By Ray Edgar
Valentina Sumini’s speculative Moon village.Credit: Valentina Sumini
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Plenty of kids dream of becoming an astronaut, but the reality of being 384,000 kilometres from home can be, well, alienating. Even billionaire adventurers who place space tourism at the top of their bucket list are likely to feel a twinge of homesickness up there in the ultimate blue yonder.
Which is where architect and engineer Valentina Sumini comes in. Sumini, who will give a talk in Melbourne next month as part of the Tools for After exhibition, interviewed astronauts as part of her research, in collaboration with the European Space Agency and NASA, into designing space habitats.
“Sometimes they feel so homesick that when they go back to Earth, they get emotional looking at grass, at flowers, looking at a butterfly,” she says.
The specialist discipline of space architecture has emerged from the contrails of space tourism and the Artemis program, which aims to establish a colony on the moon and prepare for life on Mars. The form-follows-function, engineer-driven aesthetic of the International Space Station (where even getting a window was hard won) no longer cuts the mustard. It’s not only billionaires who want more creature comforts – astronauts undertaking prolonged travel to the moon or Mars require habitable environments.
The Engineered Space Kitchen designed in collaboration with Coesia and Rana.Credit: Valentina Sumini
“You have to create an interior that is actually good for living,” says Sumini. “That is why more and more architects and designers are involved.”
Travelling eight months to get to the Red Planet can be stressful, she says via Zoom from Milan, where she is a visiting professor at the Politecnico di Milano university of engineering, architecture and design.
“We call it ‘isolated confined extreme environment’,” she says. Getting too distressed can cause behavioural issues which, in turn, can jeopardise a mission.
To help alleviate stress and homesickness, her teams from MIT Media Lab Responsive Environments and MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative designed a speculative pod that pipes in real-time data from a Massachusetts wildlife sanctuary. The Tidmarsh wetland was already highly monitored by the Media Lab, and data from the site was used to generate an immersive virtual experience.
“It is like being in the middle of a pond and seeing ducks swimming around with bird sounds, and it is really relaxed,” she says. “All the people in the survey admit that it was very nice having their cocoon of nature.”
The moon village reference masterplan and habitat design. Credit: Valentina Sumini/MIT/Skidmore, Owings & Merrill/ European Space Agency
Life on Earth inspires many of Sumini’s designs for life off Earth. A rover vehicle is based on the anatomy of bees and their swarming behaviour. The design for a potential Mars metropolis for 10,000 people uses an algorithm that replicates the root growth of a tree.
As for the ride itself, Sumini designed a crucial bit of kit that allows astronauts to work hands free while in microgravity. Inspired by a seahorse tail, Sumini designed the SpaceHuman exoskeleton to enable greater dexterity and mobility.
“Seahorses use their tails to navigate, direct their swimming and anchor themselves,” she explains. Trained with AI and using in-built object-tracking cameras, the tail changes shape and bends to grab appropriate handle points automatically.
Initially designed for astronauts to work outside the space station, the exoskeleton has multiple uses. It allows astronauts to exercise while floating, reducing the risk of osteoporosis (microgravity reduces bone mass). It also helps space tourists unfamiliar with microgravity to grab onto surfaces and pick up objects. She tested it herself for a Zero-G NASA parabolic flight that produces near weightlessness.
Valentina Sumini samples Spacehuman: A Soft Robotic Prosthetic for Space Exploration in 2020.Credit: Valentina Sumini
“This was the most amazing experience in my life,” she says. “It’s like an organ, an extension of your body.”
As well as testing their designs in weightlessness, Sumini’s research teams work in extreme environments that resemble conditions on the moon and Mars – the slopes of a Hawaiian volcano and the polar ice of Svalbard, an archipelago between Norway and the North Pole.
A video presentation of her designs features in the Tools for After exhibition, in which Italian designers examine the impact of the Anthropocene and whether, given the mess we’re making on Earth, Planet B is an option.
