LET’S MOVE TO MARS!
Read the text. For questions 1–4, choose the appropriate paragraph and write the corresponding letter (A–E) in the table. One paragraph does not match any of the questions.
LET’S MOVE TO MARS!
A. Imagine a luxurious hotel with a view that’s changing all the time, where there are 18 sunrises and sunsets every day and where food floats effortlessly into your mouth. Who wouldn’t sign up for that? It’s only a matter of time before space travel becomes a regular holiday option. We might even start living and working on the Moon. However, there are some problematic aspects to be resolved.
B. As civilian space travel inches closer, the role of architects is growing. More people travel to space for increasingly longer periods of time and their physical environment and its psychological effects are becoming more and more important. Surprisingly, the US space station, Skylab, which orbited the Earth from 1973 to 1979 and was recycled out of the fuel tank of a massive Saturn V rocket, remains by far the most generous habitat sent into orbit. It was palatial compared with the poky modules of the current International Space Station.
C. However, luxury is not an issue at this stage. First an efficient way to construct dwellings has to be invented. It would cost $500,000 to send a single brick to the Moon and lots more to Mars. As a result, the task has always been to develop lightweight materials and kits, that is to take a kind of astro-Ikea approach. Engineers’ attention is now shifting towards inflatable structures, allowing entire habitats to be folded up and packed on board.
D. In 1974, Guillermo Trotti put forward a proposal for an inflatable habitat on the Moon. His lunar colony envisaged a network of domes and structures to house a community of 200 people. It never blasted off but it inspired other ideas. The current catchphrase among NASA people is in-situ resource utilisation, the space equivalent of using locally available resources. The surface of the Moon (and probably that of Mars as well) is an open mine of readily accessible minerals and compounds that could be used in construction projects.
E. Trotti is optimistic about life on Mars, arguing that deep-space exploration will be the largest industry in the world over the next 100 years, as well as the biggest challenge for budding space architects. The question is how to build an environment in which you can happily live for three years in a confined space with the same people. Virtual reality could be an answer, allowing people to escape mentally or to study remotely. You could take the Library of Congress or the Louvre up there with you and come back with a PhD.
adapted from www.theguardian.com
