For over ten years, the Technik Salon at Leibniz University Hannover has hosted talks and discussions at the intersection of technology and science. Last week, everything revolved around the question of whether humans can settle space. How many of us could live there, and for how long? And what can space actually offer us? The participants included space experts from QuantumFrontiers.
To kick things off, Christoph Lotz addressed the question “Are we all moving to Mars soon?” What does space migration actually mean, and what concepts exist—from orbital stations around Earth or the Moon to lunar bases, Martian colonies, and even interstellar habitats and their potential time horizons. He also presented ongoing research at the Einstein-Elevator that could play a role in settling space, such as additive manufacturing with metal powder in microgravity and fundamental studies on how gravity affects manufacturing processes.
Sven Abend then introduced the fundamentals of atom interferometry. He asked, “Are atoms waves or particles? Both!” He showed applications in quantum sensing and reported on current research projects on quantum sensors in space.
Botanist Thomas Pfannschmidt rounded off the event with his talk “Space Food – How could we feed astronauts on a Mars station?” He presented the prerequisites for plant growth and the Martian environment, and explained which plants could thrive there under which conditions.
The successful event made clear that emigrating to space is still a long way off, but it shed light on several facets of this exciting topic.
