Lunar Architecture: One Small Step for 3D Printers, One Big Leap for Humanity

A UNSW team plans to use Luyten’s 3D printing technology to build a house on the moon. 3D printing/additive manufacturing has evolved rapidly in recent years, appearing in the creation of furniture, food and even human bones. But a UNSW team plans to push the limits of 3D printing and use a 3D printer to build a house. But not just any house in the suburbs, but a house 385,000 km from Earth. Using this technology, the team hopes to one day build homes on the Moon, with the goal of establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface.

Associate Professor M. Hank Haeusler, director of Computational Design (CoDe), says it’s not as impossible as it seems.

“With the possibilities of 3D printing we no longer have to think about housing in the traditional way,” he says. “Through computational design, we can take all kinds of scientific data, feed it into a program, and train a remote-controlled 3D printer to build complex geometric structures here on Earth and one day on the Moon.”

UNSW CoDe recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Australian engineering and construction company Luyten, to begin research and development of a specialized 3D printer capable of building on the Moon, called Platypus Galacticas.

The car itself would be compact and use lightweight metal composites, ideal for space transportation, says Ahmed Mahil, co-founder and CEO of Luyten. It would be able to expand to produce a design up to 9m x 12m in height and length [o dată pe Lună] It could be set up and controlled remotely in less than 30 minutes.

“The beauty of Luyten’s printer is that it can open itself up, like a transformer, and everything underneath that frame can be produced completely autonomously via satellite, with the right script,” said Prof. Haeusler.

A/prof. Haeusler claims that the remote construction process on the Moon would be similar to the remote construction process on Earth, only the distance is…greater.

“The Moon presents similar challenges to those faced when building in remote areas of Earth using traditional construction methods,” he says. “But by using local materials and 3D printing, you can not only overcome the challenges of material costs and labor shortages, but also produce much faster and with greater precision.”

The proposed moon dwelling is not similar to a traditional house, at least in the initial stages.

“The printer would first print a protective coating on the moon’s surface using the same material available on the moon’s surface”said the A/Prof. – says Haeusler – «a shelter around a separate lunar landing capsule in which astronauts live, to form the outer layer necessary to protect them from cosmic radiation, solar radiation and meteorites.»

A challenge of celestial dimensions

Building on the moon comes with a unique set of challenges. Any home must be strong enough to withstand monthly earthquakes that can last up to 5 hours and extreme temperatures between day and night. Furthermore, the only local material available is lunar regolith. Once implemented, the 3D printing technology would also require assistance from other space technologies, including regolith mining rovers, to collect and sinter lunar regolith into a 3D printer-printable form.

“We can computationally analyze the chemical ingredients of the regolith and feed that data into the program we are developing to train the 3D printer to generate a 3D geometric structure tailored to lunar material conditions,” A/ The prof. says Haeusler.

Although the team has already begun simulating lunar materials and testing different shelter designs, the technology is still in the research phase. However, if funding allows, they will be able to develop a prototype of lunar structures on Earth within the next three years.

“Taking advantage of NASA’s level of technological readiness, we have to do a lot of testing in the laboratory, where we can simulate the design and the natural environment through computer modeling,” said the A/Prof. says Haeusler.

“We will then try to build a one-to-one prototype on Earth that we can test in an environment that simulates material conditions on the Moon – most likely at a site near Newcastle that NASA recently approved – and we will continue until we get to the Moon. This will be completed. that if humans hope to one day settle on Mars, the next step will be to build on the Moon.

“There is a growing demand for computational exploration of the Moon, particularly as we become a multiplanetary species,” he says.

“If we want to create a colony on Mars and other planets, we will first have to try to build on the Moon to test how things can be done in space conditions.”

To the moon and back

A/prof. Haeusler argues that research is also necessary to solve the problems we face on Earth.

“The knowledge we generate by building on the Moon can be translated directly into building housing for extreme climates, such as extreme heat, or addressing housing problems in remote indigenous communities – both topics we are studying in parallel.

Ultimately, building on the Moon will also help us appreciate our life on Earth. Every time you ask an astronaut about the experience of being in space and looking back at the Earth, they say they suddenly realize how precious the Earth really is.