SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
NASA wants to use 3D printing technology to build deep space habitats onsite instead of bringing the materials with them. Towards that end they have announced the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, in partnership with America Makes, as part of the ongoing Centennial Challenge program.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
NASA Announces the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge For Moon and Mars Bases
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 8 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 19 2015, @03:17PM
Well... its part of Centennial Challenge, so kinda PR yeah
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/CCP-FactSheet-May-2015.pdf [nasa.gov]
Which has a lot of stuff in its mission like:
"Provide a forum for public outreach"
Its the same place that ran the robot sample return competition. I watched the movie about that from NASA TV, pretty interesting, I liked the movie. The movie pretty well mesmerized my kids, also. I wonder if they'll make an equally interesting movie about this. I think that would be difficult...
From observation of the program I'd say its kind of like "vex robotics" for adults. Exactly like my kids vex robotics competition, they're not going to actually do or apply anything even tangentially related to the competition, but its entertaining and fun. Vex robotics is "build and drive a homemade RC car made out of lego while pushing blocks thru a course" pretty much.
The more I try to talk myself into not entering because its obviously an architecture competition and not engineering, the more "great" ideas I get for architecture. If the didn't limit the build envelope to being bigger than 8x8x8 I could do it, I only have access to a printer with 100x100x100 mm, but of course I could glue or snap together...
As almost a joke entry / almost serious entry to remind the astronauts of home I'm envisioning the martian meme-plex, with some amazing copyright violation memes bas-relief into all the surfaces.
Conceptually if it were a minecraft modpack maybe distributed by FTB then I'd be in. That would be pretty cool. Like the "crash landing" minecraft modpack scenario but for "real" on Mars. And probably not with all the zombies and creepers etc. It would probably be a heck of a lot like a hyper high tech version of Terrafirma craft, without the bears anyway. Maybe they should have gone "minecraft" instead of "3d printer". More people have a box capable of running modded minecraft than are capable of large prints.