4 things a week: why we want to go to Mars.

1. World

Learning about two things this week I was a struck by the connection. The first was more about the mission to Mars. There was podcast on The Daily about the Mars Dune Alpha mission , where volunteers will live in isolation in a Mars simulation for 378 days so that NASA can learn more about how humans might handle the psychological challenges of a real trip to the red planet. This isn’t the first of this kind of experiment NASA has conducted. Questioning why scientists keep undertaking them when we already know how humans handle deep isolation, the answer came back “we are coming to terms with the trauma of having ruined this planet and enact some kind of utopian future where we can start over”.?

Reflecting on this, I disagree. I think the drive to go to Mars is purely about conquering a new untouched place. Having somewhere to start over that is so much less complex and messy and unfixable than our planet has seemingly become. Which brings me to the second story, about billionaires in California secretly buying up countryside with the goal of building a new ‘perfect’ city. Fed up of how run-down Silicon Valley is, the city’s rich kids are chipping in to simply start afresh. The project which was uncovered by a NYT journalist has now been made public under the name California Forever and is being sold as a Utopia of jobs, clean energy and opportunity.?

For 100yrs we’ve used our planet as a testbed for ideas, building projects, experiments. We’ve quadrupled in population, spreading out to all corners of the globe, using up resources as we go. Habitable space is a premium. Buildings on top of buildings until all signs of the natural world are extinguished. Like a kid with a pack of crayons and a single sheet of paper; any resemblance of the original image has long disappeared in the scribbles. That’s the messy world we live in. It’s no surprise that people want to start over. But that idea is driven by ego. The design both to conquer and build thinking ‘I could do it better, given the opportunity’ is to forget the complexity of human nature. With our intelligence comes a level of creativity that means we all think, do and act differently. One man’s utopia is just that, one man’s.

As we have become more connected, more ‘aware’ of what is happening around the world, we have an ever more zoomed out view. The sweeping narratives of the media wrap everything up in doom and gloom. But just because the paper looks like one big scribble, doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty there if we look closer.?

Sure we could jump ship to Mars or scrap a whole city and build a new one. But if we can’t fix the things we’ve broken, history will only repeat itself. And fixing things starts with what’s on our doorstep.?

A really good book to follow up this train of thought is Citizens by Jon Alexander . He comes at it from a different angle, but the message is the same.

2. Innovation

Will 'Made in India' become the next 'Made in China'? With increased levies and restrictions on imports from China in markets including India and the U.S. companies are thinking twice about manufacturing in the Far East. Chinese firms like Xiaomi have set up manufacturing in India to service the Indian market and Apple, Samsung, Google and Nothing are now manufacturing smartphones in India. But when you look at the figures India is miles behind, accounting for only 3% of global value added in manufactured goods, compared with China’s 30% . There are very mixed perspectives on this. Setting up a factor in India is nowhere near as simple as it is in China and factory work itself has a poor perception in India, whereas in China is has long been associated with a way to escape the rural areas and achieve a better life. Then if you think holistically about the Chinese people, their politics, their education, their work ethic. They have all helped to create a skilled, hard working workforce.?

On the other hand however, the younger generations in India are increasingly choosing Indian brands over imported ones. The queue for the iPhone 15 (the first to be manufactured in India) was around the block when it launched last year. Whilst many Indian brands are currently manufacturing overseas because they just don’t have the skilled factories in their own country, there is a definite desire to change that, to produce at home. So whilst I don’t see India challenging China for exports, we will see the manufacturing industry grow in India, if only to serve its own 1.408 billion people.?

3. Morrama?

A quick update this week: We’ve been working away to add to our Sustainable Design Handbook , adding more materials to the materials library. For those of you who haven’t checked it out, it’s a FREE resource on designing and manufacturing planet conscious products. From design strategies to case studies, it’s a little summary of the learnings on sustainability in design that we have made as a team over the years.?

4. Inspiration

Sci-fi has always been an opportunity for designers to really experiment without the constraints of earth-bound physics and manufacturing and material limitations. Growing up watching Star Wars I loved the intricacies of the detail on the spaceships, the playfulness, the little considerations for buttons and touchpoints. Now it’s Dune that has really captured our attention at Morrama. The consideration of the way the building facades are imagined at an angle for the winds to sweep over , with thick rock walls to keep them cool, to the suits that the Fremen wear to recycle every drop of body moisture, is awesome. OK, I'm not saying they could actually work, or an ornithopter could fly (on Earth at least), but it's important for us to think outside the box and have our ideas challenged.

We are all big fans of this movie, it’s worth sitting in the cinema for 3 hours for.

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P.s. Just incase you got to the end of this and aren't sure who I am, I'm:

• an industrial designer (I design and engineer physical objects)
• founder of Morrama | Certified B Corp
• former tutor of Design Futures at the Royal College of Art
• co-instigator of Design Declares