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NASA Announces the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge For Moon and Mars Bases
An anonymous reader writes: Space policy experts are still arguing where American astronauts should go once they venture into deep space. However, there is widespread agreement that once they get there they should be prepared to stay for longer than just a few hours or days, as was the case during the Apollo missions to the moon. Taking all the material to set up habitats, the astronauts' homes away from home, would tend to be expensive. Toward the end of lowering the cost of long duration space travel, NASA has announced the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, in partnership with America Makes, as part of the ongoing Centennial Challenge program.
The printer will have to do its thing up there. Just add water.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Could the drilling be done in a way that instead of generating rubble, whole rocks are cut out cleanly, which could then be used for additional constructions?
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The dummies were supposed to use the shuttle tanks. We all remember what Skylab was made from. Oh well...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Actual science bang for your buck. Unless the motivation is "humans on Mars because we can!" Which is cool, just don't call it science.
NASA needs a 3D printer for pork.
3D printing habitats on Mars and on the moon... okay, I'm guessing something similar to what's currently being done with concrete, but what about the materials? How are people supposed to make "Mars/moon concrete" for their tests? Also, printing with a different gravity will change a lot of parameters and how the layers interact with each other, curing speed with air vs in a vacuum, solar rays on earth vs Mars/moon, etc.
There's way too many variables that are completely different for such a challenge to represent what will actually happen.
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I have no idea why every image you see of moon colonies involves domes on the surface. Just build everything underground, saves so many costs that doing otherwise is moronic.
"Cottage Building in Cob, Pise, Chalk, and Clay: A Renaissance": http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32048
It covers the basics of creating a home from dirt. Now all we need to do is automate!
The next step is to realize that we should be sending a robotic mission with this stuff a few years earlier. That way whenever the first people get there, they'll find a cleared landing field and radio guidance towers, as well as a place to stay after they debark.
Of course the fly in the ointment is that you send robots and have them spend a few years building your base. Then someone else comes in before you and claims "rights of salvage" over all of that "abandoned property" they just found.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Locally sourced building material is a great idea. Just look at the energy budget involved. But to make it practical, you need to send in robot miners first (chicken and egg problem, human miners won't survive without the habitats they have to mine stuff to build). But NASA and their congressional pork seekers are fixated with sending humans. Until they have actual robots on site trying stuff, they are just blowing smoke (maybe the newly legalized stuff?)
For the life of me I can't understand why everyone wants to keep insisting we load everything on a ship with the astronauts and send it all there at once and HOPE nothing goes wrong along the way that kills everyone.
Instead, how about this: we send automated "builder" ships to Mars with a mission to excavate pits in the Martian surface, place inflatable habitats in them, inflate them, then cover them with enough soil to protect against radiation. Monitor the damned things to make sure they're working properly, THEN send the astronauts. If anything goes wrong, at least you know they've got a place to stay until we can get help to them. Obviously you'd need more than just inflatable housing, but this idea pre-supposes you send some sort of power generation facility (nuclear would be best), life support, and enough food for a year or so.
Even better, in addition to the above, send one or two "return trip" ships to Mars ahead of the astronauts so they have a redundant way to get home if something goes wrong. Send a fuel refinery as well that can take Martian atmospheric CO2 and turn it into rocket fuel so you don't have to send fully-fueled ships all the way to Mars. If you start it refining before the astronauts leave Earth, you can have full tanks ready to go by the time they get there.
All of this is completely achievable with current technology and reasonable timelines. Why in the world we're screwing around with trying to do everything in one trip -- along with the massive risks and massive risk mitigation costs that go along with it -- are beyond me.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What if other methods are better? Why assume that 3D printing is even relevant given that even on earth you cannot use cured in situ concrete in many environments because the temperature and or atmospheric pressure interfere with the chemistry? So what does that leave, forms of 3D printing involving laser sintering, where is all the energy going to come from to do that on a large scale? Can we assume a fusion reactor will be available in a package that can be delivered to Mars by the time building needs to commence? I know of a method of forming a large rigid bubble of bonded regolith but no 3D printing like technology is required at all, and it is much less vulnerable to environmental conditions too. But they did not ask for that so what is the point of entering the comp?
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