Researchers Build Objects With 3D Printing Using Simulated Moon Rocks 59
MarkWhittington writes "It has been a truism among space planners that future space settlers will have to build things on other worlds out of as much local materials as possible, saving the cost of transporting things from Earth to the moon or Mars. Two professors at the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University have taken a step forward toward developing that technology using laser enabled 3D printing using simulated moon rocks to create simple objects."
Easier conversion gel (Score:4, Funny)
SIMULATED moon rocks? *sigh* If only Cave Johnson knew about those before it was too late...
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SIMULATED moon rocks?
Way better than VIRTUAL moon rocks... with the later, one would print those objects in the Cloud.
3D whoosh to you (Score:2)
Is the sound of portals flying over your head.
What? You want to say two different tangents in the same point can't exist? Should be pretty boring to live in a world with a 2D space geometry
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Smooth 3D curves still have only one tangent in each point. This is also true for higher dimensions.
If you've got a surface in 3D, the tangent is a plane. Again, there's only one.
Or to go completely general: The tangent of a smooth m-dimensional submanifold of an n-dimensional affine space is an m-dimensional affine space. There is only one in each point.
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Smooth 3D curves still have only one tangent in each point. This is also true for higher dimensions.
By allowing multiple recipients (readers/listeners/etc), a told story - even a /. one - becomes a surface (due to the multitude points of view). Being originated in a single PoV, a tangent is a curve until it becomes another story on itself.
(but I'm not convinced that I want this tangent evolving into a surface)
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He did. Are you implying that CAVE JOHNSON cuts corners?!
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He did. Are you implying that CAVE JOHNSON cuts corners?!
He tried rounding them off first, but then Apple found out...
Re:I think they meant build shelter, fuel... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd go with tidal energy. If the moon's gravity can drive tides here, imagine what it can do there!
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The changing tides on the moon are month long solar tides due to the moon being tidally locked to the earth. And the smaller diameter of the moon means that even those tides will be weaker, tidal accelerations being proportional to the distance from the centre of mass cubed.
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Re:I think they meant build shelter, fuel... (Score:5, Informative)
Not 3d laser printing their bases. Where would they get the energy to do this?
Sun [markuskayser.com]?
Keep in mind:
* the solar energy flux on the Moon's surface is approx equal with the one in Sahara (even a bit better due to no atmospheric absorption on the Moon)
* the "Moon daylight" is 14 times longer than on Earth (true:so is the Moon night)
Re:I think they meant build shelter, fuel... (Score:5, Interesting)
More than a bit better and a significant more of the Sun's spectrum hitting the surface (The atmosphere is very effective at blocking certain frequencies of light.) A minor math error, since nights and days on earth are half a day, nights and days on the moon are 28 times longer, but if you go to the south pole, You can harvest sunlight from mountain tops continuously and benefit from deep dark craters for cold research at the same time. As well all the water on the moon is heavily concentrated at the poles
Initially you would want to send robot construction equipment to the moon and a small nuclear power plant to power the machines that would build the first ore smelters and solar energy collectors. Eventually you would have hundreds of solar collection sites, powering an extensive subterranean habitat that was virtually immune to micrometeorite fall and cosmic radiation (being at the poles also eliminates the fear of fatal solar radiation exposure during solar storms.) The materials in the lunar regolith are perfect for construction, building huge mirrors, building sintered construction material using 3D printing, building robotic component using 3D printing, building smelters and solar furnaces. The materials available are even great for building electronic and photonic hardware. I'd love to architect living spaces on the moon. The biggest issues would be providing earth gravity work spaces so people can spend time in perhaps 1.2-1.5 G for 8-12 hours a day to off set the impact of spending 12-16 hours a day in 0.16 G. The very coolest thing is that in large open spaces, human beings have enough strength in their arms and chest to flap wings that would allow a person to fly. You could literally build a 200 ft high aviary, for people. Because of the low G, you could build powerful mirrors on the moon orders of magnitude larger than on earth. With the seeing conditions that Hubble has and unimaginably big mirrors, we could watch the near sentient life scratching its extraterrestrial behind.
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I'm forgoing mod points to tell you... You're awesome!
