WITH LITTLE TO NO PHONE SIGNAL UNTIL ONE REACHES THE CAMP, VISITORS CAN DRIVE BY FOR A TASTE OF TRAVERSING AN ALIEN WORLD
makes as it forces its way through the gaps between boulders, but also in memory of the travelers who never made it through this harsh terrain.
China’s western deserts are seeing a boom in space tourism, with spaceexperience and educational centers springing up in Qinghai, Gansu, and nearby Xinjiang. This coincides with an increase in the nation’s space activity—most recently with China’s Tianwen-1 mission, which landed a rover on Mars on May 14, 2021—in tandem with a surge of interest in Chinese science fiction.
With a price-tag of 150 million
RMB (22.3 million USD), Lenghu’s Mars Camp was China’s first commercial space simulation base for the public, opening its doors in 2019 after one year of construction. Billed not only as a tourist site, but also as a place for scientific learning and “patriotic education,” the camp attracts a diverse group of public and private visitors—from “Young Pioneers” in primary school to government delegations—all making the pilgrimage to get as close to Mars as is currently possible.
The base has living quarters for up to 60 people, equipped with various scientific instruments (which visitors can operate) that measure the desert’s weather conditions. It also has a gyroscope, a machine used in some space-training centers to simulate flying in zero-gravity. There is a dining hall for “students,” as Yang refers to the visitors. “This is also where we have group activities, like driving the robot Mars rover,” she says, pointing to a small six-wheeled vehicle on the floor. It is only about a meter tall, with two wings of solar panels protruding from each side.
Online figures for the cost of a stay at Mars Camp vary: 1,980 RMB for a two-day sampler, 3,600 RMB for a three-day “Mars Survival” simulation, and 19,800 RMB for a ten-day youth camp, which includes classes on astrobiology and engineering. Individual tent-camping fees run from 100 to 1,200 RMB per night. The camp is connected to a paved “Mars No. 1 Road” which branches off the equally lonely G315 Highway from the provincial capital at Xining, nearly 1,000 kilometers away. With little to no phone signal until one reaches the camp, and plenty of selfie opportunities in the middle of the empty road, any passing traveler can drive by for a taste of traversing an alien world.
The living conditions at Mars Camp are designed to mimic space travel. Campers dine on boiled vegetables and Spam, participate in a mock rescue mission on Mars, and wake up to an “alien invasion” siren to catch a gorgeous sunrise over the desert. They also take field trips to the oil colony, formerly one of China’s four major oil fields. From 1955 to 1977, until oil began to run out, some
25,000 workers lived at Lenghu and produced 300,000 barrels of crude annually. A small settlement of 200 people, run by Petrochina, is now all that’s left along with picturesque ruins: hollowed-out workers’ barracks, gates with bombastic slogans, even the shell of a bus.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic’s chokehold on domestic tourism, the Chinese public has continued its interest in space, thanks to prominent state media coverage of space missions like the Mars landing. The precursor to the Chinese space program were rocket programs developed in the 1950s by the military at the missile test
facility Inner Mongolia, named after the city of Jiuquan in nearby Gansu province, now one of China’s most advanced rocket-launch platforms.
It was here that one of China’s most notable launches occurred in 1970, when The East is Red 1 satellite successfully went into orbit, quickly considered one of the nation’s greatest scientific achievements. During the Mao years, China’s most impressive scientific milestones were often