Rouge 2100, a Martian adventure | Mars, this chimera

The Planetarium is presenting with Cirque Éloize this Tuesday an exhibition on the – fictitious – conquest of the planet Mars. An adventure on which Farah Alibay, aerospace engineer and “muse” of Red 2100also participated.

Let’s get one thing straight away: there is no circus or acrobatics in this journey directed by Frédéric Bélanger.

The contribution of Cirque Éloize – which seeks to diversify its activities – essentially consisted of designing the different elements of Red 2100 based on scientific knowledge provided by the Planetarium team.

We are therefore in 2100, and the visitor is invited to board a shuttle in order to make the great journey to the (fictitious) Olympus station based on the planet Mars. A trip of about six months if all goes well…

Projections on a globe allow us to visualize the journey while an artificial intelligence talks to us.

Here, there is no virtual or augmented reality, the immersive dimension of the journey is quite tenuous. As soon as you enter the Olympus station – and therefore the heart of the exhibition – the route in six zones is quite classic.

We really learn a lot of things there, in a quite fun way. But for those who have forgotten, essentially this: Mars is not a habitable planet.

The unbreathable air is made up of 95% carbon dioxide and barely 0.2% oxygen. There is no water, temperatures fluctuate between 20 degrees Celsius and -140 degrees. In short, to walk on the rocky plains of the red planet, you have to wear a suit that costs more than your house in Outremont…

Which prompted us to ask the question to the director of the Planetarium, Olivier Hernandez: why then be interested in Mars?

“It’s the most studied planet in the solar system,” he answers. The second closest planet to Earth, which has the most satellites and robots. But scientists know that it is impossible to settle there. The intrinsic idea of ​​this exhibition is to say: we will not be able to go to Mars, but we are trying to take you there anyway through the imagination. »

“Mars looked a lot like Earth”

But then, what is the scientific interest of this planet? We asked Farah Alibay, who answered from her home in Los Angeles.

“What’s fascinating,” she tells us, “is that billions of years ago, the planet Mars looked a lot like Earth. »

If scientists want to continue missions to Mars, it is with the aim of “unraveling these mysteries”, she insists, not to inhabit the planet.

“I think it’s quite clear in the exhibition that there is no plan B,” insists Farah Alibay. We will never inhabit the planet Mars. We are sending you to Mars to make you appreciate Earth, she said with a burst of laughter. So that you realize that there is only one habitable planet, that it is beautiful, but that it is fragile. »

Olivier Hernandez agrees. “It’s not for nothing that we launched the exhibition on Earth Day. We want to show that what happened on Mars can happen on Earth. It is climate change and a series of natural disasters which are at the origin of the transformations on Mars… So, it seems to me that there is a beautiful parallel to be made with the Earth. »

Board the Planetarium

This fictional trip to Mars is part of the mythology surrounding the conquest of this planet, as seen over the years in films like Total Recall Or The Martian. But despite the chimera that it represents, doesn’t an exhibition like this not feed precisely this imagination?

“Yes, it’s true,” replies Olivier Hernandez, “but we do it for all our shows, taking care to make the necessary nuances. »

In addition to the different areas of the Olympus station, which includes a greenhouse, a water sensor and the technical details of the suit necessary for walking outside, we find six small biographical capsules of women explorers or scientists, who have marked their time. All women chosen by Farah Alibay.

“These are women who have inspired me a lot in my journey as a racialized and queer woman,” she said. There we find, among others, the astronauts Valentina Terechkova and Sally Ride, but also a scientist like Gladys West, mathematician who designed the satellite geodesy models, integrated into the global positioning system (GPS), or Margaret Hamilton, who designed the system of the Apollo space program.

The exhibition ends with projections of images resembling a cave where we suspect there is a living presence. An exhibition which therefore raises a lot of questions – ethical among others – especially when we know that private companies like Elon Musk’s Space X want to organize (paid) excursions to Mars in the near future…

Until December 31, 2024 at the Planetarium

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