THIS Is How We Build On Mars

space-travel ignites imagination but the idea of actually living on other planets has always felt pretty far-fetched until now faced with unprecedented challenges here on earth NASA are exploring ways to actually build on Mars [Music] but how would we get this planet let alone built there this incredible proposal holds many of the answers along with some lessons for building right here on our own planet Mars is at closest habitable planets and taking a manned mission there is seen by experts as our next achievable goal in space exploration a human presence on Mars would enable us to learn more about the universe gain a better understanding of our own planets and search for extraterrestrial life in recent years encouraging progress has been made towards this goal both by NASA and by other organizations such as SpaceX and the European Space Agency but reaching the red planets and building the environments that are essential for any manned voyage there is an extreme undertaking to help NASA invited teams of innovators to submit ideas stipulating that designs must include 3d printing technology that would use the harsh Martian terrain or regolith as a building material for the base one of the leading ideas is this unique human centric habitation concept that were submitted by international design practice hassel in partnership with engineering firm echoes Leo Callahan here our future settlers would thrive rather than simply survive to learn more about the plants and how they would actually work in practice I met Xavi a Turkish teller head of design technology and innovation at hassel who masterminded the concept we're here at the Design Museum in London at the Mars exhibition we what is this how did it come about well there's an exhibition it's called moving to Mars it's all about how humans will move to Mars but from a design perspective we've been working with lots of scientists and engineers to make sure that our design is not just science fiction it's actually pretty realistic we only use the analogy that as existing today or will become very mature improve the next five or ten years building a settlement like this in a place where no human has ever been before is a serious challenge as each kilogram of equipment is expected to be hugely expensive to transport to Mars NASA's preferred strategy is for structures to be 3d printed using material from the local environment Earth has this beautiful magnetic sphere that protects us from solar and cosmic radiation Mars is magnetically dead so which means all the radiation hits the planet and will hit our astronauts the way you protect yourself in radiation is using a lot of mass so the ideal thing would be going into a cave so what we're doing is we're creating our own cave working from London and San Francisco hasil developed an external shell which could be made entirely from Martian soil by autonomous robots equipped with advanced cameras and sensors in actually looking at designing specific types of robots to do this task if we get a robot over to Mars what might happen if one of Sue them fail there this you can't get a replacement part so what we do we sending loads of small robots that kind of work together in building this structure think of it like this and ants nest right they build the ants nest if I would take half of the ants away the ants nest would still get built maybe a bit slower same thing here if not all our robots arrive on Mars they'd still be able to get built it will take just a bit longer so what's the next step mean robots have made it to Mars they've built these cave structures for us at what point to humans go there and what parts lately well we'll take a few years before the shell structure is built then the astronauts pool will come they will also bring their habitat pods so they'll bring these kind of inflatable structures remember going to Mars you know gonna bring heavy stuff or big stuff for you so we're gonna bring inflatable collapsible structures with us and those will be inflated and those will actually have the atmosphere that and the pressurized environments that the Astros will live in with the build phase complete the robots would take on new roles such as scouting for new locations so I mean the way this proposals been brought to life is just amazing what kind of software is used for animations and graphics and things what we've done we actually worked with Epic Games and unreal to create this real-time environment so what you see here in the back of us is a real-time environment showing life through on Mars through a whole 24 hours we've speeded up a little bit because it won't take too long but you'll see you guys die day and night and so forth all done by company called light field in real-time with Unreal Engine and it helped us also to kind of make really tiny just adjustments all the time so we were able to move the robots change the lighting and because we were working still such a kind of tight deadline we had to be able to kind of use a real-time engine to be able to do that the environments that many of us associate with space travel tend to favour functionality above all else prioritizing performance and equipment efficiency over human amenities but hassles design turns this convention around and creates a habitats where the crew can live and work in competent safety in familiar surroundings without sacrificing the essential practical elements that a Mars base requires what we have here is our rack system they're all identical in shape but the infill is always slightly different right so let's go into for example the the lab one and what I can do I can open it up I can just now step into my lab do the experiments on the left here have a workshop with 3d printer even a sewing machine if you need to fix stuff and once it's all done I can close it up again and use other parts of the habitat the astronauts will be able to repurpose as much waste material as possible from 3d printing spare parts and tools to making clothes out of landing parachutes imagine the astronauts day we're having lots of waste plastics and waste material from food packaging from science experiments so we're thinking to reuse it and recycle it and use that to 3d print furniture I mean it looks really stylish as well it doesn't look like furniture that's been 3d printing party robot actually was quite appealing well it's been designed by a friend of ours Manuel Jimenez Garcia and his prints in his Factory in Spain so we actually used recycled plastics and all of these are 3d printers and designed specifically for the 3d printing process what have you learned from this that can be applied back home I've learned a lot about circle economy and sustainability doing this project and you might think what designing something on Mars that's not sustainable that might not be on its own sustainable to be able to survive and thrive in an environment like that we have to think about sustainability on every single level that way you restart thinking and how fresh is really our own environment is how happens our own earth is so I mean this has got to be one of the coolest projects I've ever come across what's it been like to work on it and it's been really interesting right especially as an architect designing a really technical space and I hope it actually shows when you compared this space to for example the International Space Station that is purely done by engineers that it reassures the skill and the the need for architects to be involved in really complicated engineering projects as well as designer be just brave and realize that our skill is really necessary and needed in a whole range of different type of projects while many technological financial and political challenges must be overcome before the first manned mission to Mars this remarkable concept brought to life in such a compelling way makes the prospects seem much more feasible if you enjoyed this video and would like 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Channel: The B1M