I wish you were president.
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Wouldn't the unimaginably big mirrors be vulnerable to micrometeorite fall?
The unimaginably big mirrors would most likely be built from mylar. Micrometeors would simply pass right through, leaving a small hole. Imagine the awesome damage of shooting an empty potato chip bag with a high velocity rifle.
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Or you make a rotating pool of Mercury. Splish.
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That and it will all evaporate off in jig time.
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And that would lead to seven years of bad luck! Better scrap that idea right away.
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I'd love to architect living spaces on the moon.
Prison cells is all they'd be, and I imagine any humans living there would have to be criminals given the option of the Moon or a slow and painful death, much like early transportees to Australia..
No one in their right mind woul choose to live there. At least with Oz you could breathe the air and swim in the sea there, however hellish it was otherwise.
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Initial habitats, perhaps.
But you also have to remember that the moon has 1/6 earth gravity. Once the initial habitats are made, you can do things with common materials that you simply can't do on earth. A stone roof could hold up 6x as much dirt before reaching the mechanical limits, etc.
You could easily have collosal vertical spaces and grand living accomodations underground; you could build a very nice house, INSIDE the habitat structure, have real windows on said house, and a real view of a low gravity
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Energy will be a big issue.
Water is another, of course, but that may be available in the form of ice at the poles.
Now sure you have a lot of sunlight available on the moon, but we don't have any machines that run on sunlight. This light has to be harvested and converted into electricity: currently done though methods like solar panels or via steam driving generators.
To get significant amounts of power, you need rather big solar panels. IR+visible spectrum gets you about 1,000 W/m2, most of which is not usab
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Energy will be a big issue.
Water is another, of course, but that may be available in the form of ice at the poles.
Now sure you have a lot of sunlight available on the moon, but we don't have any machines that run on sunlight. This light has to be harvested and converted into electricity: currently done though methods like solar panels or via steam driving generators.
Sure, you'll need to first send something capable of harvesting the Sun power. However, once you have some kW (maybe tens of kW?), you can set up something to self-replicate in a reasonable time. Like: extract some volatiles from regolith - like He - and build a Stilling engine working between +600K concentrated and 30K (in the shadow, with enough radiative surface of the heat sink). One can even think of sending a programmable-replicator automaton, powered by a Stirling radioisotope generator [wikipedia.org] (200-300W of
one small meteor to bring back to the beginning (Score:3)
First Post?
This may be one more step towards a replicator.
Also, I think we could use the sun to help out http://www.kidstatic.com/2011/06/solar-3d-printer-egyptian-desert-as-materials/ [kidstatic.com] - wouldn't this be a similar idea?
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Also, I think we could use the sun to help out http://www.kidstatic.com/2011/06/solar-3d-printer-egyptian-desert-as-materials/ [kidstatic.com] - wouldn't this be a similar idea?
I think the correct approach would be to link to the artist's site [markuskayser.com]
Mooncraft (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Mooncrete (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps a sidestep would be "welding" natural moon rocks together to obtain an airtight shell. Then no water is required to build the moon base.
Assuming all the properties are similar to silica it may be possible to create quartz glass with it, allowing for windows.
This lessens the cost of building a base (or maybe a city) on the moon. They are still astronomical, but this is a step in that direction.
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The new threat to the human race (Score:2)
They can print using simulated materials now? Forget nanomachines, it's only a matter of time before we turn the planet in to a macro-scale grey goo made out of 3D printers!
We already have moon habitat technology (Score:2)
Nader Khalili [treehugger.com] already worked out the basics of building moon habitats using lunar materials...
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I'd like to see mr.Khalili build a fire on the moon. You know that they have water up there [wikipedia.org] do you? He'd never get his kindling to light no matter how many moon trees he chops down to build his fire.
Did you know... (Score:2)
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There are 3d printers that use concrete media, and can print you a house?
That's right, using only some detailed blueprints, many tons of reinforced concrete and a team of builders they can "print" you a house in a way that has been almost impossible up to now using only the old-fashioned methods of some detailed blueprints, many tons of reinforced concrete and a team of builders.
Time takes time (Score:1)
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future (Score:1)