3D printing will help space pioneers make homes, tools and other stuff they need to colonize the Moon and Mars
https://theconversation.com/3d-printing-will-help-space-pioneers-make-homes-tools-and-other-stuff-they-need-to-colonize-the-moon-and-mars-245930
21 Comments
From the article
Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars – although astronauts will face even greater challenges than, for example, the Vikings did when they reached Greenland and Newfoundland. Not only will the astronauts have limited supplies and the need to live off the land; they won’t even be able to breathe the air.
Instead of axes and plows, however, today’s space pioneers will bring 3D printers. As [an engineer and professor](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ckQTyHoAAAAJ&hl=en) who is developing technologies to extend the human presence beyond Earth, I focus my work and research on these remarkable machines.
3D printers will make the tools, structures and habitats space pioneers need to survive in a hostile alien environment. They will enable long-term human presence on the Moon and Mars.
The first Martians will have a lot of chores we want them to do.
Enjoy that red dust ball.
I think I remember similar in the Red Mars book, where they made what they needed for building materials from the surface soil or rocks from the planet, pressed or formed or something. I need to re-read the books its been a while! but yeah being able to use local resources for a multitude of things would solve a lot of problems.
It could also do that here, where materials are becoming more expensive and we have a housing crisis.
If you’ve ever messed with a 3D printer, then it’s pretty obviously an important tool for any extended mission.
We don’t know how yet, sure you can do 3d printing with Portland cement in earth gravity at air pressure, but how about it 1/6 and 1/3 earth gravity in the vacuum of space and 1% earth air pressure (basically a vacuum) and with a material that we have never built anything with? The simulants you can buy of these places bare little resemblance to the particle size and shape of the moon and mars and on top of that are very expensive, no one has been able to prove it is possible at scale from a materials stand point and it is impossible to test from limited gravity standpoint. Renderings are easy, prototypes and peer reviewed studies, not so much.
The brick is a tried and true building material proven effective since antiquity. It ain’t sexy, but it gets the job done.
Great idea. Sort of like a primitive version of a replicator.
Global wars and climate collapse will preclude any harebrained aspirations that Oligarchs have of colonizing Mars.
I’d rather die than try to colonize the moon and mars.Trying to start life on a different planet seriously sounds like too much work lol
They should just von Neumann the whole enterprise, none of this homesteader colonists with a shotgun and a can-do additude guff.
Send in robots to mine minerals and refine materials. Robots use those to build tools. Robots use those tools to build better tools. Keep leveling up until they start making more robots. Robots build factories, habitats, greenhouses, power plants, water reclaimers, etc. etc. Then the humans move in.
Okay, sure, we can tweak this here and there as needed, but that should be the plan.
Until the nozzle’s clog or filament runs out, or the support material doesn’t adhere to the ground
lol, no shit, been talked about for over a decade at least.
This is entirely dependent on source materials available on site. 10000kg of lift material is the same, whether it’s hammers, filament , or sand. To “build” what you want , it either has to be there, or you have to take it with you at the same mass rate . It may be more durable or easier to pack as a source material, but we haven’t gotten around the mass problem yet
We should test it on a massive scale here. Test until there are no homeless left, then we can send it out into the black.
If humanity cannot make Earth into a utopia, it is ethically wrong to fuck up another planet
Kinda getting ahead of ourselves aren’t we? Could we show how 3D printing can help folks in an already livable planet improve their own environment? Sounds very “what-about” but seriously, what is the use of living in a bubble in hell at the cost of so many resources when we can’t even use these tools to fix a system that’s only mildly broken (mild compared to the unlivable hell-scape that is other worlds)?
Could you imagine a planet so bleak that this is the next best option?
Space, so unfathomably huge, and getting to Mars as if we’ve actually achieved a great milestone in traveling the solar system…Even if we made it to Mars it’s thousands of years of TRAVEL to make it any systems suspected to be habitable.
Except martian soil is extremely toxic and will poison you faster than asbestos.
Mars’ surface is toxic regolith. Mars has no magnetosphere to protect humans, and any other lifeforms from radiation. There’s no reason to establish a colony there.
Can somebody please revive [Biosphere 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2) or build something similar? I am getting tired of all this space talk when we can’t even build a self sustaining colony *on Earth*.
This is a pretty common trope in a lot of science fiction, and in fact I think versions of this have existed from even books written 30 or 40 years ago.
Interesting to see if and when we can make these things a bit more practical and possible, including here on Earth.