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 "A spaceship is a delicately balanced environment. Every element that doesn't contribute to the overall functioning of the system is by definition working against it. The same is true of our planet – our mothership – though sadly, most architecture today is slowly fatal to nature's systems."
After graduating with a sociology degree from Harvard, Constance Adams went on to study architecture at Yale. Adams worked as an architect in Tokyo and Berlin before she had the opportunity to apply her knowledge of architecture, engineering, and design to space. Projects that Constance has been involved in include a design for the next generation space shuttle, a crew return vehicle, and heat shields for reusable spacecraft. She began design work on a transit habitat. The TransHab is an inflatable module that provides living space for astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Constance Adams believes our planet is perfectly designed to support life and that all project requirements have already been solved somewhere in nature. Take water for instance, water is the very best material for shielding humans against radiation. So when designing water tanks for TransHab, a donut shaped water tank was devised that formed the wall surrounding the crew living quarters.
Constance Adams is just one of a growing number of architects that are working at NASA on what is called human factors. She is motivated when her daughter playfully asks her to put on her space suit and go to Mars with her. If she'll be making the dangerous trip someday, Constance wants to do everything she can now to make it safe.
Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Adams
http://www.creativewell.com/adams.html
http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/Interviews/Systems/ConstanceAdams.html
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/emerging/constanceAdams.html
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