Moving to Mars
'I’ve always wanted to die on Mars, just not on impact' - Elon Musk
4 stars
Space travel and design go hand in immaculately engineered glove. Rockets and rovers, space stations and satellites, the unique environmental challenges that extra-terrestrial exploration must solve are fascinating. The exhibition, “Moving to Mars,” is the engrossing result of the human aspiration to find just what’s out there beyond our little blue blob.
The exhibition covers it all. Starting off with the ancient obsession with the Red Planet, it moves on to looking at Mars in pop culture and literature. Other than the obligatory Bowie, “Life on Mars” CD, there some rather funny comics and books on show that certainly were inspired by the revelations of canals on Mars and the expectation that we would discover life there.
However, these theories of Martian canals were evaporated by the extraordinary machines that mankind has built and flown to this distant rock. ESA’s ExoMars rover occupies centre stage, with a mobile version wandering round the Design Museum foyer. One of the most staggering parts of the exhibition was the massive screens featuring photos from the Curiosity Rover. Stitched together hi-res images give you the disconcerting feeling that you’re looking at a rather desolate place on earth as opposed to the desolate, alien, Martian soil of actuality. The images are, frankly, breathtaking and worth going to see on their own.
The rest of the exhibition is firmly focused on future Martian missions. Videos of SpaceX’s Falcon 9’s launching and landing are perhaps worth seeing if you haven’t already watched the videos a hundred times before. I really did enjoy the section on the habitation of Mars, but I’ve always been a sucker for miniatures. The only detractions of this exhibition were the bits and pieces of stupid art. Art is not design, and it certainly wasn’t good enough to fit in with some of the actual design work present in the exhibition.
The whole purpose of this exhibition is not to show what is possible, but whether it is at all necessary. Moving to Mars is presented as a feasible next step for humanity, we only need to decide whether we should go. It left one with the rather profound feeling of what if... And the disappointment that I’ll be dead before I can hop on the next rocket out of here.
