REAL LIFE NEWS: BUILDING A SHELTER FOR MARS
by Hazed
In yet more Mars news, NASA has announced the winners of a contest for architectural designs that can be used to 3D print a shelter to use on the planet.
The winner is an Ice House, which would be built using the planet’s water supply. There are pictures of the design at the source link below.
NASA received more than 165 entries to the competition, which is ultimately aimed at contributing to the development of new technologies that would use “local indigenous materials” to produce 3D printed structures, both in space and on Earth.
“The creativity and depth of the designs we’ve seen have impressed us,” says NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program Manager Monsi Roman. “These teams were not only imaginative and artistic with their entries, but they also really took into account the life-dependent functionality our future space explorers will need in an off-Earth habitat.”
This is an exciting idea. A 3D printer could be used to create shelters and other structures, meaning they wouldn’t have to be shipped out to Mars or other planets at great expense. All you would need is a 3D printer on the planet, and the designs needed in software templates – which of course can be updated and added to at any time during the mission simply by transmitting data from Earth to the mission’s printer.
Source: www.gizmag.com/nasa-3d-printed-habitat-challenge-design-competition-winners/39673/
