“I have designed solutions for living on the Moon and Mars because I like utopian projects, so much so that in the past I have even worked on solutions for the bridge over the Strait of Messina”: when he answers the phone, the civil engineer Marco Peroni has just returned from a construction site. For now, no space settlements, but a simple renovation in the medieval village of Brisighella, near Faenza, where he lives and works, and which he nevertheless talks about with the same enthusiasm. He feels he loves his job, but he also understands that it fits him tight.
And who loves challenges: not only the bridge over the strait was his degree thesis, but also since 2016 he has been studying ways to make life on the surface of other planets safer and more comfortable. For example, a glass and steel dome 100 meters in diameter, passed through by a very high voltage current for create an artificial magnetic field that deflects cosmic radiation, to be built around a space settlement to protect astronauts.
Arms “made in Italy” to take samples on Mars
Antonio lo campo
How the radiation dome works
“On the metal elements of the structure, along the meridians of an ideal sphere, there are superconducting electric cables arranged in the shape of a torus which, when powered, generate a magnetic field – he explained to Italian Tech – this deflects radiation on the outside. , but inside it is null, avoiding risks to the health of human beings “. More or less it is the same mechanism by which the earth’s magnetic field protects us from cosmic radiation and with the same great advantage: once built, it would allow astronauts to live on the surface, “inside settlements in which to walk and from which to enjoy the view of Mars”, instead of several meters underground or in caves, where they would practically be located all the spatial living modules hypothesized so far.
Therefore, the solution proposed by engineer Peroni is a solution that he himself defines “all things considered simple, at least on paper” to a complex problem that seems to have to be faced in the coming decades: how living the space in a way that is comfortable and compatible with the health (including mental) of the astronauts: “Sooner or later we will go to Mars and make ourselves 9 months of travel in a spaceship to arrive on a planet where you then live at least 2 years underground it can be psychologically unsustainable. Since it won’t happen very soon, there is a way and time to propose engineering solutions based on existing technologies ”.
And to solve non-trivial problems, such as the production of the energy necessary to generate the magnetic field around the dome, which for the Mars project alone would require a 90 gigawatt nuclear power plant (or the equivalent in solar panels).
Mars: Perseverance at the finish
Antonio lo campo
That base ready for the moon
However, the engineer went ahead: in the last 5 years he first designed a base to live on the Moon, the Solenoid Moon Base, with which participated in a “call for paper” of the Italian Space Agency, arousing the interest of the then director, Roberto Battiston, and then went around the world to tell this idea, from Florida to Switzerland. Not only that: it has designed living modules designed to be transported with future versions of the rockets of Space X, the company of Elon Musk, or to be built on arrival, using 3d printers powered with materials available on site.
To give more substance to the research, Peroni has also dealt with some scientific institutions, collaborating with Professor Genta of the Polytechnic of Turin and with the National Institute of Nuclear Physics of Bari who, as the engineer from Faenza told us, has validated his system that uses the magnetic field to repel radiation.
And now, with the world appearing to emerge from the pandemic and return to life, Peroni is once again ready to relaunch: preparations are already underway for go to the International Astrounatical Congress 2021 in Dubai, where he will present the project of a lunar hotel to be built always sheltered by its geodesic dome: “The study underlying the project is the same one used for Mars, because once you have the idea of how to reject cosmic rays, decline it in as many ways as possible “.
And if one day, as Musk and Bezos wish, we will really colonize the Moon or Mars, perhaps the credit will also be a bit of this visionary Italian engineer.
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