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In 2016, designer Liz Ciokajlo received
a task from the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York: revisit the Moon Boot,
a fluffy-looking snowshoe inspired by the footwear used by the Apollo
astronauts.
Launched in 1972 at the height of the lunar
missions, the Moon Boot is an icon of the 20th Century's “plastic age” and the
museum administrators wanted a new take on it.
Ciokajlo set out to reimagine it. She knew
only a biomaterial would work in a “post-plastic age”, but the designer also
wanted a new destination to inspire it. Our generation's space travel obsession
is not the Moon, she thought, but the red planet Mars. And Mars allows you to
really think outside of the box.
The task led her to an amazing biomaterial
that had already attracted the attention of engineers innovating m building
materials and of top space agencies like NASA and ESA. Her final design, a
tall, female, rough-looking boot, can be made on board a spaceship with almost
only human sweat and a few fungus spores (真菌孢子), ideal for a seven-month trip to Mars
with limited check-in luggage.
This magic biomaterial is mycelium (菌丝体), the vegetative part of the fungus It
looks like amass of white thread-like structures, each called hyphae.
Collectively, these threads are called mycelium and are the largest part of the
fungus.
Mycelium has amazing properties. It is a
great recycler, as it feeds off a substrate to create more material, and has
the potential of almost limitless growth in the right conditions. It can endure
more pressure than conventional concrete without breaking. It is a known
insulator and fire-retardant and could even provide radiation protection on
space missions.
On Earth it's currently used to create
ceiling panels, leather, packaging materials and building materials, but in
outer space it stands out for its architectural potential, says artist and
engineer Maurizio Montalti, who has teamed up with Ciokajlo.
For her revisited boot, Ciokajlo wanted to
use the human body as the source for some of the building materials and decided
to employ sweat. Reusing sweat is not entirely new in space exploration but a
novelty approach for footwear. She thinks it might make astronauts feel closer
to home during the long journey to Mars.
The design is still hypothetical, because the
real boot submitted for Moma and currently in display at the London Design
Museum did use mycelium but not human sweat, as their deadline was too tight,
but the science checks out.