With governments and businesses alike looking towards Martian travel, they're looking to keep costs as low as possible. This means it would be ideal to bring up no construction equipment at all and 3D print everything you need on the planet. Homes are already being built though 3D printing here on Earth, after all.
But the Red Planet's soil is different that Earth's. The particles in Mars' soil "do not adhere to each other when compressed, unless if heated to a high temperature," says a paper by the scientists published in Scientific Reports. Getting to that level of heat would take a massive effort on its own, and using polymer could work but would be impractical with the travel costs.
So the team recreated Martian dirt with what we know of its components already, and then began to reduce the number of polymer binders in the samples. Eventually, they began to avoid polymers altogether in favor of squeezing everything together really tightly with a piston press. When squeezed tightly with the force of the press, the iron oxide particles in the simulated soil bond tightly on their own.
Of course, one problem is that this is all just a simulation with no actual Martian dirt around to test. "That is also our worry—everyone's worry," mechanical engineer and co-author Yu Qiao tells Popular Science.
Even if the calculations are correct, the finding would only apply to the areas of Mars with high level of iron oxide, which according to what we know about the planet's surface might limit the potential locations. As Curiosity continues to explore the Martian soil, what we know of the planet's surface will increase. But when we've got enough soil for scientists to start experimenting on their own, that's when we'll be happy we've already got some working theories on how to build bricks on Mars.
Source: Popular Science
David Grossman is a staff writer for PopularMechanics.com. He's previously written for The Verge, Rolling Stone, The New Republic and several other publications. He's based out of Brooklyn.
