For a gathering of machine learning, automation, robotics, and space exploration pioneers called MARS hosted in the desert of California we were asked to present about the Hackrod research (hackers with AI meet hotrodders to use machine learning to radically redesign a race car.) Along the way they asked if we could help apply the research to dreaming up a habitat for exploring the red planet.
With the level of attendees (100 visionaries across the various fields as well as the odd robot, rockets and billionaires considering living on Mars) we wanted to tap into the potential of a company in Italy founded by a rogue genius who had a new way to “3D print” with sand.
The challenge with classic building fabrication with cement extruding robotic printers is that Mars doesn’t have the ready access to water required to make the mixture. The solution is to use the sand that’s already in abundance on Mars and bind it together with various engineered adhesives and heat bonding performance materials layer by layer. Not only can you print the components of a habitat but you can potentially design each “MaXel” (Material-based volumetric piXel) to define functional gradient structures. They may be mostly the standard bonded sand, but in some areas can be innervated with hollow tubes to flow air, or water, or fused conductive materials to form circuits within the walls.
To hint at what might be possible at the scale of architecture we explored a set of habitat spaces within a larger dome along with an entry tower that flows the natural winds of Mars towards an energy capturing series of MEMs based actuators.
The designs were hand sketched and then rapidly migrated into Fusion to take advantage of its organic workflows.
Early prototyping by the printer company’s founder inspired us as to what would be possible. We shipped their prototype printer to the desert event to begin making sample modules and stir the MARS participant’s minds about the possibilities for new forms of space–in space–that we may dare to imagine one day.
