Four people will spend a year living in this 3D-printed Mars habitat

Speaker 1: How would you like to live here in this 3d printed habitat for one year with almost no contact with the outside world? That sounds like a good deal to you. You may be just what NASA is looking for. They're recruiting people right now for simulated Mars missions, and you don't even need to leave the planet. The goal is to mimic the challenges of living on Mars, specifically relating to health, both physically and psychologically. The first mission is set to begin next [00:00:30] fall. For one year four people will live in this 1700 square foot 3d printed habitat called Mars dun alpha and NASAs Johnson space center inside our four private quarter. Yes, everyone gets their own room. There's work stations, medical stations, and an area to grow food. There's two bathrooms and a fitness area. The ceilings are vaulted, and that was done for a very specific reason. The idea is to avoid all those spaces, looking the same, hopefully making for a more comfortable living experience and [00:01:00] keep people from, you know, going crazy. The habitat is being printed by a company called icon. That sounds familiar. It's the same company that helped create the world's first 3d printed community in Mexico. All Speaker 2: Of our work on earth has prepared us to deliver Speaker 1: This project. That's icon CEO, Jason Ballard. He told me that even though the habitat is here on earth, it's pretty close to what humans will probably live in. When we even get to Mars, we're Speaker 2: Using construction methods and construction materials that are as faithful as possible to the way that we would probably have to do it. If we were [00:01:30] gonna build, learn long term shelters and habitats, uh, on Mars, Speaker 1: That means they're using the same printers they use for earth structures, which print with a material icon calls Lare, but they've Mo the lava Creek formula to more closely match the geology and color of Mars rock. So you may be asking why do we even need to print a habitat? Why not just bring an inflatable structure like they did in the Martian or something like that? Well, there's a couple reasons, but mainly that's a lot of material to [00:02:00] transport and that costs a lot of money. Speaker 2: If we want a Martian settlement, we're never gonna have it. If it costs 10 billion, every time you want a 1500 square foot building. So we're gonna have to learn to use local materials to live off the land. Like all successful explorers have done throughout history. Speaker 1: Now us for the four people living here, this won't be a full scale Mar simulation for them. I mean, they'll still be breathing earth atmosphere and NASA won't be simulating different cavities or anything like that. [00:02:30] What Speaker 3: We are changing is they will be isolated and confined for one year with their crew Speaker 1: Mates. Now that's Dr. Grace Douglas. She says, even though the four explorers will be living on earth, they'll still basically be living like they're on the red planet. And he, yes, that does include space walks. Speaker 3: There will be Mars relevant resources within these missions and they will be doing Mars relevant tasks. So they'll be simulating planetary exploration. And we can start saying, this is gonna be a Mars tempo [00:03:00] and make sure that we are supporting that. Or we still have the time to, to tweak things and, and, and fix those things before we go on a Mars mission when we no longer have that opportunity. Speaker 1: So who is NASA looking for? There's a list of prerequisites on the application page. They include master's degree in stem field and two years of professional experience or a thousand hours pilot in command time on a jet aircraft. All right. So what about money? How much is NASA paying people [00:03:30] to live in complete isolation for a year? Well, that I unfortunately cannot tell you NASA's being pretty tight lift about that right now. And if you are interested in this project, I'm sorry to say the application window just closed for this first mission, but the good news is that there's two more planned missions with the next one set to begin in 2024. So what do you think would you live in Mars doing alpha for an entire year with three total strangers with limited come contact with [00:04:00] the outside world? Let me know in the comments as always, thank you so much for watching. And if you enjoyed this video, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up. I'm Andy Altman and I will see you in the future.