It’s not really often you see a furniture store collaborating with a national space agency but IKEA and NASA are about to break bread on a new partnership that is designed to set the stage for life on Mars. IKEA has said that it is working with NASA to try to develop the mass production system of cheap furniture that will allow people to settle on the new planet and feel at home. But consistent with the difficulty of space exploration, there is a big if here. Even though there have always been signs that Mars could support human life, it’s still not yet clear whether it will be possible for people to live on the planet.
But IKEA seems more optimistic than most of us and the Swedish furniture company is keen on developing what it is calling a mass ready home if or when we finally make our way to the red planet. The company has set up base at the MDRS habitat in Utah. It is said that the habitat which is a simulation of outer space would provide a good starting point for understanding how exactly life is out there and the kind of solutions that can be explored to offer the Mars ready home. The confined spacecraft in Utah is not a joke. In fact, astronauts who are looking to be part of space missions have to spend at least three years in that small space in order to be fully ready for space travel.
IKEA’s creative leader, Michael Nikolic, said that the company was excited about the experience. He added that the partnership will allow personnel from IKEA to use the NASA facility in order to get a taste of what astronauts go through in space. The idea here is to simply have knowledge about deep space and while both NASA and IKEA have not explicitly revealed what the collaboration is expected to achieve, no doubt there are many lessons to be learned. The Swedish furniture company is hoping to leverage on this experience to understand urban life in megacities better, especially when you consider that the confined space and the polluted air and water at the NASA spacecraft are almost the same thing dwellers in such big cities go through every day.
Although IKEA’s goal is to make furniture designed for Mars, the furniture company will also look to see how the knowledge of deep space can be used to make furniture improvements here on Earth. Nikolic also noted that the collaboration with NASA will serve as a subtle reminder of the great benefits that we have here on earth. From the clean air, the clean water, to the plants and animals, all have been taken for granted for far too long and Nikolic believes that spending three days on the spacecraft would perhaps inspire people to rethink their role in the planet and what they are doing in safeguarding the only home that we have. The personal from IKEA will spend three days in the confined spacecraft units.
