 I'm going battle for space supremacy between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and the question of colonizing Mars, it's an awesome time to be a nerd right now. One of the major research avenues for space exploration and colonization is habitat support. In other words, what would houses or labs look like on the dusty red Martian soil? Or among the clouds of Venus or the seas of Europa? Would we ever be able to build a standard three-bedroom house on Mars or a nice-looking permaculture field to grow Martian carrots? Well, not exactly, because the weather patterns on the other planets are pretty crazy and stuff like dust storms and quakes are pretty common, which would destroy any normal building. But if you look at any sci-fi movie ever, you've probably seen a cool solution. People living in big glass domes. Think of any science fiction colony in space. The bottom of the ocean, floating in the clouds, chances are there's some sort of dome or floating city there that looks like something straight out of a futuristic fantasy. But here's the best part, there's actually some really promising research into geodesic domes that could mean Mars domes aren't that far off from reality. So today, we're going to take a look at the work of the late great Buckminster Fuller and ask something pretty simple. What does a domed future look like for humanity among the stars, or even right here on Earth? And for the record, this is something we're actively striving to create right now. If you want to be a part of the movement of transforming global consciousness and creating beautiful, sacred spaces both online and offline, you're invited to join us in Spirit Mysteries, a growing community of spiritual seekers just like you from around the world that makes it easier than ever to make authentic connections with awakened souls who genuinely care. Use the link below to sign up, and we look forward to seeing you there. Let's quickly go over what exactly a geodesic dome is. Now, while everyone tends to call them domes, the proper name is geodesic polyhedron, which, you know, is just a fancy word for a curved polyhedron made from triangles. In other words, it's a geometric shape that has straight edges and flat faces that approximates a perfectly round 3D sphere. When it comes to architecture, this actually makes them easier to build than a huge one-piece half sphere. And they're often built as hemispherical, lightweight lattice shell, which is just a structure with crisscross points that interlock with each other to make a cool stitch-looking pattern. The end result is one of the most stable, secure geometries that exists, and it just looks awesome. Because of the way the triangles are arranged in the lattice, it allows the dome to distribute structural stress throughout the entire body, kind of like an archway, but in three dimensions. This means that they can withstand huge loads of stress for their size, making them extremely durable and pretty perfect for extraterrestrial environments or places where weather would otherwise batter them around with earthquakes or storms. While habitation domes are often associated with Bucky Fuller, the first proper geodesic dome was actually designed by German engineer Walter Bausfield, who made one for his local planetarium to house a projector for star maps, which opened in 1926. Following the opening, he got the first German patent for the domes. Fast forward 20 years later, Bucky was teaching at Black Mountain College, where he got a group of students and professors together to build a small test dome and dubbed it geodesic, based on its geometry. He was an architect by trade but had a huge interest in futurism and is often quoted as saying he loved the idea of domes, not only because they were strong and stable structures, but also because a sphere encloses the greatest volume for the least surface area. After Bucky got the patent for the geodome in 1954, public interest soared and engineers and designers from many fields began exploring the idea and breaking records for covered surface and closed volume and constructability. Everything from auditoriums, weather observatories and storage facilities to Disney's EBCOT and our personal favorite, the Montreal Biosphere started to be built over the years. While the construction of these domes wasn't always easy, since it can be a rather long process due to the geometric complexity and cutting all the materials into the right shape, recent advances in science mean that whole domes could be printed pretty quickly using big mobile 3D printers. The material used as the filament is usually a kind of air injected concrete or closed cell plastic foam, which if all of this doesn't tell you just how far technology has come, I don't know what will. You don't even have to be a nerd to appreciate this kind of stuff. Interestingly, Bucky believed that if we could build these things quickly, they would be a great solution to the housing crisis. But after World War Two, the whole residential side of things didn't really take off since no normal people couldn't afford the construction costs. So that's why most of the domes we see today are artistic or novelty projects. Although, if you wanted to, nowadays you can get a flat pack. Build it yourself dome type kit. And specialist contractors can come and fulfill your dome home dream. Bucky was true to his word, though, and actually lived in his own dome home in Illinois, where you can actually still go visit to this day. The coolness doesn't stop there, though, and neither did Bucky. After patenting the concept, he started thinking about how entire dome cities would actually work and ended up coming up with the Cloud Nine project. Basically, think Cloud City from Empire Strikes Back. Say you build a huge geodome. In theory, it could be made to float by slightly heating the air inside above the ambient temperatures of the outside. Not only that, but geodesic domes actually become stronger and more stable the bigger they get since they can distribute more stress across their surface. In other words, the massive dome cities of science fiction are seeing quite a bit more science future. Economically speaking, since the sphere always has a high volume surface ratio, the material required to build bigger and stronger domes grow slower than the amount of space each dome would have within it. This means, as Bucky discovered, that the mass of material constituting a mile wide geodesic sphere would be negligible compared with the mass of the air trapped inside it. He had this idea that if all the air inside