Space Igloos, Lava Tubes and Hobbit Holes: Here Are Our Future Martian Habitats

The discovery of liquid water on Mars is great news for would-be settlers, but we’ll need more than H2O if we actually want to live there. The only cost-effective way for humans to colonize the Red Planet is for us to start building infrastructure out of local materials. I’m talking rovers made of Martian metals and greenhouses built on Martian cement. A series of fascinating new designs are helping NASA imagine what that locally-sourced space colony could look like.

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