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Science & Tech
New Online Course Makes Living on Mars a Mouse Click Away
NASA predicts we could be living on Mars by the 2030’s, so why put off the inevitable? Living on Earth is easy with the whole oxygen thing in our atmosphere. Now a new university program will teach you how you can live on Mars.
With the click of a mouse you can be at home in your pajamas learning all you need to know about inhabiting Mars with a new free online course given by Monash University in Melbourne. Developed by Australian astrophysicist Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway and chemistry professor Tina Overton, the course “How to Survive on Mars: The Science Behind Human Exploration of Mars” will run over four weeks, three hours per week.
Already 1,500 people have signed up for the course beginning on October 24, 2016.
Living on the red planet seems to be an idea that’s not so foreign anymore.
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has been planning his escape for years, developing all the gadgets and technology that’s needed to send people to Mars by 2025. Recently, filmmaker Werner Herzog boldly asked him for a ticket to ride to Mars on his Red Dragon capsule in his newest documentary, Lo And Behold.
On August 28, a year-long mission ended when six crew members happily emerged from their simulated Mars habitat on the slopes of Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii. The University of Hawaii at Manoa’s fourth Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) project had the crew living in isolation in a Mars-like environment for 365 days.
Mashable reported the online Mars course was inspired by the ladies’ love of Andy Weir’s bestseller, The Martian, which became a 2015 award-winning film starring Matt Damon. They respected that the scientists were real problem solvers, and their mission is to bring the basics of Mars living to the common man and woman. Think, Mars For Dummies.
The introductory course features how to live in space without air, the ability to grow food and how to find a water supply. At the course’s completion students will be able to “apply basic science to explore possible ways of producing water, oxygen, food and energy on Mars.”
In the inimitable questioning words of the late David Bowie, “Is There Life On Mars?” We won’t have to wait light years to find out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v–IqqusnNQ
