SpaceX and NASA are both planning manned missions to Mars, and human settlement is becoming a very real possibility. So, what would life actually be like on the Red Planet? New Atlas took a trip to the Greenwich Royal Observatory, where National Geographic has set up a model Mars home, to find out.

The National Geographic exhibition was designed in tandem with astronomers from the Royal Greenwich Observatory and Stephen Petranek, author of How We'll Live on Mars. It might be a compact display, but the design and materials chosen are rooted in reality. That means the materials mentioned should all be able to shield humans from the inhospitable environment on Mars, and take the tricky economics of space travel into account.

With those tricky economics in mind, the dome-shaped exterior is wrought in bricks made from martian soil, and the double airlock has been recycled from the spacecraft used to get to Mars.