This is the kind of thing that NASA should be doing. Instead, Congress is forcing them to waste their scarce resources on a rocket that they don’t need and won’t be able to afford to fly.
6 thoughts on “3-D Printing Of Lunar Bases”
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You might want to check before making statements like that. Actually NASA is supporting this kind of research being conducted at the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University. In any case a 3D printed moon base would be pretty useless if people can’t get to it.
They don’t need an SLS to get to it and an SLS by itself won’t get them to it. They do need a lander and propellant storage facilities, for which there is no plan or budget.
Cool, but does anyone know why just sintering regolith without consumeables from Earth is apparently not in vogue? Seems to me melting the stuff would be cheaper than hauling water/binder up from Earth.
Sintering would work if you had a mold to hold the regolith and a way to heat it. Perhaps you could do it with a high-intensity solid state laser, though.
Awhile back I saw a video of a 3D printer that sintered desert sand using concentrated sunlight. Potentially suited for lunar construction. No mold needed.
Indeed, sintering of simulated regolith has been demonstrated with microwaves some years back. In addition, there have been solar heated experiments in desert environments here on Earth that show promise for the lunar environment. It seems that a moving solar furnace hotspot with sand dribbled into it as it moved did quite well to build up a rough walled structure. I remember videos of this. Below is a link to one article from 2011.
http://inhabitat.com/the-solar-powered-sinter-3d-printer-turns-desert-sand-into-glass/
A wall thick enough to hold pressure would require a wider “bead” on the ground, and thus a larger mirror.
One point is that you would have to accept walls that were not “smooth”, by present standards.