Maurer is a Cleveland-based architect who will bring you down to earth very quickly about the romantic ideal of colonizing another planet. Most of us realize it’s probably a one-way trip. The Mars One Foundation–which dreams of putting colonies on Mars by 2023–recently had 200,000 people volunteer for the adventure, even knowing they’d have to die on the red planet. Elon Musk, whose SpaceX promises to land on Mars in 2024, has announced a plan for a city that would house a million people.

　　Maurer是一位克利夫兰的建筑师，他能够非常快速地将你带离地球，探索另一个星球殖民的浪漫理想。 我们大多数人意识到这可能是一次单程旅行。虽然这是一次前往火星的单程旅行，但近期全球仍有20万人报名争当志愿者。而硅谷明星创业者伊隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)领导的太空探索公司SpaceX承诺将于2024年将人类送上火星，并于未来在火星上建造一个可容纳100万人的城市。

　　Often, these broad strokes visions overlook tremendous design problems, beyond Mars’s ?55 °C average temperatures and lack of a breathable oxygen atmosphere. But Maurer has a solution: grow Martian buildings out of mushrooms. And he’s working with NASA to make it a reality.

　　通常情况下，大家会忽略了巨大的设计问题，考虑到火星表面零下55摄氏度的平均温度和缺氧环境，克利夫兰建筑师克里斯托弗·莫尔(Christopher Maurer)正在与美国国家航空航天局合作，用种植蘑菇来打造火星建筑物。

　　(1) The problem of building materials in space.

　　太空建筑材料的问题

　　Right now, it costs about $10,000 to put a single pound of payload into orbit. Even SpaceX admits you can’t possibly carry all of the materials you need with you because the rocket payloads would be too pricey, so that means you’re probably forming a shelter in situ, instead, out of Martian dirt.

　　目前将1磅有效载荷送入轨道需要大约1万美元的费用。即使SpaceX也承认，由于通过火箭运送有效载荷的成本太高，因此登陆火星的开拓者不可能携带所有需要的材料，所以这意味着人类成功登陆火星后可能需要在原地建造一个临时避难所。

　　Maybe a dirt hut doesn’t sound so bad, especially in the fetching red hue of Mars soil. But there’s another catch: To block the cancerous radiation that flows through most of space, you need more than some adobe bricks. You need 10-foot-thick walls of the soil, which is why that scenario probably has you just moving underground instead–“living like early burrowing mammals,” Maurer says.

　　也许临时的一间小屋听起来并没有那么糟糕，但还有一个问题：为了阻止来自外太空的致命辐射，火星殖民者需要的不仅仅是一些土坯砖。你需要至少10英尺厚的土壤墙，这就是为什么起初殖民火星的人类或许只能在地下活动—— “像穴居哺乳动物一样生活，”莫尔说。

　　(2) A novel, organic solution.

　　一种新的有机解决方案

　　In his Ohio architecture firm, Redhouse Studio Architecture, Maurer has spent the past three years experimenting with refuse from mushroom harvesting–stuff like its mycelium root structure humans don’t typically eat–compressing the waste into strong planks to build sustainable housing. At a conference, he met NASA scientist Lynn Rothschild who had also been considering the potential of mycelium as a growing material.

　　在其位于俄亥俄州的建筑公司Redhouse Studio Architecture中，莫尔在过去三年中一直尝试菌丝体根部结构来建造绿色住房。人类通常不会食用蘑菇的这一部位，将其压缩成板材后就可以建造房屋。在一次会议上，莫尔遇见了美国宇航局科学家林恩·罗斯柴尔德(Lynn Rothschild)，后者恰巧也在考虑用菌丝体作为建筑材料种植材料的潜力。

　　Independently, they’d both reached the same vision, and realized if so, they might as well work together to actualize it: Why not just grow buildings from the ground up? And instead of settling for earth, why not try it on Mars?

　　他们各自都想到了这一点。在见面都两人意识到如果可行，他们也可以一起努力实现它：为什么不在火星上试试呢?

　　“With one spore, you could grow mycelium, indefinitely,” says Maurer. “With just a little seed biology, a couple pounds going into space can turn into thousands of tons of building materials on destination.” And with a carefully designed, vacuum-sealed plastic bag, that mycelium can grow into a giant habitat with little to no human effort required, filling its casing like an intergalactic pop-up tent.

　　“只需要一个孢子，菌丝体就会无限期地生长。”莫尔说，“只需要掌握一点点种子生物学，载入太空中的几磅材料就可以变成上千吨的建筑材料。”而且，通过精心设计的真空密封塑料袋，菌丝体可以生长成一个巨大的栖息地，甚至不需要任何人工干预，其外壳就像一个太空中的大帐篷。

　　Now, Maurer and Rothschild hope to prove the concept first on a NASA-funded study here on Earth, by turning 1,722 pounds of material (most of which is the plastic shell) into a McMansion-sized igloo that grows itself in just a few weeks.

