This is Hotel Mars episode n I'm John Bachel with David Livingston Dr. Space of the Space Show

also of Hotel Mars and we're visiting with Michael Hect who is a genuine leader to hotel Mars.

Hotel Mars is a construction in my imagination. I do not believe I'll reach the planet Mars. I'm not certain.

I'll see man and woman reach the planet Mars but oxygen is the hook that we have.

And Michael as the principal investigator on the experiment, Moxie, that is on board perseverance

right now and Jezero Crater has given us to understand that making oxygen is something that's

imaginable. The chemistry is very straightforward. You need power to do it and you need

scale to provide for human beings. However, Michael I come to you on this puzzle. You have an unlimited

budget now and the question of producing oxygen for a four or six person mission is a challenge

that's frontier thinking. You know, first you have to get there and see how you can survive

and not on the surface, probably under the surface. What I'm imagining is a Mars colony that uses

lava tubes because they're hollowed out underneath it would protect you from the dangers of the

surface of Mars because the very thin atmosphere doesn't protect the way our atmosphere does.

Are you at MIT? Are you at JPL or NASA already working on that scale? And is that scale

imaginable to fill a lava tube or a constrained space with oxygen on a continual basis so that

we're manufacturing earth-like conditions? Admittedly the gravity is not anywhere close to what we

have here on earth. It'll change us, but maintaining an atmosphere that not only can make humans

breathe, but also sustain plant life and agrarian life and growing things. Is that already on the

on the drawing board, Michael? It is absolutely on the drawing board and let me give you an idea of how

that will work. If we have, let's suppose we have 100 people in the lava tube. That's a really good

start toward a sustained presence on Mars. That's a research station at least. Those 100 people in

terms of breathing and in terms of, you know, the things that they'll use in cooking and whatnot

...