We can’t take you anywhere—especially not to Mars.
The Mars Society has been trying to work the kinks out of life on Mars for a while with practice missions here on Earth, but their habitat has hit an unfortunate setback: it caught fire recently. Luckily, all volunteer crew members of the Mars Desert Research Station made it out OK, but their successful containment of the fire still left them lucky to be here on Earth—the habitat is currently uninhabitable.
Crew commander Nick Orenstein told Space.com that the small, four-person crew rushed outside to fight the fire and used up every fire extinguisher they had in the process. They put the remaining fire out with water, which would be a precious commodity on Mars. The fire wasn’t caused by any rogue Sailor Scouts, though. A heater in the GreenHab greenhouse set fire to one of the shelves, and unfortunately, it’ll cost at least $40,000 to replace.
MDRS director Shannon Rupert added,
It’s devastating because it’s a loss of a functional component of the campus. But it could have been so much worse. Everyone was safe. That was the main thing. Everybody got out.
Luckily, when practicing here on Earth, you can just walk away from your crippled Mars habitat. Although, we all know that on real Mars, we’ll have a convenient built-in sprinkler system to put out fires and prevent this kind of thing from happening.
(via Gizmodo)
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