Gadgetory

if you want to live in space for months at a time you're gonna need a good house and it's not going to be glamorous living either imagine living in a one-room tin can with three to four other people that tin can is keeping you alive NASA wants to send humans back into deep space but the last time people went beyond low-earth orbit they stayed for less than two weeks per trip this time around NASA wants to send astronauts to live in deep space orbiting the moon and then possibly on to Mars for months at a time like they do on the International Space Station but what does the deep space habitat look like NASA is partnered with six different private companies as part of their next step program to figure that out each company is researching and building deep space habitats all with unique designs to see which modules will work best and these habitats could be used as part of a new Space Station that NASA wants to build near the moon called Gateway I went to one of these companies Lockheed Martin to check out a mock-up of the deep space habitat that they're working on so here we are in the prototype habitat that you guys are building for the next step program so tell me about it what informs its shape and size and and all that stuff we put together this prototype to get a better feel for what it would be like to live and work in a space station at the moon so it's round because the launch vehicles are round right so we need to fit inside the payload fairing for launch but we've also thought about what it would be like to live here so you need all the standard things food water shelter you would have all your personal items your clothes your toothbrush all those normal things NASA hopes this will serve as a new outpost for astronauts allowing them to conduct studies in the deep space environment around the moon and to travel to and from the lunar surface the one challenge of sending things to deep space is space getting a habitat of this size far away from Earth in one piece requires a lot of fuel and the larger the habitat the more fuel it will require that's why Lockheed is trying to do more with less sand in here right now that big of a space but you envision people living and doing work here so how would they utilize all of this limited space if you will right can you imagine for people in this space I have a problem with my tiny apartment and my dog so I don't I don't know that's exactly what this is it's one room but it's four bedroom one bathroom but yeah we'll have a science workstation where the crew can do their science experiments get information from the vehicle look at health and status we have a treadmill and exercise equipment right on the ceiling it's but in space there is no ceiling right the way you are is the right way up so we can use all four walls we need to to get very effective use of this limited space of course it's tough to get the full experience of living in this habitat here on earth this habitat is just a mock-up Rocky is currently building its first working nextstep prototype in Florida so the company is using virtual and augmented reality to give engineers a better understanding of how the finished product will look and feel all right I'm ready I'm ready to go to space all right I hope I didn't break anything Here I am home sweet home you find your way there go ahead and go outside oh let's do that how am I gonna get over there Wow it's clear that I'm just a mess and zero gravity so we've been using a lot of VR and AR technology to play around with the next step habitat what is so great about these different types of technology that helps you with design and modifications and why not well there's a few things that's really great about the first is affordability it lets you perform a lot of reconfigurations while keeping things cheap you saw with the AR you know ones that you had on you're able to see the different components that are going to be in the spacecraft in a habitat so it allows us to move them around and reconfigure and see the spacing of everything things you don't want to put your treadmill right next to your workstation and have somebody running and sweating right above you so and if you go ahead and build it without knowing those problems you kind of have a big cost problem yeah or if you actually do like build out those big size you know components it's expensive and heavy and you have to actually move them around so they are really helps a lot with that and VR really helps a lot with training too because you solve with the simulation you kind of got a little bit of a sense of what it's like to be in the spacecraft and so on the ground we can train astronauts or the crew just you know how to move around the new crane in space isn't as easy as people might think you know you turn your hand a certain way and it doesn't your whole body it moves with you yeah Newton's third law it's pretty crazy right now this program is just for engineers not for astronauts however astronauts going to the ISS actually do lots of VR training to prepare for space where is it yep if this station does go to the moon VR trainings will be important before heading there too what are the things that you think of when you go out to design a habitat what are the essentials that you need well we think about what is a day in the life of an astronaut gonna look like they're gonna wake up they're gonna eat breakfast they're going to perform science we want to know what it takes to keep them alive as well as what work they're going to do in science they're going to perform while they're there so we need to accommodate all those aspects keeping them healthy and keeping them productive now you mentioned a one bathroom where's the bathroom gonna be it's actually on Orion right through this hatch is where the crew would come to the habitat right in Orion and the bathroom is there at least you have some privacy Orion is much more than just a bathroom it's a crew capsule that Lockheed Martin is also working on to transport people from earth to deep space and once Orion reaches this habitat it'll have to dock explain this setup very sure we're sitting in the Orion crew simulator gotcha so this is the cockpit this is where the pilot and the commander would sit as they fly Orion to dock to the Gateway so we've been traveling for months and months and months and now we're finally here and ready to dock I've been waiting for this day of my whole astronaut life basically so if you pull out on that that'll slow you down okay or you can push in and fire a thruster to speed us up docking turned out to be pretty tense just one small movement can send the capsule veering off in the wrong direction okay so I'm veering off to the right so I think I want to go to the to the left so close oh oh here we go I mean right on the turkey Oh perfect doggy beautiful okay just a little bit off but man nailed it of course it could be a while before this happens Lockheed and the other next step finalists will need to finish building and testing out their habitats before this deep-space outpost becomes a reality so it might not be the most spacious but like all real estate it's all about location you're interested in more science videos from the verge check out our new verge science YouTube channel and subscribe