　　现在，莫尔和罗斯柴尔德希望首先在NASA资助的研究中证明这一概念。他们将1,722磅材料(其中大部分是柔软外壳)转变成一个“快餐式大宅”(McMansion)大小的冰屋，在短短几周时间内即可生长完成。

　　If they succeed, they’ll demonstrate a dwelling that’s also possible to grow on Mars–with a payload that’s almost two orders of magnitude lighter than NASA previously thought possible.

　　如果获得成功，他们将能够展示一个也有可能在火星上生长的建筑物——而且这一有效载荷几乎比美国航空航天局先前认为要轻两个数量级。

　　(3) A strange, old material.

　　一种奇怪的老材料

　　Perhaps mycelium seems like an odd building material. It’s probably something you’ve never heard even of, since the mushroom is the reproductive fruit of the plant that you eat, and the mycelium is the part that lives out of sight, under the Earth’s surface. How could you build a house out of fungus?

　　也许听起来菌丝体似乎是一种奇怪的建筑材料。这可能是你从来没有听说过的东西，因为蘑菇只是你日常吃的一种东西，而菌丝则是蘑菇长在地表下的看不见的部分。你怎么能用真菌来建造一座房子呢?

　　In fact, it can have tensile strengths that rival wood. It’s also lightweight, fire retardant, and self-healing. A little water, CO2, and algae (or similar food) is all it needs to grow into habitats, furniture, or even shells for rovers.

　　事实上，菌丝的抗拉强度可以与木材相媲美。此外其还具有重量轻，阻燃以及自我修复力强的特点。只需要少量的水、二氧化碳和藻类，菌丝就可以大面积生长。

　　“It may sound strange and weird to talk about [growing] a biological structure on Mars, but think about it, we’ve been using biology to build habitats on the Earth for thousands of years. Whether you’re talking about a teepee with wood and skin or houses made out of wood, we use biological products in building all the time,” says NASA’S Rothschild. “I’m sitting here looking at myself, and I have leather in my shoes, I have cotton in my jeans, and wool in my sweater.”

　　“在火星上谈论[如何生长]一种生物结构可能听起来很奇怪，但想一想，数千年来我们已经使用生物制品在地球上建造了无数的栖息地。比如我们用木头和动物皮做成的圆锥形帐篷，或者是用木头建造的房屋，我们一直在使用生物制品，”美国航空航天局的罗斯柴尔德说，“我坐在这里看看自己，我的皮鞋上有皮革，我的牛仔裤上有棉花，毛衣上有羊毛。”

　　Rothschild is an astrobiologist and synthetic biologist. She believes that it may be possible to not just grow a fungus shelter, but to seed it with genetically engineered bacteria that would help absorb harmful radiation. One possibility is that the fungus itself could develop melanin, the same thing that makes our skin tan in the sun, to help convert harmful energy into more food for the structure. Such genetic engineering is another thread of the project that Rothschild plans to study.

　　罗斯柴尔德是一位天体生物学家和合成生物学家。她认为，不仅可以通过种植真菌来建造火星避难所，同时还可以利用基因工程的细菌来帮助吸收有害辐射。一种可能性是，真菌本身就可以产生黑色素，帮助将有害能量转化为更多的建筑结构体。这种基因工程是罗斯柴尔德计划研究项目的另一个主题。

　　In any case, Rothschild and Maurer imagine that they can build a dwelling that looks a lot more like a human home than a prehistoric burrow, simply because you can grow mycelium in any shape you want. And in doing so, life on Mars could feel much more like a life worth living.

　　无论如何，罗斯柴尔德和莫尔想象他们可以建造一个看起来更像是人类住宅而不是史前洞穴的避难所，因为你可以以任何你想要的形状来种植菌丝体。而在这样做的时候，火星可能更像是一个值得生活的地方。

　　(4) Looking ahead.

　　展望未来

　　As promising as the work may sound, growing a habitat on Mars is still a long ways off. This nine-month proof of research grant itself is just beginning now, and it’s aimed at projects that NASA deems 10 to 20 years away from fruition. If it goes well, the team will pursue another that lasts for two years.

　　尽管该项目听起来很有希望，但在火星上建立一个栖息地还有很长的路要走。这项为期九个月的研究现在才刚刚开始，其目标是美国航空航天局将要在未来十到二十年要实现的计划。如果进展顺利，该团队将开展另一项持续两年的项目。

　　“We’re showing in principal this would work,” says Rothschild. “A double-bag dome igloo is a very easy concept.” Growing it 33.9 million miles away is just slightly more complicated.

　　“理论上已经表明这会有用，”罗斯柴尔德说，“用真菌打造一个圆顶冰屋是一个非常简单的概念。”当然，在距地球3390万英里以外的地方实现这一点只是稍微复杂一些。