1/16/20

Lunar and Martian Construction note three

Exploiting readily available building materials on new solid planetary objects (or ones that are mostly ice) will use a number of innovative construction techniques eventually. The Defense Advanced Researched Project Agency recently invented a method to make living  bricks grow with bacteria, gelatin and CO2. https://www.slashgear.com/darpa-backed-living-bricks-could-reproduce-self-heal-and-slurp-co2-15606931/

Using the local chemicals of planets, moons and comets to form buildings is an obvious efficient approach. Bringing a sourdough starter to add to a growing structure could have innumerable variable components to shelter humans in adverse environments.


Ice shelters, and dirt-regolith domes moved into place with A.I. driven bobcats would compete for ubiquity with electromagnetic charged particle fields attracting material for growth and stabilization. It may also be possible to make a kind of laser-sculpted dwelling in the right material as an opposite of the 3D printing approach.

If some process were made to produce charged particles from local materials (i.e. dirt) a magnetized thin-wire structure such as is used to build a chicken coop could be made into any sort of shape to which the charged particles could stick and be fused permanently in place. N.A.S.A. is also experimenting with growing mushroom fungus into shaped structures. https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-grow-moon-base-mushrooms

Another planet- a large one six times the size of Earth (in mass probably since the discovery was made measuring gravitational impact) may have been found orbiting a star relatively near the solar system. Proxima Centauri c is just 4.2 light years away. The red dwarf star doesn't provide nearly as much sunshine as Sol and the new planet may be very cold- perhaps more than 300 degrees below zero. It is too far away to be warm.

https://phys.org/news/2020-01-discovery-super-earth-orbiting-proxima-centauri.html

In a couple of centuries when technology exists in various combinations to allow Earthers to visit Proxima Centauri tech to grind up the large planet to make six Earth size planets may be developed. Then Earth normal gravity could be established to allow human settlement. A lot of new geo-engineering and construction techniques will need to be researched and developed before actual use- in theory.

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