likes of NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX, alongside
new commissions and immersive installations by Konstantin Grcic and Alexandra Daisy
Ginsberg.

The MARSHA Habitat by multidisciplinary design agency AI Spacefactory is one of several

speculative habitats featured in the exhibition. The show's first section, Imagining Mars, charts
our fascination with the red planet throughout history and culture, and how our understanding of
it has been shaped through scientific advancements. Covering everything from the first real
maps of Mars, created by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli in the 1870s, to a prototype of
the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars Rover which will be sent to the planet in 2020.
Named after the scientist whose x-ray images let to the discovery of DNA, this mobile laboratory
created by the European Space Agency (ESA) and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos, will drill
two metres into the planet's surface to look for evidence of past or present life.
The Rosalind Franklin rover is the largest of a number of different ESA prototypes and models featured in Moving to
Mars

First map of mars, 1877 - GIOVANNI VIRGINIO SCHIAPARELLI  1835 - 1910

 This is followed by On Mars
Today, a multi-sensory installation meant to help visitors imagine the current conditions on the
planet, from the radiation to the freezing temperatures, the lack of oxygen and the frequent dust
storms.
It visualises these conditions through a slowly panning panorama of the Martian environment,
accompanied by an audio track of otherworldly sounds and a scent created especially for the
exhibition by perfumery Firmenich. On Mars Today offers a multi-sensory experience of
conditions on the red planet
Part two of the exhibition takes a closer look at how we would actually get to Mars, starting from
the first iterations of space travel and going on to explore how it might be adapted for the journey
to Mars.
"It took us three days to get to the moon, so how can we stay safe and sane on a seven- to nine-
month journey to Mars?" asked McGuirk. "Add to that the time needed for the scientific study of
the planet and it's a completely different prospect."
"It's not just about making sure that people can be kept healthy and fed. It's also about making it
tolerable," he continued.
Sokol spacesuits were worn by those onboard the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft
This shift to a more human-centred approach is explored through seminal interior designs created
for both NASA and the Soviet space programme.
Sketches by American designer Raymond Loewy illustrate his introduction of windows, which
had previously been considered a structural weakness, as well as a dining table to facilitate
communal eating.
Galina Balashova, :Alongside this designs from Russian architect Galina Balashova, who first
introduced the colour coding of floors and ceilings to help astronauts maintain a sense of
orientation. Moving to Mars explores design as a crucial factor in keeping astronauts safe and
sane during their journey to the planet
This part of the exhibition also considers the constraints of zero gravity, which require
everything from basic equipment to furniture to be re-designed.
A new commission by German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic simplifies the highly
engineered and complex tables present in spacecrafts and on space stations today as a circular
rail. Astronauts' feet are hooked into floor-mounted straps to anchor them.

Designer Anna Talvi, meanwhile, has contributed a series of lightweight, flexible garments,
which act as a sort of "wearable gym" working out the wearer's muscles to prevent them from
atrophying in low gravity. The NDX-1 spacesuit is more flexible than the suits used for the moon
landing to allow for planetary exploration. On display for the first time as part of the exhibition is
NDX-1, the first prototype spacesuit designed specifically for use on Mars. It was created by the
University of North Dakota to withstand the planet's gruelling conditions, while soft fabric-joints
improve mobility when compared to the suits used on the moon. The outer shell of Foster +
Partners' Mars habitat would be built by semi-autonomous robots. In part three, designers turn to
the matter of survival – namely where we will live, what we will wear and eat.

Here, a large space is designated to different miniature models of what a future habitat could
look like, including a 3D-printed habitat designed by Foster + Partners, as well as a full-sized,
walk-in model made by architecture firm Hassell.Both make use of Mars' loose, sandy topsoil,
called regolith, to form a protective outer shell, while inflatable pods are used to form the
interior.Raeburn's collection of clothes repurposes materials such as parachutes, which would
deployed in the process of landing on Mars
.
Malaysian designers propose building Mars colony from locally grown bamboo. Warith
Zaki and Amir Amzar have envisioned using bamboo grown and harvested on Mars to build the
first colony on the red planet.
Named Seed of Life, the conceptual colony design comprises a series of structures woven from
bamboo by autonomous robots.
Malaysian designers  Zaki and Amzar designed the proposal to demonstrate that there may be
alternative ways of building on Mars that do not rely on shipping material from earth or 3D
printing. "After doing a lot of research on Mars colonisation, we realised that half of the ideas
would go about deploying fully synthetic materials made on earth to build shelters, while the
other half is about using the locally available regolith," Zaki and Amzar told Dezeen.
"We tried to find something in between, a balance of natural material from earth and advanced
technology." To create the buildings, Zaki and Amzar envision farming bamboo on Mars and
using the material the build the structures.
"Human civilisation has yet to build anything on any other planet outside of Earth. That fact
alone opens up infinite possibilities of what could or should be used," explained the designers.
"Sure, 3D printing seems to be a viable proposition, but with thousands of years worth of
experience and techniques in shelter construction, why shouldn’t we tap on other alternatives
too?"
“A rendering of Marsha, one of the options NASA collaborators have come up with for housing on the
Red Planet. The tall, slender shape maximizes interior space and lends itself to printing.Courtesy AI
Spacefactory

Architect Jeffery Montes and his colleagues at architecture firm AI SpaceFactory are in a -
cavernous hall near Peoria, Illinois, to show NASA how astronauts could use 3D printing and
Martian materials to make houses on the Red Planet. After spending the better part of 30 hours
watching their custom-built printer squirt out a chocolate-colored domicile called “Marsha,” they
have just minutes before the agency calls time in its 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. The -
company’s only competition for the $500,000 prize, a team from Penn State University, finished
its gray concrete double igloo a few minutes before.

