NYC vs dome

The following is an illustrated discussion of the ways in which life in New York prepared me for life in a Martian habitat.

Physical awareness

To operate smoothly in the flow of the sidewalks and subways of New York City, you have to pay attention to the space that you’re occupying. You keep your elbows in, you plan the path you’re walking, you keep your suitcase close. On the subway, you’re cognizant of whether you’re fragmenting the available space on the hand rail, you always take off your backpack, and you might put your book away if it gets crowded. Similarly we must consciously share space in the hab. Some areas are particularly congested. For example, every day we repurpose the main floor space for exercise and must be careful not to kick the experiments, desk items, or each other. Physical awareness is especially important when we suit up for EVAs. The airlock is roughly 8 by 8 feet and at times contains a wagon, EVA equipment, and four people simultaneously pulling on extra-large hazmat suits.

Living space

My first apartment in NY was 350 square feet, shared with my boyfriend, two cats, and frequent houseguests. And by New York standards, it was pretty luxurious. It had a bedroom. The bedroom had a door. For comparison, the hab has about 1200 square feet divided into 6 small bedrooms (with doors!) and a few nice big common spaces.

Neighbors

Like a New York apartment building, the dome is pretty low on sound isolation because of both the size and the material. In that first apartment, I remember being able to hear our upstairs neighbor gently tapping his foot while he played guitar. I also remember being able to hear our upstairs neighbor playing basketball at 3 am, but that’s a different story. We got a lot of street noise too, so I’m both used to an environment with a lot of ambient noise and to having to keep my own noise production low. For the most part, the crew sleeps and wakes at the same time, but when some are sleeping (or filming, or just need some quiet), we need to be conscious of our noise production. The hab has assorted fans and the crew is running a couple noisy experiments, so noise tolerance is also important. That said, one of my favorite parts of living in the hab is having no neighbors other than my crewmates. I can finally blast music and watch movies as loud as I want to! I can stomp if I want to! When the crew came to this realization, we had a stomping party.

Access to nature

I don’t live in the woods. I don’t have much opportunity to hike. New York has beautiful parks, and I even live near one of them, but I admit I don’t go there very often. My main greenery is the street/backyard tree tops I see from my window, and even those go bare come November. So I’m already used to a lack of growing things. The area of Mauna Loa where the hab is situated was chosen in part because it is barren. We do occasionally come across some brave bush when we hike away from the hab, but there is little to no greenery to be seen from the hab itself. As in a city, the exception is the plants we are growing inside. I’ve got some enthusiastic peas planted in one of the gallon cans that used to hold our freeze-dried food. My crewmate has a much more scientific setup. He is growing cabbage, bok choi, and other plants using the same equipment as they do on the ISS.

Constant company

During my commute, I stand in a subway with a hundred strangers. At work, I sit in an open space with my coworkers. When I walk outside, the sidewalks are crowded. When I’m at home, my husband is usually also there. I’m perfectly happy without much alone time. In the dome, we aren’t necessarily interacting all the time, and there are certainly places we can go to be alone; we have individual bedrooms, and there are spaces in the hab (e.g. the attached workshop/storage container) that are less heavily used than the main common spaces. But for the most part I am constantly accompanied by some or all of my crewmates. Even when we go outside in our suits (EVA), we must make sure that at least two go out and at least two remain.

Number of people

I’ve found one way in which living in New York made the transition to the dome more difficult. It’s not the liveliness; I love the energy of New York, but I’m a homebody and there’s plenty of energy and creativity here. It’s not the food; I eat better here than I do at home. Who knew fruits and vegetables freeze-dried so well? It’s the number of people around me. It feels like the time I visited Seattle after moving to New York and the streets were empty at 8 pm. It feels like a meeting when half the team is home sick. Or like a morning Queens-bound E train car with two other riders. Occasionally even now, 7 weeks in, the crew will be sitting all together and I’ll get a strong feeling that somebody is missing. I’ll count heads, or name names. Everyone is present, but the feeling persists. Where is everybody?