'Curiosity' Lead Engineer Suggests Printing Humans On Other Planets

Jason Koebler (3528235) writes "Adam Steltzner, the lead engineer on the NASA JPL's Curiosity rover mission, believes that to send humans to distant planets, we may need to do one of two things: look for ways to game space-time—traveling through wormholes and whatnot—or rethink the fundamental idea of 'ourselves.' 'Our best bet for space exploration could be printing humans, organically, on another planet,' said Steltzner."

Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys

[neilo_1701D]

Old story from way back; a building has been found on the moon that contains a machine that kills people in many different ways throughout the strange building but always consistently. Almost like a mouse in a maze, the scientists figure out that if they can get through this death trap and map each method of death along the way they should be able to get further each time and eventually manage to travel out the other side. Of course it could take many lives to accomplish this so they devise a method of teleporting a copy of someone from the earth to the moon and taking a "backup" copy that shares memories with their counterpart so that when that doppelganger dies there is still a version left alive earth-side.

The only problem is that the sheer horror of each death causes the surviving copy to be driven insane, the human mind just not able to cope, that is until they find the reckless Al Barker who's courted death all his life. It's only then that the research makes any headway.

Re:Out of his discipline

[sgtsquid]

The whole "glass dome over a crater" thing is as much sci-fi as warp drive at this point. The material technology just doesn't exist and might not for a long time. It might be more appropriate for "Habitat 3.0", but it will require an established industrial infrastructure. The most likely scenario for "Habitat 1.0" is a smaller concrete dome. Look up "magnesium oxychloride cement". It can be made from magnesium chloride and water, and it will cure in the Martian atmosphere. Yes, I have tried it in a vacuum chamber and it can work.