3D Printing: Think of housing on Mars, and that’s the kind of shape that might come to mind.
But Montes, an architect who spent 17 months designing Marsha (for Mars habitat) and the
equipment to print it, sees something that looks more like a jar. Or an urn. Or an egg. “It even
has this hermaphroditic quality where on the outside it’s kind of phallic, and on the inside it’s…”
Montes envisions several floors where residents of the Red Planet will live and work and play,
and a skylight under which they will gaze at a starry sky or bask in sunlight refracted through the
thin Martian atmosphere. But that means securing the round window atop a 15-foot structure
that’s still squishy. The mixture sets quickly, but not quickly enough to meet NASA’s looming
deadline. As the printer nozzle climbs higher, Marsha’s upper layers slump ever so slightly.
The robot finishes with three minutes to spare, then inches the polycarbonate skylight into
position. With seconds remaining and dozens of people—including a film crew from NASA—
watching, Montes gives the order to release it. Everyone holds their breath, hoping Marsha
doesn’t cave in.

People settling on Mars will to some degree have to live off the land. At its closest, our
neighboring planet lies 35 million miles away. Transporting supplies there will cost roughly
$5,000 per pound and take at least six months using current technology. Better to enlist the
natural resources of their new home when possible, an approach called in situ resource
utilization. "It totally changes the logistics of a mission," says Advenit Makaya, a materials
engineer who develops processes like 3D printing at the European Space Agency. "You don't
have to bring everything with you."

Humans on the Red Planet might draw power from the sun, mine water from buried ice, and
harvest oxygen from the atmosphere. With NASA’s encouragement, architects, engineers, and
scientists are exploring how early residents might use recycled waste and the planet’s loose rock
and dust, called regolith, to craft tools, erect homes, pave launchpads and roads, and more.
Rovers and probes have revealed enough about Martian geology for us to start figuring out how
that might work. The surface contains an abundance of iron, magnesium, aluminum, and other
useful metals found here at home. Scientists also believe the crust consists largely of volcanic
basalt much like the dried lava fields of Hawaii.

Here on Earth, researchers often employ crushed basalt as an analog for Martian regolith. They
can heat and compress the sandy material, a process called sintering, to create paving tiles.
NASA and aerospace agency Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems did
exactly that in 2015, then had a robotic rover called Helelani use the pavers to build a launchpad
66 feet in diameter. Compacted regolith might even hold together without heat, according to a
team led by Yu Qiao of the University of California at San Diego. Their 2017 study posits that
iron oxide, which gives Mars its rusty tint, could serve as a binding agent.

If humans want to create a

lasting presence on the Red Planet, they’ll have to live off the dirt beneath their feet.
They turned to a relatively simple method of pottery-making called slip casting. It calls for
pouring a soupy mixture of clay and water, called slip, into a plaster mold and allowing it to set.
Then you dump out the excess material and remove the object for firing in a kiln. Instead of
using clay, Karl and Gurlo tried it with a simulated regolith called JSC-Mars-1A, which NASA
developed in 1998, and a rotund mold from the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin. The smooth,
squat vases they created resemble terra cotta, and wouldn’t look out of place filled with flowers.
Karl envisions greens sprouting from vessels like them in hydroponic gardens on another world.
He also thinks refining the process could allow astronauts to slip-cast Red Planet mud into more-
complex shapes with the help of a 3D printer. Mars inhabitants might craft everyday objects, but
NASA wants architects and engineers to consider where those pioneers might live. Four years
ago, the agency invited them to enter the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge.

Contestants navigated three escalating phases of competition. The first, completed in 2015,
called on teams to create architectural renderings of their habitats. Two years later, entrants had
to develop the tools needed to 3D-print dwellings, and create the beams, domes, and other
structural elements needed to erect them. Teams came and went as the contest progressed, until
just two entered the final, and hardest, event this year.
The rules, which ran 76 pages, required each group to print a one-third scale model of a four-
person habitat with at least three openings within 30 hours. Judges awarded points for using
materials like simulated regolith, and, because the competition emphasized automated
construction, deducted points for intervening to, say, fuss with printer software or clear a clogged
nozzle.

