Sealed behind the steel doors of two bunkers in a Beijing suburb, university students are trying to find out how it feels to live in a space station on another planet, recycling everything from plant cuttings to urine. “I’ll get so much out of this, “
BEIJING (Reuters) – Sealed behind the steel doors of two bunkers in a Beijing suburb, university students are trying to find out how it feels to live in a space station on another planet, recycling everything from plant cuttings to urine.
They are part of a project aimed at creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that provides everything humans need to survive.
Four students from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics entered the Lunar Palace-1 on Sunday with the aim of living self-sufficiently for 200 days.
They say they are happy to act as human guinea-pigs if it means getting closer to their dream of becoming astronauts.
“I’ll get so much out of this, ” Liu Guanghui, a PhD student, who entered the bunker on Sunday, said. “It’s truly a different life experience.”
President Xi Jinping wants China to become a global power in space exploration, with plans to send the first probe to the dark side of the moon by 2018 and to put astronauts on the moon by 2036.
