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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2020, @06:41PM
I like how they claim round is good for building them quickly, and then mention they'll be made out of plants grown on site.
So how long do we have to sit around growing plants before we can build a shelter?
As a nitpick: aren't all modern plastics plant-based? A million year long prior conversion to oil doesn't change the original source. Hopefully their process isn't that time-intense.