NASA likes the idea of robot construction crews because the habitats could be ready before
humans arrive.
Habitat construction got off to a rough start the first day of the May 2019 competitions. The
teams worked in an enormous exhibition hall owned by heavy-equipment manufacturer
Caterpillar, which typically uses the space to demonstrate earth-movers and other big machines.
The arena briefly lost power, causing hiccups in the teams' printer programs, and wonky
extrusions required occasional troubleshooting. Judges discreetly warned NASA's Monsi Roman,
who oversaw each of the phases leading up to the final event, to prepare for disappointment. But
within a day, both teams found their momentum, and the mesmerizing whir of the printers drew
company employees and field-tripping students to watch the structures rise in fits and starts.

Some wondered if the tumble doomed AI SpaceFactory’s chance of winning, even though the
team had earned high scores in several categories and intervened in its automated print less often
than the Penn State crew. After letting the habitats cure overnight, the judges spent a few hours
beating them mercilessly to ensure they were airtight, check their impact resistance, and assess
their strength. Dairy Queen proved remarkably robust during a simulated meteorite strike,
enduring a barrage of increasingly heavy balls until the last one, a 26-pounder, removed a small
chunk of the roof. More impressive, the structure resisted the crushing vertical assault of a 96-ton
excavator—at least for a couple of minutes, before collapsing with the percussive crack of a
bowler throwing a strike.
Strictly speaking, Marsha was incomplete because it lacked a roof. It clearly wasn’t airtight: The
habitat emitted great plumes of colorful smoke when a contest official tossed a test flare into it.
The judges saw no point to dropping fake meteorites on it either. The model, however,
surrendered just a few small pieces to the excavator, which placed its bucket on Marsha’s rim
and pushed down with enough force to raise the front of the rumbling machine’s treads off the
ground.
After spending a few hours reviewing notes and tallying points, the judges named AI
SpaceFactory the winner. Montes, grinning with teammates as they held an oversize check for
$500,000, seemed almost as pleased as NASA’s Roman, who considered the build a great
success. Despite their scars, the habitats provided perhaps the most tangible evidence yet of what
homes on another world could look like. “They’re not perfect,” she said, “but they’re beautiful.”

3D printed Habitat
Balashova was born in Kolomna and was educated at the Moscow Architectural Institute.
Balashova began her career in 1955 at the GiproAviaProm design institute in Kuibyshev. Her
work at this time involved removing decorative elements, considered "decadent", from
residential buildings. In 1957, she became senior architect at OKB-1, which was responsible for
design during the early days of the Soviet space program. She began by designing residences for
employees but later contributed to the interior design of the Soyuz spacecraft and
the Salyut and Mir space stations. Balashova also worked as a consultant for the Buran
programme. She retired in 1991 upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, making her work no
longer a State secret and available to the public.

Her work with the space program included the design of interior spaces, furniture, control panels,
decorative logos and murals for interior walls. Balashova designed for a’ 0’ gravity environment,
using contrasting colors for floor and ceiling so that astronauts would not become disoriented.
Her color schemes come from her experience doing watercolors as a child, where she began her
artistic education. Balashova also used the color green in her designs so the televisions at the
time would produce the color truthfully.

In 2018 in the United States for the first time Galina Balashova's remarkable life and
professional accomplishments have been uncovered and emphasized in talks presented at
international conferences organized by two leading American universities.

Her design for lapel pins used at the Aérosalons exhibition in France in 1973 later became
official emblem for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project. Balashova was denied approval to attach her
name to her own drawing under the "pretext of safety," losing the opportunity to spread her name
among 100,000 distributed pins at the exhibition.[2] Press coverage increased in the Soviet Union
and the United States but Balashova still failed to receive any credit for her designs. When the
lapel pins began production in a factory in Mytishchi, certificates for Balashova's design were
created by the factory's artistic committee without approval of the government.[2] Balashova's
superiors became enraged that she held not only the copyright, but also she was officially
registered as the creator; her superiors considered themselves to be the creators of the emblem,
and that the workers were only following their direction. Bobkov, one of her superiors,
threatened to place Balashova in jail for 8 years "for the betrayal of State secrets." Balashova was
only able to save herself by claiming it was not her, but the factory who submitted the certificate,
and that she was forced to sign a declaration of renunciation and restrict any future royalty
payments for the emblem.  For comparison, a male in the department found the emblem and
reproduced it with a hexagonal profile and reportedly received tens of thousands of dollars for
his design, which was simply a replica of Balashova's design.

Galina Balashova's pioneering achievements are illuminated in major planned volumes on

women's contribution to architecture but her contributions to zero gravity designs are rarely
recognized today beyond a few minor exhibitions and these volumes.

Space station MIR

 Galina on Right

“Design for the Soviet Space Programme – Galina Balashova, Architect” © Uwe Dettmar

REFERENCES

Inside NASA's plan to use Martian dirt to build houses on Mars

If humans want to create a lasting presence on the Red Planet, they’ll have to learn to live off the
land. Megan Gannon, October 14, 2019
https://www.popsci.com/making-houses-on-mars/

From Architectural reviews

 “

how a house on Mars might look. Photograph: HASSELL + Eckersley