The plan for Japan is to create a space bullet train to take people to the moon and Mars. Japan set its full intention of constructing an artificial environment on Mars with an Earth-like atmosphere for humans to live in without causing harm to the local environment.
NASA has yet to launch the first human-crewed Mars mission, while Japan is creating outer space habitats, including gravity zones and oxygen. NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX both have a transportation system in development named the “Hexagon Space Track System,” which is different from the Japanese plan. The Space Track System has its intentions set for an interplanetary bullet train created by researchers at Japan’s Kyoto University who are collaborating with Kajima Construction to advance space travel. The cost of space travel could reduce drastically if the train functions correctly.
Japan is also collaborating with Canada and the European Space Agency on Heracles, a robotic transport system that could deliver cargo to the moon or help bring back valuable resources mined there. Although Heracles is still under development, it’s aimed at supporting the Artemis program and Gateway in the long run. Defense benefits aside, space exploration is simply more achievable with partners, and Japan is just a natural fit.
Yosuke Yamashiki, director of Kyoto University’s SIC Space Center, cast out her pride in partaking in something as essential and surreal as intergalactic living, “Our plan represents important technologies that are critical to ensuring that humans can move into space in the future.”
Associate Project Professor at the Center and Senior Scientist at Kajima, Takuya Ono, expressed excitement but with realism in the back of her head: “As the idea of life in space becomes more realistic, the low gravity problem, which I intuitively felt when I was a child, this is a problem that we must overcome. We strive to execute the plan to be useful for people.”
According to the researchers, the planned project is expected to be completed by 2050. However, technology might move as fast as the projected timeline, leaving the harsh truth that it will most likely take approximately 100 years.