The moon village design seen at the International Conference on Environmental Systems in 2019. Credit: Valentina Sumini/MIT/Skidmore, Owings & Merrill/ European Space Agency
For Sumini, the answer is no. “There is no Planet B,” she says. “We have to learn from space and bring the results back to Earth. But it will be intriguing from a research perspective, seeing one day maybe a community living on Mars, not because of the Planet B, but because we reached the technological capability to do that.”
Building that community will require an advance party of artificial intelligence, robots and 3D printers to construct buildings and greenhouses with two-metre thick walls able to withstand cosmic radiation.
“AI will generate an optimal design, and then I pick the one that is suitable,” Sumini says. “The benefit is that everyone can become a good designer. Imagine being stranded on Mars and then your habitat got destroyed. With these tools you can generate a new one, 3D print it autonomously, and then you will survive.”
‘There is no Planet B. We have to learn from space and bring the results back to Earth.’
In the 1960s another Italian designer, the legendary Joe Colombo, was inspired by the Apollo program to devise a compact all-in-one kitchen. But compactness isn’t the Artemis program’s key priority, according to Sumini. In the event of failure, there must be an option.
“You have to design in a way that has double, or even four layers, in terms of safety,” she says.
When the crew arrives at its ultimate destination, AI and augmented reality will help to cook meals and advise where to find ingredients in the greenhouse, such as micro algae, a nutrient-rich superfood. Naturally, the greenhouse has to have backups in the event of any contamination that could destroy the colony’s food source.
“The main difference between designing for space and Earth is on Earth you can design an object and think, ‘oh, this is a beautiful object’. But in space this object needs to be compliant within the system: from the settlement design to the interior to elements like the kitchen and the plates I’m going to use. So I’m really fascinated by this opportunity to design across disciplines and across scales. I’m exposed to new challenges every day.”
The International Space Station is seen as one of the great examples of international co-operation. But as many corporations attempt to capitalise on space, will we see competitiveness or collaboration? As on Earth, it’s a question of sustainability, says Sumini. It extends from how we share resources, design space modules to be compatible, and carefully consider what we build – and leave – on these other celestial bodies.
“If I create a habitat on the moon with a 3D-printed concrete regolith shield, it will last forever,” says Sumini. “We’re going to impact this planetary body forever. We have to think not just of a human-centric approach to space exploration, but a planet-centric approach.”
It’s perhaps the ultimate lesson to bring back to Earth.
Found in space
Innovations developed for the space program have already proved beneficial in a range of fields:
Health: Intensive care monitoring was developed from systems used to check astronauts. Foil blankets used by emergency crews to retain a person’s body heat originated from NASA research to insulate spacecraft and protect astronauts from extreme temperatures. A nanofibre filter for purifying water in orbit is used in remote villages and by hikers. Heart transplant recipients are kept alive by a cardiac pump designed to simulate fluid flow through rocket engines. Surplus rocket fuel is used to make a flare that detonates landmines.
Architecture: Space suit fabrics made from Teflon and fibreglass are used as tensile shades for buildings. Shock absorbers originally used to protect spacecraft and launch pad equipment during shuttle launches now brace buildings and bridges in earthquake-prone regions.
Home: Black & Decker’s Dustbuster vacuum evolved from a NASA commission to build battery-operated tools for collecting moon samples. Ensuring the safety of prepackaged foods for space flight resulted in industry standard quality control.
Cyberspace: Project Nebula, an effort to standardise NASA websites, produced cloud computing technology. Satellites and their attendant transmission of everything from communications to weather information to locating underground water and tracking distress signals are perhaps the most obvious benefits from the space race.
Elsewhere: Memory foam invented to cushion test pilots is now used to cushion shoes, helmets, prosthetics, amusement rides, cars, and modern art, to name a few. Cutting thin grooves across runways and roads, as NASA did to aid space shuttle landings, avoids hydroplaning and has, according to NASA, contributed to an 85 percent reduction in highway accidents.
Tools for After Design and Architecture is at Fitzroy Town Hall until October 10; Valentina Sumini will deliver a talk on October 20 at CO.AS.IT. Italian Assistance Association in Carlton. Bookings essential; www.toolsforafter.info
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