Civic Recreation Center

Dylan Stewart

This Barren Rocky Landscape

The moon is no Mother Earth. Not only does the moon's landscape look incredibly different from Earth, it literally feels incredibly different too. There are no living creatures, plants, or any of the hallmarks of a traditional ecosystem. Instead, there is a rocky expanse full of craters and a wide black and starry sky. This is a vacuous setting for human life or any sort of life at all.

Isolation & Confinement

There is limited research about the psychological impacts that stem from the abnormal environment of space, but we can consider comparable cases of remote and extreme environments, such as those near the poles of the Earth, as well as those within prisons. Some issues that frequently arise in these extreme environments for human living include isolation, confinement, and inactivity. These issues are riddled with all sorts of negative consequences ranging from increased stress, hostility, apathy, to a loss of cognitive function and performance (1, 2). In the operation of a successful lunar habitat, we must proactively confront these malaises.

Creating Community

Thus, we conceived the idea of creating a dedicated civic recreation center. This provides a place for people gather together to engage in social interaction outside of a work context. This is especially important in playing the role of a "third place," somewhere that is not home nor work, but a place where people can come together to build relationships and have a good time. Research has shown that third places are linked with greater perceived life quality in communities in which they are accessible (3).

Our Design

The proposal for what the civic recreation center should contain only presents the skeleton of what it could be. After all, the point is for the citizens of the habitat to make use of it as they seek to as a community, ascribing to it the needs they may have for it, depending on what types of activities and gatherings the community values. As for what the civic recreation center can provide for residents, we propose a variety of amenities. We have a nice park with trees and plants to simulate the feeling of normal life on Earth, which can be used for walks, meeting up with friends, or playing games. We have a gymnasium with basketball, tennis, and volleyball courts, as well as a swimming pool. Then there's the strength and conditioning room for maintaining healthy physical fitness while in a low gravity field. And finally, we have a general purpose game and event room, where citizens can host whatever gathering they may have planned.

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Challenges & Complications

The apparent major obstacle is figuring out how we're going to construct this entire civic recreation center. Research on the matter of space structures seems to point to the use of inflatable structures, as compared to rigid structures (4). Inflatable structures are much lighter than rigid structures, and in many instances, they can be cheaper to create (4). Inflatable structures also are inherently stronger and more versatile since they distribute loads over large areas and have preferable dynamics when considering issues like resonance (4). Something that is especially pertinent to our use of inflatable structures is the idea that they are very conducive to habitability due to the fact that they can take up a large volume that can be appreciated by people who are already having issues with isolation and confinement (4). The fact that they can easily take up larger volume is essential for the construction to accommodate our design of an open park and gymnasium.

Speaking of parks, the other major challenge we face in the design of our civic recreation center is how we would create a park that resembles what we have on Earth in space. Being able to have at least a communal, open area that has greenery for people to walk about and play or exist in is important as research has shown that such green spaces can be linked with reducing stress and improving mental health (5), which is something we really want to focus on alleviating when considering the context of the psychological stressors such extreme environments put inhabitants into. The extent of cultivating plants in space has thus far been quite limited, so having the feel and scale of an entire park might be initially unfeasible, but we could certainly reproduce what has already been achieved to start with, such as the Advanced Plant Habitat on the ISS.

Summary

Life in space is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and stressful. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that we can't take steps to make our life to feel more normal, stable, and comparable to what we had experienced up until this point on Earth. The amenities that the civic recreation center has to offer insofar as recreational activity and leisure goes, as well as the fundamental "third space" for community and relationship building that the center provides, creates a life that is more so than just tolerable but genuinely livable for the people on the moon. This is important because it allows these inhabitants to satisfy beyond just their bare minimum physiological necessities, but they can meet their higher ordered needs as well, leading way to greater being and performance under self-actualization.

References:

1 - Leach J. Psychological factors in exceptional, extreme and torturous environments. Extrem Physiol Med. 2016 Jun 1;5:7. doi: 10.1186/s13728-016-0048-y. PMID: 27257476; PMCID: PMC4890253.

2 - Sandal, G.M., Leon, G.R., Palinkas, L. (2006). Human challenges in polar and space environments. In: Amils, R., Ellis-Evans, C., Hinghofer-Szalkay, H. (eds) Life in Extreme Environments. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6285-8_25

3 - Jeffres, L. W., Bracken, C. C., Jian, G., & Casey, M. F. (2009). The impact of third places on community quality of life. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 4, 333-345. doi:10.1007/s11482-009-9084-8

4 - Haym Benaroya, Lunar habitats: A brief overview of issues and concepts, REACH, Volumes 7–8, 2017, Pages 14-33, ISSN 2352-3093, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reach.2018.08.002

5 - Roe JJ, Thompson CW, Aspinall PA, Brewer MJ, Duff EI, Miller D, Mitchell R, Clow A. Green Space and Stress: Evidence from Cortisol Measures in Deprived Urban Communities. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2013; 10(9):4086-4103. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph10094086

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