NASA spacecraft are not the most comfortable places to call home. They have sleeping arrangements that make an uncomfortably uncomfortable futon seem like a luxurious bed. One company might make it easier for astronauts and moon tourists to live in a 3D-printed home.
It may not qualify into the three L’s of real estate, but Austin-based Icon Technology secured a $57.2 million contract to develop the technology to print 3D homes for the moon. This wouldn’t involve 3D printing the homes on Earth and then strapping them to a rocket like when you see a small house on a flatbed truck.
Instead, ICON would use locally available Lunar dirt and rock — or regolith, as geologists like to say — and mine the materials using robotics to help create powdery Moon structures that resemble futuristic igloos.
“To change the space exploration paradigm from ‘there and back again’ to ‘there to stay,’ we’re going to need robust, resilient, and broadly capable systems that can use the local resources of the Moon and other planetary bodies,” said Jason Ballard, ICON co-founder and CEO.
“The final deliverable of this contract will be humanity’s first construction on another world, and that is going to be a pretty special achievement.”
ICON uses similar methods to create 3D printed parts for homes in the United States and Mexico. However, the materials used are from Earth, not on the moon. They received the moon contract as part of Phase III of NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, based upon previous NASA funding for ICON’s Project Olympus, which seeks to explore space-based construction systems in order to support future exploration of the Moon and beyond.
The company has already begun producing a 3D-printed prototype called Mars Dune Alpha to simulate a realistic Mars habitat and help train astronauts for long-duration missions. It includes crew quarters and workstations as well as common lounge areas and food growing stations. Sounds nice enough, but there’s no solariums or Holodeck, if you’re wondering.
Greyish Moon houses are a direct result of the Artemis program mission, which aims to establish a permanent base camp at the Moon within the next decade. At the moment it’s not entirely comfortable up there, just some footprints and leftover equipment and a flag.
Source: Icon Technology
Via: PCMag