A photo from open sources
Earlier this year, the billionaire and founder of SpaceX, Ilon Musk suddenly announced that to create a colony on Mars in the coming decades is simply not possible because it will require shipping to Red planet, at least a million tons of various cargoes, in order to create a Martian base. And given the carrying capacity modern Starship ships, they will need to be launched by many and many thousands. And when this task will be within the power of modern US space industry (or even the entire global community), while is unknown.
However, the other day there was interesting information from researchers NASA’s microarchitectural project who believe that the future the colonizers of the Moon and Mars will not need to drag a single house from Earth, nor building materials for them. For this, says the astrobiologist and Project Leader Lynn Rothschild (Lynn Rothschild) a very simple and original solution – colony buildings are needed build out of mushrooms.
A photo from open sources
Mushroom houses will be grown on the spot, for this it’s enough to bring mycelium to the same Red planet mycelium, which can easily and quickly create the most complex “building” structures that are then baked – and it turns out low-cost and A very effective alternative to traditional construction. The key to the success of growing mycelium on atmosphereless planets will become cyanobacteria capable of secreting oxygen during photosynthesis and other useful substances for the multiplication of mycelium.
As planned by NASA researchers, the mushroom house will consist of three layers. External ice will protect against radiation, medium from cyanobacteria will absorb light and produce oxygen and nutrition for the inner mushroom layer. The latter will be reliable frame of any structure on Mars or the Moon, and after baking his, mycelium will be viable only under certain conditions, for example, in case of damage to the building (possibility of regeneration such half-dead mushroom houses). True, for this you need a good still work with the genome of this fungus.
A photo from open sources
However, if successful, Lynn Rothschild confidently states what she has no doubt, mushroom houses can be created on Earth itself, thereby eliminating colossal costs and equally colossal inherent amounts of hazardous waste and emissions modern construction industry.
The prospects, of course, are rosy, both for space and for our planet. However, all this is only at the development stage, especially since no one knows how to actually behave mycelium, say, on the same Mars. For example, bacteria in space (experiment on the ISS) became practically uncontrollable and unpredictable. Mushrooms are also known to be one of the oldest inhabitants of our planet, with many still unexplored properties, for example, a unique collective mind capable of even control the weather. And what if this collective mind in conditions of another planet, in the absence of natural “enemies”, will lead aggressive and not at all the way scientists plan. What if the mycelium does not wish to become a building material, but intervention in her genome will make her only more “cunning and insidious”? So what then? Fantastic horror in reality? ..
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