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<\/p>\nEmily Wong: Melody, you work at the intersection of architecture, design, and technology and are often described as a \u201cspace architect.\u201d What led you to this career path?<\/p>\n
Melodie Yashar: My career into space architecture transpired very organically. I was following my interests and my passions, some of which I was pursuing outside of normal working business hours. I was a repeat contestant and a winner in multiple NASA competitions much earlier in my career, and those opportunities, as well as my in-house position at NASA Ames for several years, led to this very niche and very specialised area of thinking about how to design habitats in space and how to conceive of the technologies that would be required to realise them, but, I actually started off as a regular terrestrial architect, and then things just really snowballed from there.<\/p>\n
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EW: You\u2019ve worked on the design of human-supporting environments in space, including the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog at NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center (CHAPEA). What are the main constraints you\u2019re dealing with when designing those habitats?<\/p>\n
MY: The CHAPEA project was unique in that we were purposefully stripping the design and the project of any of the spaceflight environmental constraints, which we would otherwise have to contend with, if we were actually in outer space. As it was the earthbound analog, the focus was really on crew health, performance, and on behavioral study and evaluation. It was very much an interior-focused project where we were using the construction technology to demonstrate it was possible to create a resilient structure that is soundproof and is going to adequately create an interior environment that would be suitable for a one-year-long mission. The focus was on how we could create spaces that are suitable for work, leisure, private recreation, and retreat \u2013 and of course, how we could integrate all of the utilities and the technological requirements of the analog itself.<\/p>\n
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EW: What\u2019s the difference between designing the interior spaces of a habitat on Mars and designing the interiors of a residence here on earth?<\/p>\n
MY: One of the things I really encourage people to think about when they consider the isolation and confinement of being on a long-duration Mars mission is to think about your experience during COVID-19, when you were home for a very, very long time, not really interacting with other people, not going to social spaces, and then just amplify that to the extent where you have no natural light coming in. You can\u2019t crack open a door or a window, and so your interior becomes extremely important, both in how it\u2019s organised and also in how functional it is. [It\u2019s important] that you can create your own customised space and also that you can do multiple things within tight quarters. And then we [also] need to accommodate all the technologies and activities which the crew would be doing over the course of the year, of which there are very many. It is important to make sure that everything fits.<\/p>\n
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EW: Moving on to these larger scale systems that are your main area of research, what are the key design challenges for permanent settlements off-world?<\/p>\n
MY: The architectural implications of how we build are just as important as designing the interiors. Those implications are also relevant to the sustainability approach to what we\u2019re creating, so that we can achieve resilience within an environment where resilience is not something that is thought about very often. The materiality of the habitat \u2013 what it\u2019s made of, where those materials are coming from, the launch constraints of what can [transport], as well as what resources are required for the habitat to be operational \u2013 are incredibly important.<\/p>\n
This led to this principle of using local resources on the planet to be able to think and conceive of larger infrastructural developments, habitats being one of them, and using those materials to build what\u2019s necessary for small base camps to be achieved. I\u2019ve been thinking about surface infrastructure and how we can achieve things like roads, landing pads, berms, really basic infrastructural elements that can support power, communication, data, that are absolutely essential for human beings to be able to be on the moon or Mars. The architecture [housing] is really just one component of making staying on those planets a reality.<\/p>\n
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EW: Your work explores the potentials for 3D printing and autonomous robots. How can these two technologies respond to the challenges of living off-world?<\/p>\n
MY: Even doing basic repairs aboard the International Space Station currently is an extremely hazardous task that is very slow and very difficult to accomplish with the limited dexterity that astronauts have within a spacesuit. The idea that we\u2019re going to have [human] construction crew in space creating habitats and infrastructure is just so far off. So, we really rely on robotics and autonomous technologies to do a lot of the exploration activities in remote and extreme environments. In addition to general regolith and geotechnical soil sampling, we\u2019re thinking about how we can use robotics to not only confirm that the qualities and mineralogy of the regolith are suitable for us to create buildings there, but also to actually construct them.<\/p>\n
3D printing is one method of construction. There\u2019s a lot of work that\u2019s been done in using bulk regolith as a radiation shield for habitation. And we often talk about modular construction when we talk about building in outer space.<\/p>\n
My focus has been 3D printing for several reasons. First, it uses local materials. It\u2019s a digitally native way of building, so in theory, you could send a digital file to space and reactively respond to what\u2019s going on in real time. It\u2019s a technology that\u2019s going to enable a lot more people within the design field to participate and to conceive of new innovative structures that haven\u2019t been thought of before. Traditional civil engineering or structural engineering don\u2019t necessarily allow for the kind of creativity that 3D printing can introduce.<\/p>\n
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EW: You talk about efficiency and sustainability in your practice, which makes so much sense when there are so many limitations around weight, manoueverability, and the ability to transport materials to off-world sites. How is the work you\u2019re doing around designing for space impacting how we design and build here on earth?<\/p>\n
MY: The work we do in thinking about how to design in the resource-constrained environment of space can provide a lens and methodology for how we should be designing on Earth, because if we can do it in space, there\u2019s no reason why we can\u2019t do it on Earth. This encourages me to think about how we can design 3D-printed homes in disaster recovery areas, and I\u2019m doing some work for fire recovery in California right now. How can we push the boundaries of what\u2019s possible with 3D printing from a materials perspective, so that we\u2019re introducing higher-performing structures that are better for the environment, and that make sense from an economic perspective too? Space really becomes a lens by which we can focus our efforts on what\u2019s most needed here.<\/p>\n
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EW: With space agencies like NASA now actively planning permanent settlements on the Moon and exploring similar possibilities on Mars, considering the ethics around space settlement and space alteration is becoming important. What are your perspectives on this?<\/p>\n
MY: We have to be considering what the future of an inclusive cooperative on the moon should be like. It\u2019s often said that [NASA\u2019s] work is in response to a very loaded geopolitical landscape in which other nation states who do not subscribe to the Artemis Accords or the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 are laying claims to scarce resources on the moon, such as sub-surface water ice areas and the peaks of eternal light, and so there is definitely what feels like a race to return to the moon and lay claim to some of these territories. This is alarming to say the least.<\/p>\n
We need to be discussing now what governance on the moon should look like, and how we can introduce safe havens and cooperative structures where everyday people, not just nation states, can be involved in sharing opinions around what surface infrastructure on the moon should be. My hope is that we can create shared resources, and that it\u2019s not an entirely privatised area of ownership.<\/p>\n
We need to be hopeful for the future, but also [shouldn\u2019t] shy away from these really ambitious goals to deploy technologies and procure infrastructure on the moon. It\u2019s not too early to decide what gets built or to have a say [in terms of] how institutions should be governing [this area] and what we could be implementing to make sure [space exploration] is more cooperative in the future.<\/p>\n