There is a lot of talk about setting up colonies on the Moon and heading to Mars. It sounds great, but it’s not going to be easy. There are many complex problems that need to be addressed before we even leave Earth.
The history of humans in space is filled with accidents and incidents, including the death of several astronauts. When we look back to the creation of the first moon base, will we see technology malfunctions, failures of materials, astronauts dying from lack of air, no water, no food?
This is the future we are seeking to avert by starting up a new testing facility for moon habitation here on earth.
While large vacuum vessels are available in the United States, such a large vacuum vessel has never been made in Australia.
We also believe it is important to get people involved with the future of space travel. So we plan to open this simulated lunar environment to the public and let them see it and experiment.
We have more details about the dome in our blog, including Building a lunar simulator on Earth: the vacuum dome and Building the vacuum dome for the lunar environment.