Let's pretend that we have travelled to Mars after an eight-month expedition. Mars, indeed. We need to figure out how to build strong, reliable buildings that will protect us from radiation from the sun, cosmic rays from space, and sudden changes in temperature.
Life on mars
There are only so many things we can carry from Earth on a voyage to Mars. Also, it would be very expensive to send tonnes and tonnes of building materials into space.
So, we must rethink how we construct in order to realize a pioneering habitat that gradually develops, adjusts, and enlarges into a permanent outpost. Humanity will be able to survive off the planet thanks to these shelters and the robots who construct them. I am an architect of space.
I create shelters that enable human space exploration, such as those found on Mars' surface. I not only make places for the crew to work that are good for their health and productivity, but I also do research on the nature of these places and how they are built.
Mars is so far from us that communications delays can take up to 22 minutes one way to or from Mars. And what that means is that we can't rely on real-time telerobotics controlled by people on Earth to supervise what happens in construction on Mars or, for that matter, to supervise anything that happens when we're exploring the planet.
But if we leverage autonomous robotics, we'll send 3D printers and other construction robots to build protective habitats and shelters before the crew even arrives. So how exactly would 3D printers build a habitat on Mars? Well, first we have to figure out what these structures are made out of.
Just like early civilizations, we will use in situ regolith, commonly known as dirt, and other resources that are local and indigenous to the planet, including water, and possibly combine them with additives and binders that we bring from Earth to engineer high-performance construction materials.
Our goal when we're designing these habitats is to introduce an airtight structure that can withstand internal pressurization, which is what will allow people to live in a breathable and temperate environment on the inside.
The robots that we deploy on Mars will need to perceive and interpret the complexity of a construction site in order to sequence and choreograph different types of tasks.
These tasks will include prospecting Mars and surveying for a site to build on; collecting raw materials; processing those materials; and manoeuvring them around. Some of these bots might resemble the character Wall-E, except, you know, not so cute.
Once the site has been excavated and foundations are printed, these structures are manufactured layer by layer by layer. And as construction progresses, prebuilt and preintegrated hardware like airlocks or life support equipment brought from Earth is inserted into the print until finally they're sealed at various connection points.
To do more than just survive in space, we need to create environments that positively contribute to our well-being for months and years into the future.
And as more civilian astronauts travel to space, it's important that our environments are more than the tightly packed mechanical interiors of the International Space Station, which today represents the state of the art for long-duration human life in space. We also want to incorporate practical architectural elements such as access to natural light through windows and greenery. These were features that were missing aboard the space station when it was first commissioned but which we know are critical to positive psychological functioning and well-being. For long-duration missions in deep space, it's important that crew members feel less like they're living in a machine and more like they're living in a home.
There are other ways of approaching habitat construction on Mars. Hard-shell or inflatable structures may not provide the radiation protection that we need, and living underground in lava tubes doesn't quite support direct surface exploration on the planet.
And also, why would you travel for eight months to live underground? Creating structures in space is all about reducing risks, and the habitats we build will have to be the strongest and most reliable structures ever thought of.
Future off-world surface habitats will be self-regulating and self-maintained structures to support the crew members while they're there, but also to operate autonomously when they are not. Before we send anyone to Mars, we need data to answer some very key questions about human health and safety and to validate each of these construction activities. Fortunately for us, we have a testbed and a proving ground much, much closer to Earth.
That's our own moon. Today we're working with NASA to demonstrate how we'll 3D-print infrastructure like landing pads, roadways, and eventually habitats directly on the lunar surface.
The Moon is a critical pit stop to refuel, resupply, and serve as a general platform for vehicles travelling to deep space, and we'll use the technologies established to establish a permanent human presence on the Moon to travel to, from, and operate on the surface of Mars. What else are we doing to advance the viability of 3D printing for building in space? Well, for one thing, we can demonstrate that 3D-printed structures can support people in a mission-like environment right here on Earth, and use data from those experiments to set standards and requirements for future Mars missions.
This is what we did in designing and building Mars Dune Alpha, a 3D-printed analogue habitat at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, referred to as the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog. That's a really long name, I know.
This building will be home to four volunteers who will act out a one-year mission to Mars, complete with a 20-minute delay in communication.
The first mission is kicking off later this year, but you could actually apply to be a crew member on this habitat sometime in the future.
Or if you're not so inclined, you can suggest it to someone else in the name of research. If you're one of the chosen few, you'll be sharing 1700 square feet of living and working areas with three others, and that includes an aeroponic garden for plant growth, a communications area, an exercise room, as well as individual crew cabins that are very cozy, just six by 12 feet.
Some of you may be thinking, "Well, building in space is a topic pretty far removed from our day-to-day lives; how might it impact what we do on Earth today?" My experience tells me that designing for an extreme environment that is the most limited and has the most restrictions, and where no one has ever been before, gives us the best chance of coming up with creative ways to solve problems on Earth that seem impossible to solve.
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