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The 3D Printed Homes of the Future Are Giant Eggs on Mars:
It doesn’t get much more futuristic than living on Mars—and guess what? There’s a 3D printed home for that, too. In fact, there are a few; last year saw the conclusion of a contest held by NASA called the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge.
[...] The top prize ($500,000) went to AI Space Factory, a New York-based architecture and construction technologies company focused on building for space exploration. Their dual-shell, four-level design is called Marsha, and unlike Martian habitats we’ve seen on the big screen or read about in sci-fi novels, it’s neither a dome nor an underground bunker. In fact, it sits fully above ground and it looks like a cross between a hive and a giant egg.
The team chose the hive-egg shape very deliberately, saying that it’s not only optimized to handle the pressure and temperature demands of the Martian atmosphere, but building it with a 3D printer will be easier because the printer won’t have to move around as much as it would to build a structure with a larger footprint. That means less risk of errors and a faster building speed.
The building material would combine basalt fiber and bioplastics made from plants grown on Mars.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday July 10 2020, @01:55PM (7 children)
There are good reasons why round is a bad idea for a house, but architects seem to love them. Where to you put the book cases? The closets? The food storage? How do you access them for maintenance? Where to you put the couch? The bed?
There are answers for each of those questions, but there don't seem to be answers for ALL of those questions.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Friday July 10 2020, @02:10PM (3 children)
Which is cheaper or more practical to deliver and build on Mars:
* material efficient round structure at cost of having to answer the square peg questions
* square structure that costs more materials and energy to construct but solves interior design issues efficiently
Book cases probably require books. Book cases can be installed on your mobile phone or tablet.
Closets likewise can be installed . . .Closets can be against exterior curved wall, making curved closet. The clothes hanging bar can be curved in parallel with exterior wall. Closehangershangars can slide along curved bar about as easily as they do on a straight bar. Astronauts accustomed to straight bars will get used to it.Couches can be curved along an exterior wall. Or TVs can be curved along an exterior wall. Beds can have the head of the bed along exterior wall, with foot of bed pointing toward center of structure. Or beds can be along curved exterior wall with unused space made into small oddball shelves. Similarly book cases or other utility shelves could be along exterior wall, with flat fronts, such that the center part of the shelf is deeper than the outer edges of the shelf.
Flat structures, or more efficient round structures. Some compromises are going to have to be made in order to build on Mars. At least for the first generations.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Friday July 10 2020, @08:16PM (1 child)
Not sure I can accept your arguments, but though they're on topic, they don't really address my question.
That said, I can see rounded external walls as a pressure containment mechanism. But I don't see the problem with getting an extrusion mechanism to print rectangular walls. Even the first large scale extrusion printers could print linear walls. Rounded clothes racks are quite doable, but replacing the rod becomes a whole lot harder. With couches, better to produce a bunch of small pieces that can be fitted together into a roundish couch. As I said, each specific problem is soluble. But solving them all at the same time becomes intractable. It's likely to cause more problems than it solves.
However, my question was really a lot more general than this specific case. It covers Chicago's World's Fair http://www.chicagomag.com/real-estate/January-2019/Restoring-the-1933-Worlds-Fair-House-of-Tomorrow/, [chicagomag.com] and others. (Not as many as I thought, though, from a quick google.) I've seen a few and they've all been unsatisfactory, from the campus building at UC Berkeley (well, the chemistry lecture hall worked pretty well, but the office building was a real problem), to a couple that people were living in. They're ok if all you want to do is camp out, and I presume the Mongols worked out the problems with their Yurts, but they don't work well if you've got lots of stuff...and that includes things like computers an printers. (Perhaps it would work better with portable computers and WiFi. I've never seen that tried. That's a version of the "cut it in lots of small pieces and fit them in" solution.)
That said, I've lived for awhile in a Geodesic Dome. A Quonset hut worked better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quonset_hut [wikipedia.org] And there were environmental reasons for the design of radomes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radome [wikipedia.org] But those reasons don't make them good to live in. Basically, when you use rounded living areas, you may be more efficiently enclosing the area, but you need a lot more area (or volume) to compensate for the problems that it causes.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday July 10 2020, @09:23PM
I'm only thinking about the Mars habitat case. The first ones are going to have to be very sparse. I don't expect multiple couch pieces. Just something practical to sit on.
On Earth I think round homes are probably a bad idea, generally. Rectangular rooms seem to solve a lot of problems. If other shapes worked generally, we would see more of them. But we don't. Or only in more expensive houses with lots of space to waste.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:30PM
But it all seems like putting the cart before the horse since there's little science that has been done to prove that Mars gravity is enough for long term survival of humans and our favorite animals.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 10 2020, @05:14PM (1 child)
Rounded dome designs are more impervious to hurricanes, tornadoes, and nuclear explosion shockwaves, all of which will become more common in daily life.
You can put the rectangular rooms in the underground floors.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday July 10 2020, @08:26PM
That *might* apply here, but the illustration didn't look as if there were any underground rooms. My question, however, was more general. I can accept that environmental constraints may make a roundish dwelling necessary, but why do architects tend to prefer them even when there is no good reason...and there are lots of reasons why it's a bad idea. (I've seen a curved picture window on the front of a house. That window MUST be custom made. Imagine the cost of replacement if/when it's broken.
That said, I feel that the reasons against a rounded living area are sufficiently strong that that should be nearly the last choice. But that's not how architects feel.
I'm also dubious that it would be that much easier to construct, even given extrusion printing. But I could be wrong on that. I know rounded fish bowls are much less likely to leak than rectangular ones. (OTOH, the rectangular ones weren't extrusion printed, so the argument is less than totally convincing. Still, the corners would definitely need to be stronger.)
One problem is that rounded areas are less efficient to live in, so one ends up requiring more space to do the living. I lived in a Geodesic Dome for awhile, and also in a Quonset hut. The Quonset was a lot more efficient, but the edges of the space were still essentially unusable.
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(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday July 10 2020, @11:47PM
You still see the furniture as been squares or boxes. I guess a lot of furniture would be fairly simple, just make them at the same angles as the walls, I'm sure there will be some standards. It should work fine really. There might be some deadspace in the bends and corners but over all it will be fine. Couches and such are probably fine to. Problem might be beds, not sure if people would like to sleep in the shape of a banana. But they might get used to it.