was heated, even by one degree higher than the outside, the sphere could become airborne. He calculated that a balloon of this kind could lift an insane amount of mass, which would allow many cities or airborne towns of thousands of people to be built. Think about if this idea really took off, pun intended. We could drive or migrate floating cities in response to climactic and environmental conditions or provide quick emergency shelters to thousands of people. It's not even just air cities, though. Bucky was involved in the Triton Project, which was commissioned to design a floating city that would provide housing in cities located near the ocean. In fact, a tetrahedron-shaped module holding up to 5,000 inhabitants was designed. I bet Jumila would love that one. And the Comprehensive Engineering Report was submitted together with a large model which is on display in Texas today. That's pretty cool. I mean, even we want to build a domed Atlantis type thing at some point. Bringing it into more modern-day science, though, aero and geodomes are really strong contender for the colonization of Mars and Venus. One of the major issues with finding a good place to colonize in space is the G-Force problem. See, there are concerns about the damaging effect of long-term exposure to fractional Gs or zero gravity on the human musculoskeletal system, which is something that happens to astronauts in orbit, unfortunately, when they get back. But Venus, however, is close in size and mass to the Earth, resulting in a similar surface gravity that would likely be sufficient enough to prevent the health problems associated with weightlessness. The other thing to remember is that Venus' atmosphere is made mostly of carbon dioxide. Because nitrogen and oxygen, the two main gases of Earth's atmosphere, are lighter than carbon dioxide, breathable air-filled balloons on Venus could theoretically float at a height of about 50 kilometers, with the temperature being around 75 degrees. But at 55 kilometers up, it drops to 27 degrees Celsius, which is like a nice summer day for us. The atmosphere also has all the right elements for human life and farming, like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur. I mean, everyone saw that thing last year where NASA detected traces of phosphines 55 kilometers up in Venus' atmosphere, right? Which, yeah, is a possible signature of life on other planets. Naturally, we can't go to the surface, though, because it's like 450 degrees Celsius up there. And with the atmosphere pressure being like 90 times greater than Earth, although there are also plans to terraform the surface. But say we could live in the clouds of Venus with these geodomes. Would you go live up there? Let us know in the comments below. We're actually kind of curious if any of you guys would actually go and do that. Taking note from Bucky, NASA researcher Jeffrey Landis thinks that floating cities and domes would work great for this. Based on the concept from earlier, that breathable air is a lifting gas in a carbon dioxide atmosphere with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth, meaning that a geodesic balloon full of human breathable air would sustain itself and extra weight, such as a colony, in mid-air. And no, before you ask, there wouldn't be a huge danger of the bubble popping and us crashing to the surface and becoming Venus kebabs. The main problems standing in our way at the moment are that industrial materials would be really hard to retrieve from the surface and expensive to bring from Earth and nearby asteroids. Plus, the acid rain is a thing. And so the colony would need to be constructed of or coated in materials resistant to corrosion by the acid. But in 2015, NASA developed a high-altitude Venus operational concept, otherwise known as Havoc. Exploring the possibility of setting up an atmospheric manned mission, so we are well on our way. Finally, we have stuff like the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK, a vast expanse of different adjoining domes set up to house and grow crops from all around the world. Each enclosure emulates a natural biome and is environmentally controlled to create the perfect conditions for plants to thrive. The big dome simulates a rainforest and is actually the largest artificial indoor rainforest in the world. And the smaller one creates a Mediterranean biome. But the best bit is that the massive amounts of water required to create the human conditions are all sanitized rainwater that would otherwise collect at the bottom of the quarry. Really, the only disadvantages to having dome structures at the moment are time and labor costs. Lloyd Kahn pointed out that standard off-the-shelf building materials like plywood and strandboard normally come in rectangular shapes. So some material might be scrapped after cutting rectangles down to triangles, increasing the cost of construction as well as build time. There's also the air moisture problem. As moisture will build up and conditions tend to quickly degrade wooden framing or interior paneling, meaning that many domes need to be made from types of plastics that are unfortunately harmful to the environment. But imagine what new materials like hemp plastics could do for dome building. So really, Bucky's dream of a domed future for humanity high up in the sky might actually come to pass. And even if it is on another planet, hey, if how Pudolph comes up with artificial gravity at some point, maybe we can even get gravity domes for certain planets like Mars, which would be just freaking amazing. Even further in the future, floating cities might also let us settle the outer three gas giants. Jupiter probably isn't great for habitation due to the high gravity, escape velocity, and radiation. But other gas giants like Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune could be more practical. In 1978, the British Interplanetary Societies Project, Daedalus, envisioned floating factories in the atmospheres of Jupiter refining helium-3 to produce fuel for an interstellar probe. And Uranus and Neptune even have upper atmosphere gravities comparable to Earth's, and even lower escape velocities than Saturn. So with that, thank you so much for watching. Would you want to live in a dome? Up in the alien skies of Venus or Neptune? I'm sure there's a fart joke about living in the gas of Uranus, but hey, we won't go there. Maybe Bucky's dream of a floating city that would be the answer to climate change and non-renewable resources isn't too far off after all. It's certainly fun to think about. Well, until next time, y'all.