Do you romanticize about the future?
If you think about the future and settling on the planet Mars? Space is unlimited and for everybody regardless of nationalities and personal or demographic differences What a life on Mars would look like? Will countries compete over the Martian territories?
Credit: Image by TenebrisCilva from Pixabay
I can picture a situation where there are multiple countries with jurisdictional claims on Mars. Each country might have their own cities, technologies and cultures. As someone who travels a lot on Earth and enjoys the experience of immersing myself in another culture, I think that people would be interested in Mars. What if I wanted to travel from the NASA colony to the UAE colony? How would I get there? What would be the differences between the colonies?
Would there be airports on Mars?…And perhaps a larger, tougher question to answer, would planes fly on Mars? What about cars? I’m sure Elon Musk would love to put a Tesla on Mars.
The short answer is probably yes, but it’s actually quite complicated. We would have to build planes specifically for the Martian atmosphere which is approximately 100 times thinner than Earth’s. Oliviu Şugar-Gabor and Andreea Koreanschi from the University of Salford in the UK published a study in 2020 conceptualizing a wing shape that could facilitate flights on Mars. Of course this wing shape will need to be tested in years to come but it is promising that aviation scientists are already tackling this issue with reusable rockets such as SpaceX_____[cite the name]
Let’s imagine you can travel on Mars Where would you stay? There must be a hotel or an accomodation somewhere right?
I don’t think it’s outlandish to think that there will be hotels on Mars. People like to get away, even if it’s just a staycation. While we don’t have any examples of hotels on another planet we do have examples of remote hotels on Earth.
Credit: Radisson Blu Svalbard
Svalbard is an island owned by Norway that is the closest human habitation to the North Pole. As remote as it is, Svalbard is home to nine hotels. While Svalbard does have a high tourist season, it is not uncommon for residents of the island to stay at these hotels for a little “Staycation”. I think it is possible that the residents of these colonies may want to have staycations of their own. After all, we can assume that some of the work they will be doing on Mars will be mundane and mentally taxing.
Hotels on Mars could offer an escape from the isolated day to day life in a colony or the Martian domes. But their materials of establishment would be completely following biomimicry and biomorphic designs where the connection between humans and machines will be obsolete. A few artists and designers have already developed concepts which could be used as materials for building hotels on Mars. Our hypothesis is that the materials and components of any settlement must resist the harsher conditions on Mars. Here is our top inventory of ideas for building hotels on Mars:
- Species, people and machines are co-existent therefore settlements will be symbiotic.
(Chris if you cant see the image — pls extract from here: http://www.grahamfoundation.org/grantees/4850-although-with-hapnea-loophole-bkk)
For example, New-Territories could be dedicated to the possibilities of self-organized urban apparatuses.
Source: New-Territories, Although in Hapnea, film still, 2013. Courtesy of the artists.
- Living Architectures and Biomimicry structures
Philip Beesly illustrates imitating processes or behaviors found in the natural world, but working with human-made and digital technologies in the following art-work:
Source: Radiant Soil by Philip Beesly
- Environments fusing technology and biology to deliver designs that align with principles of ecological sustainability
Neri Oxman and her MIT Media Lab group have worked on a series of projects which are transforming the way we think about materials. For example, the team created 3-D printed masks infused with pigments and living microorganisms. This concept can be applied in settlement walls and deliver the appropriate nutrition and ecology to humans living or resting as tourists on Mars.
Source: Neri Oxman
But of course the largest challenge we face is getting to Mars to build these colonies and hotels. Right now we are still sending rovers and orbiters but we can hope that in the near future we will see the first manned missions to Mars. It’s a long road but if we keep working towards it we will prevail.
Do you think we’ll ever build hotels on Mars? If so, how? We’d love to hear your thoughts!
Key Takeaways:
- Once humans colonize Mars there will be a potential for two forms of tourism. The first being tourism from Earth to Mars and the second being tourism within the planet Mars and beyond.
- We will see a new hospitality industry built on the planet Mars.
- We will figure out transportation on the planet. This includes both air and land travel.
Written By:
Chris Maraboli
Ina Wanca
