Hi, I'm Phnam.
Hi, I'm Mardis.
And we're the hosts of Future Future, where two designers talk about the future of everything.
We're in the business of turning science fiction into reality for a better future.
And today, we're going to talk about Color on the Moon.
So space is in the news a lot lately.
And why are we really talking about this, Phnam?
Well, we're going back to the moon very soon.
In 2024, NASA is sending back some astronauts to the surface of the Moon.
It hasn't happened since the 1970s. Which is crazy, right?
And in 2024, the first woman on the Moon is going to happen.
So, yay!
But what's very important is that the Moon is going to be used for multiple purposes.
Number one, it's going to be used for mining.
Because there are a lot of resources that are very valuable there, like some sort of metals and oxygen and hydrogen.
And all of this is going to be a great stepping point for a bigger mission that everybody has their eye on:
which is going to Mars.
So if we use the Moon as a sort of launching point and this mineral extracting or mining point in the Solar System...
think about the Moon. It's totally a greyscale environment.
It's not like planet Earth where we have green leaves and we have all these different colors.
It's hard to go anywhere on the planet and not find color, whether it be a blue sky, an ocean, or anything else.
On the Moon, everything is greyscale until you look back at the Earth and you see blue and things like that.
So I wonder about the psychology of living on the Moon or staying on the Moon for a certain period of time.
What does that look like?
Yeah. If you're a miner, you're stuck there for a few months and all you see is a greyscale,
that's going to have some implications on your health: mental health and physical health.
So, as designers we thought, "well, what if we introduce the idea of color on the Moon?"
So as we design the habitats and all the structures necessary to create that settlement,
how do we integrate color to support that?
And color can come in the materials that are being used, also in the lights
and all the AR/VR environments that we create to support the physical.
It can be also on the things that are on the body, the clothing, the wearables.
I love that!
And think about the first time humans really get deeper into space and longer time periods in space.
How can we brand space as a human experience?
What does human endeavors in space look like?
Well, it's certainly colorful.
Yeah. And this is in contrast to what's happening right now as the status quo for space missions.
If you look on the inside of the ISS, for example, which has been orbiting planet Earth for twenty years now,
everything is white or grey or black...or maybe a little blue.
But there's not much to it.
And we here at Nonfiction have a particular expertise and interest in space -
specifically because we have our own personal space architect on staff: Phnam!
Yes, so I graduated from the University of Houston about fifteen years ago in space architecture.
That is a very small field - and hopefully it's growing -
that is focused on the buildings and architecture and construction methods for off-planet settlements.
So we've recently done a project that we call Color on the Moon.
And this is what we're talking about today.
And can you dive into this a little bit more?
Yeah. So, Color on the Moon is an interesting project because on top of my background in space architecture,
we are practicing industrial design, which is the empathetic process of taking ideas and turning them into reality to serve humans.
Right? And so we took all of this at once and created a habitat.
Instead of putting it on the surface - which a lot of concepts have been developing - we're putting it underground.
The reason for that is because the Moon has a lot of what we call, "lava tubes."
They are natural formations that are very stable in many ways.
They're very stable in temperature; they're about minus twenty degrees celcius.
They are very protected from micro-meteorites and radiation,
which is what's hitting us on the surface because the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere.
And because it's underground, it's going to be all dark.
Right? So all of the light and all of the construction we're going to put underground is going to be artificial,
built by us, and controlled by the designers and architects that are going to work on the project.
So the fun part about this is we already have part of the structure (the lava tube) built.
We need to just fill it out.
Almost like a skyscraper underground.
But then adding to that is bringing in color.
Bringing in shape and form.
And really develop that human experience in a way that - you know, on the surface with the radiation and all the potential hazards -
we couldn't really do in the same way.
And we can integrate colors in many different ways.
We can print 3D materials mixing local regolith and using other types of thermal plastics coming from Earth.
So we can actually print things that look like wood - kind of familiar, right?
We can print things with vibrant colors or very muted colors to kind of sculpt our visual landscape.
We can also paint different types of structures.
We can also do projection mapping on different surfaces to make it feel a lot bigger or more like nature.
We can import materials, perhaps importing nature or having it grow one way or another on the planet,
so people feel that familiarity.
And we can bring in nature, as Phnam says, but as a food source.
So we can have plants remove carbon dioxide and input oxygen to help us breathe better and clean and filter the air.
But then we can also use mosses.
Which, moss, basically...they're dead, really.
Dormant?
Uh, they can be. Yeah. And they can look very very nice as dead materials.
And it's very lightweight.
So when you think about space and lifting off materials from the Earth, what costs a lot of money is weight.
So the lighter the material, the smaller the space it takes in a payload of a rocket, the better.
So we're integrating the principles of color psychology in this project.
And the reason being is because everything is more hazardous, more life threatening on the Moon.
We have to be really careful.
How do we keep people calm and focused when they're in an environment that could be potentially very stressful?
How do we keep them engaged and stimulated in a way that, you know, really engages their minds
and allows them to do their jobs even better than before?
And a part of this is wrapping them in a color scheme that's in the workout area that is lively and brilliant.
And in the private areas where you're relaxed and focused, maybe reading a book or just chilling out,
it has tones that really balance with that whole story.
And the more we learn about this,
the more we integrate more humans in this permanent settlement,
the more we will have information that will refine the way we design settlements on Mars.
Yeah, literally the Moon is a great big sandbox for testing future projects for Mars.
And what an exciting time to live [in] now,
where we're on the cusp of making humans an interplanetary species.
We're going to start with the Moon.
And we're going to go to Mars.
And who knows after that!
So if you have ideas [on] how we as designers can make the Moon and outer space more comfortable or more meaningful,
please leave comments below.
And until next time, bye bye!