Architect unveils proposed inflatable pods for moving to Mars in Design Museum's new exhibition

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Robert Dex @RobDexES17 October 2019

Visitors to an exhibition at the Design Museum can experience how future space travellers might live on Mars.

They will be able to step inside a pod made for a Nasa competition to see a building that astronauts could call home on the red planet.

Architect Xavier De Kestelier’s scheme for six inflatable pods includes a gym, laboratory and living space complete with a luxurious chaise longue, 3D printed from recycled plastic. The designer proposed that those who stay on the planet would have to build their own furniture from waste material.

He said: “We thought, on Mars why would I bring furniture? Every kilo you take is hugely expensive so why don’t we have this idea of 3D printing it from waste material, packaging material the astronauts will have.

“On the International Space Station they put it in a module and they burn it up in the atmosphere. On Mars there are no bin collectors, where is the recycling plant? All these things you have to think about.”

The exhibit is part of the Moving to Mars exhibition. It also includes Nasa spacesuits, science-fiction stories about life on Mars and early maps of the planet drawn in the 19th century.

There is also a full-scale model of the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover which is set to be launched next year and spend months on the surface of Mars looking for evidence of previous life.

Also on display are designs from the Space Race era when the Soviet Union and the US were locked in competition to explore the galaxy, alongside clothes by British fashion designer Christopher Raeburn made from recycled solar blankets and parachutes.

Mr De Kestelier, who is head of design technology at architects Hassell Studios, invited 30 scientists to a one-day meeting to “rip apart” his initial plans for a Mars home in order to make them as workable as possible.

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His scheme involves using robots to mine the dust of the planet and melt it into a concrete-style material which will act as a radiation shield before the astronauts land and the robots transform themselves into a mobile platform to carry the pods into place.

The architect admitted his plan to put astronauts on Mars for around a year — which is budgeted at around £500 billion — is “still a while away” but said he expects to see something very like it in the future.

“I still hope that in my career I’ll be involved in designing some of the first habitats on the moon. I think the one thing I’m really going to take back from this project is this idea of sustainability and the circular economy, it’s the first project where I really started to think about it.

“Most of the time people think about it and take it seriously but it doesn’t have a direct effect; here if you don’t you will die. If you don’t recycle your air, if you don’t recycle your water, it’s a matter of life and death and that’s how we should treat it on earth as well.”

Moving to Mars runs from tomorrow to February 23.

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