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Constance Adams, an architect who abandoned the design of skyscrapers to develop structures that would help travelers comfortably live at the International Space Station, Mars or the Moon, died Monday at her home in Houston. She was 53 years old.
MaryScott Hagle, a friend and babysitter of Mrs. Adams' daughters, said the cause was colorectal cancer
. Adams had interviewed for architectural work in Houston in 1996 when she made a tour of NASA's Johnson Space Center. The visit aroused his curiosity and led to two decades of work that challenged him to create facilities for humans in the rarefied environment of space.
"How could the child of a historian resist?" in 1999. "It's a great historic effort of our time."
A full-size prototype of TransHab was built, but the project never received the necessary government funding to deploy it in space.
"The core module of the space station is absolutely the most extraordinary engineering project ever undertaken.", Said Ms. Adams at the New York Times in 2002. "But to live, it's not the same." is a gun house. "
She added," You do not want to conduct lab experiments next to someone on a treadmill.Be remember, in microgravity, sweat floats. [19659005Theprototypeincluded12000cubicfeetoflivingquarterscommonareasakitchenaninfirmaryworkandexerciseareasallprotectedbyathickKevlarwoventothetestTheroleofAdamsfocusedonthehumanandperformanceaspectsofinteriordesign
"She was very persistent and determined," said Kennedy, who recently took his NASA retreat, in a phone interview. "She was an independent and strong thinker who did not hesitate to share her thoughts and opinions and defend what she thought was right in the design. "
Marc M. Cohen, another former NASA architect, added in An interview She has transformed the concept of a tire – a flat tire, essentially – into a viable interior structure.
Although TransHab never reached the space, Ms. Adams argued that the design and testing had made it a success.
"Her formal purpose was simply to prove the virtues and viability of the inflatable option," she told the HobbySpace website in 2003.
(A smaller version of TransHab found Life A private company, Bigelow Aerospace, licensed NASA technology and attached its expandable activity module to the space station in 2016. It is used not as a living habitat, but for storing goods.)
Constance Marguerite Adams was born on July 16, 1964 in Boston. His father, Jeremy, was a professor of medieval history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas; his mother, Madeleine de Jean, is a writer and expert in Champagne. The young Constance often traveled to Europe with her parents and, after their divorce in the 1970s, with her father and stepmother, Bonnie Wheeler, professor of medieval studies at S.M.U.
Ms. A graduate of Harvard in Social Studies, Adams wrote his master's thesis on Le Corbusier, the Franco-Swiss modernist architect. After a master's degree in architecture at Yale, she did an internship with the architect César Pelli. She then worked in Japan for the architects' office of Kenzo Tange and in Germany for the firm Josef Paul Kleihues
"I went to architecture originally because It involves a lot of different things, "she said at an event sponsored by Microsoft and National Geographic last year to encourage girls to participate in science and math." I knew that if I did that, I would never get bored. "
When business slowed in Germany, where she had worked on master plans, she returned to the United States. NASA, she left her CV, the agency connected her to Lockheed Martin, who hired her and brought her to NASA as a consultant. Bio-Plex, a prototype of surface habitat that could support six people on Mars.
In his spatial vail – through Lockheed Martin; Futron, another entrepreneur; and Synthesis International, a consulting company that she formed in the 1990s – Ms. Adams also participated in the design of NASA's X-38 Crew Return Vehicle and its orbital space plane. And she consulted on the design of Spaceport America, built in New Mexico by the Virgin Galactic space company.
Last year, she worked with a group of Ikea designers who explored space saving solutions for their furniture. days in Mars habitat simulated at the Mars Desert Research Center near Hanksville, Utah.
"The things we assume are a constant, like gravity, change in these environments," Ms. Adams told Wired magazine. "The only thing that stays the same is the human."
Adams is survived by his daughters, Mathilde Adams and Valérie Wehring, as well as his mother and mother-in-law. His marriage to Charles Wehring Jr. ended with a divorce. His father passed away in 2016.
Adams expressed his admiration for what NASA had achieved with government funds under the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, and she had hope for the future, as evidenced by his personal motto: "Originally from Mars, trying to get home".
But it was troubled by the budget cuts that led to the elimination of TransHab and the decline of NASA's once vast ambitions.
"No nation in the history of the earth has missed major projects and remains significant" she said in a TEDx Talk 2011.
"What is our Sputnik moment?" She added, referring to the satellite launch by the Soviet Union in 1957 that galvanized the space program of the United States. "How are we going to go ahead? What are we doing next?"
She added, "We will never get to Mars like this."
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