The worst part of building things is the material handling. Store plywood and 2x6s around your house, shipping metal stock from Lowe’s home to patch those frame rails. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could build your next project from what you already have?
NASA certainly seems to think so, because it hadecided the best way to build structures on the Moon and Mars wouldn’t involve bringing any concrete into space. Instead, the administration’s Moon-to-Mars Autonomous Building Technology (MMPACT) group wants to melt the soil on the Moon and Mars to create materials for high-tech 3D printers.
Of course, melting natural materials is nothing new — that’s how each metal foundry turns raw minerals into shiny new products. However, the difference between the tutorial level of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and Mars is many. Wired digs into exactly what difficulties MMPACT will face because it takes this effort to the stars:
MMPACT team leader Jennifer Edmunson said the first step towards 3D printing on the moon would involve using a laser or a microwave to melt the regolith. It must then cool down for the gas to escape; Failure to do so may cause the material to become punctured like a sponge. The material can then be printed into the desired shapes. How to assemble the finished pieces is still being decided. To keep the astronauts out of harm’s way, Edmunson says the goal is to make construction as autonomous as possible, but she adds, “I can’t rule out using humans to protect maintain and repair our large-scale equipment in the future.”
One of the challenges the team faces now is how to turn moonstone into a building material strong enough and durable enough to protect human life. For one thing, since future Artemis missions will be near the moon’s south pole, the regolith could contain ice. On the other hand, it’s not that NASA has actual mounds of lunar rock and dust to test with—just samples from the Apollo 16 mission.
…
There are other X factors to take into account when building on the moon—and a lot can go wrong. Gravity is much weaker, there is a possibility of lunar quakes that can produce vibrations for up to 45 minutes, and temperatures at the south pole can reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit in sunlight and as low as – 400 degrees at night. Abrasive moon dust can clog machine joints and cause hardware to stop working. During the Apollo missions, the regolith’s damaged spacesuit and dust inhalation caused the astronauts to experience hay fever-like symptoms.
When it comes to printing structures from lunar or Martian rocks, the unknowns seem to outweigh the known. But that’s the point of science experiments — to turn those questions into answers, find out what works or doesn’t work and why. Who knows? It’s possible that future Mars missions will find comfortable, hospitable shelters made right out of the planet’s own rocks.