Views: 819,354

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, mars, nasa, spacex, european space agency, building on mars, living on mars, mars habitat, space, colonising mars, robots, robotics, hassell, eckersley o' callaghan, design museum, 3D printing, design, xavier de kestelier, moving to mars, science, epic games, unreal engine, lightfield london, space exploration, space travel, elon musk, unity, architectural visualization, CGI, CGI software, future

Id: mqyREFE_bWs

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/xbpb124]

I personally don’t see this plan being feasible in the near future. I feel like developing the technology involved for an autonomous swarm of modular foundry drones would be far more difficult than developing the a 10k starship fleet

[u/FutureSpaceNutter]

This tends to be the result when you ask artists to design Mars/space structures: innovative, striking ideas that put form over function. Oftentimes, the most effective solution is invisible or mundane. A buried cylinder doesn't make for a sexy 3d render.

Egregious example from this video: "The ideal thing would be going into a cave. So what we're doing is we're creating our own cave."Or, instead of wheeling a hab into a structure built by numerous robots 3d-printing regolith, just wheel the hab into an already-existing cave (lava tube) on Mars. But that way you don't need the robots or the 3d-printed 'cave', so then all you have to show is the hab. The sliding shelves idea seems neat, until you realize it's even more mass- and space-efficient to ditch the redundant shelving and put most of that stuff in bins.

I'll give them the 3d-printed chairs made from recycled plastic, though, that's the kind of thing that will actually be needed. How about a ballute that's reusable as an inflatable hab, instead of parachute pants?

[u/[deleted]]

I'm sorry, but do you really need to send robots to build a pre-made regolith structure over a future mars habitat? You could just as easily send humans in habitats and then thave them fill up empty bags with mars regolith and place that over the habs for additional radiation "sheilding" (if that even works). Besides, that whole structure could fall right on top of the habs, I don't think it's actually very safe, or worth approaching.

[u/RegularRandomZ]

Interesting related interview with Dr Aleksandra Radlinska, an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Penn State (College of Engineering), who developed the Marscrete mix used for the Penn State entry into NASA's 3d print challenge. And a video focusing on the winning entrant and their prototype printer (with related links in the description).

Regardless of whether people feel this autonomous collective approach is the best route [and with a cursory search, anyone can find numerous examples of development, prototypes, and commercial solutions of the various related tech that would enable such an idea], there are groups working on Marscrete and Marscrete 3d printers, specifically for structures like that envisioned above, and other solutions to many of the other challenges that SpaceX will face heading to Mars.

It's not like we can't take the best ideas of this proposal, and of other developments, and iterate into the best Mars solution possible. It's quite disappointing to see people here who subscribe to the idea that SpaceX will overcome a number of significant technical challenges to create Starship, refuel it, and land it on Mars, mine ice, and generate propellant, and then fly the crewed version back; yet turn around and be dismissive of any other idea that is demonstratively achievable within the next 5-10 year horizon [that is already pretty ambitious for putting first boots on Mars]. And not just in 5 years time, but even with just a couple of years of focused refinement/iteration.

And with relying on Crewed Starship as a primary hab, it's not like we couldn't send such a printer as a secondary objective (prove Marscrete structures viable). If Mars is a serious long term destination, this is a core tech that needs to be developed/proven, sooner rather than later.

[u/kontis]

One working prototype is worth more than billions of concept videos, especially those videos with smiling people drawing things together.

[u/Decronym]

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
DMLS	Selective Laser Melting additive manufacture, also Direct Metal Laser Sintering
ISRU	In-Situ Resource Utilization
SLS	Space Launch System heavy-lift
	Selective Laser Sintering, contrast DMLS

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^{Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
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