3D PRINTING SCRAPBOOK: ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING ON THE MOON AND MARS ~ hehe drip,drip,Drip,DRIP
A
few weeks ago I blogged about the possibilities of additive
manufacturing, or 3D printing, for the construction of permanent
buildings and dwellings on the Moon and Mars, utilizing the actual "Moon
dust" and "Mars dust" found on the surface of those planets. For those
who've been following the meme of mining asteroids, or the Moon, or
Mars, the idea has definite overhead implications, for back in the late
1950s and 1960s when the USA and the Soviet Union were hatching projects
for permanent human colonies on the Moon, the basic premise was that
everything would have to be hauled up there and assembled in place.
Gradually, things began to change. But the idea of using materials of
those planets themselves to construct facilities was not part of the
initial phases for establishing such facilities. That, in their
thinking back then, came at a much later phase.
But now there's this important story, shared by Mr. M.H.:
Note, this was a Google-sponsored study, using NASA-approved lunar and Mars dust simulants,
to do a basic "proof of concept" experiment to demonstrate that one
can, indeed, use such materials to manufacture tools and perhaps,
ultimately, dwellings and other human facilities:
"For
places like other planets and moons, where resources are limited,
people would need to use what is available on that planet in order to
live," said Shah, assistant professor of materials science and
engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and of
surgery in the Feinberg School of Medicine. "Our 3D paints really open
up the ability to print different functional or structural objects to
make habitats beyond Earth."
Partially
supported by a gift from Google and performed at Northwestern's Simpson
Querrey Institute, the research was recently published in Nature Scientific Reports. Adam Jakus, a Hartwell postdoctoral fellow in Shah's TEAM lab, was the paper's first author.
Shah's
research uses NASA-approved lunar and Martian dust simulants, which
have similar compositions, particle shapes, and sizes to the dusts found
on lunar and Martian surfaces. Shah's team created the lunar and
Martian 3D paints using the respective dusts, a series of simple
solvents, and biopolymer, then 3D printed them with a simple extrusion
process. The resulting structures are over 90 percent dust by weight.
Despite
being made of rigid micro-rocks, the resulting 3D-painted material is
flexible, elastic, and tough -- similar to rubber. This is the first
example of rubber-like or soft materials resulting from lunar and
Martian simulant materials. The material can be cut, rolled, folded, and
otherwise shaped after being 3D painted, if desired.
"We even 3D-printed interlocking bricks, similar to Legos, that can be used as building blocks," Shah said.
This,
of course, is a huge step in the development of permanent human
habitations off planet, and, of course, for the commercialization of
space in the form of mining celestial bodies, for the ability to
manufacture needed tools on the spot, rather than drag them from Earth,
is a crucial step in reducing launch weights, and as long as we're
thinking in terms of chemical rockets, launch weights, thrusts, and
escape velocities, these developments are important. (Of course, I'm not
backing off one iota from my belief that to be talking of permanent
human habitations on other planets in the solar system, or of asteroid
mining, is really to be implying a very different technology than
chemical rockets. I'm simply using the chemical rocket model here for
the purpose of discussion.)
As
a proof of concept experiment, this is important, and it immediately
points the way to the next step and stage, and hence to today's high
octane speculation and prediction. To be absolutely certain of
the viability of additive manufacturing as a means of creating tools or
eventually even habitats or dwellings on other celestial bodies, one
will necessarily have to take a 3d printer to those bodies, land them on
the surface, and quite literally scoop up the dust and see if it can be
used to manufacture something under the more extreme conditions on
those bodies. The next stage, in other words, will be for the
space-faring powers to design lunar or Martian landers that will include
a 3D printer and the experimental equipment needed to verify the
feasibility of additive manufacturing on other celestial bodies. NASA
has already taken a printer into space and printed simple tools in zero
gravity, so this would be the next logical step.
We
can expect, in other words, China, Japan, India, Russia, the Europeans,
and the USA, to begin planning some such experiment in the near future
(if they have not already covertly done so).
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