{"id":11140,"date":"2024-02-01T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=11140"},"modified":"2024-01-22T04:47:57","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T04:47:57","slug":"for-all-mankinds-happy-valley-why-a-martian-city-could-well-extend-below-the-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/for-all-mankinds-happy-valley-why-a-martian-city-could-well-extend-below-the-surface\/","title":{"rendered":"For All Mankind\u2019s Happy Valley: why a Martian city could well extend below the\u00a0surface"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n The entrance to For All Mankind\u2019s Happy Valley.\n Apple<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\nElizabeth Stanway<\/a>, University of Warwick<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

Apple TV+\u2018s alternate space race, For All Mankind<\/a>, imagines what would have have happened if USSR cosmonauts, and not Nasa\u2019s astronauts, had been the first to land on the Moon. Rather than the waning of interest in space that followed the Moon landings in our reality, over the four seasons of the show to date, the race has continued towards lunar and then Martian settlement. <\/p>\n\n

In the latest season<\/a>, the finale of which aired on January 12 2024, initial colonisation efforts on Mars have developed to the point where an international alliance supports and maintains a single large colony. Dubbed \u201cHappy Valley\u201d, the Martian city features<\/a> an array of interconnected modules. <\/p>\n\n

Tubular corridors run between bigger geodesic and half-pipe structures housing control rooms, laboratories, meeting rooms and eating and living quarters for the base commander and other higher ups. Most residents live below ground.<\/p>\n\n

\n \"Two\n
\n Happy Valley\u2019s surface level habitats are for the top-tier residents of the base.<\/span>\n Apple<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

With its Artemis programme, Nasa plans<\/a> to have humans living outside Earth\u2019s orbit. This would including a lunar base camp, as well as a space station that circles the Moon, in the view of ultimately sending people to Mars. Quite in what structures<\/a> such Martian explorers would live has long had people dreaming<\/a> \u2013 and scientists experimenting<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Life on Mars?<\/h2>\n\n

In the early 20th century, sufficient uncertainty remained to allow for planetary romances such as the Barsoom<\/a> novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Written between 1912 and 1946, these tell the story of a 19th-century US veteran transported to Mars, and were brought to life in the 2012 action film, John Carter. These fantasies paved the way for more serious consideration of survival on Mars<\/a> as our understanding developed. <\/p>\n\n

However, astronomers were already establishing that the planet\u2019s surface was arid, cold and toxic. Long before Burroughs completed his series, it was clear<\/a> that Barsoom\u2019s great cities, open to a breathable atmosphere, could never exist.<\/p>\n\n

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