to build a one-third scale model of what might someday be a home on Mars.
Cleanliness happens when you outsource the dirty work to a robot.
Montes and his colleagues at architecture firm AI SpaceFactory are in a
cavernous exhibition hall near Peoria, Illinois, to show NASA how astronauts
could use 3D printing and Martian materials to make houses on the Red Planet.
After spending the better part of 30 hours watching their custom-built printer
squirt out a chocolate-colored domicile called “Marsha,” they have just minutes
before the agency calls time in its 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. The company’s
only competition for the $500,000 prize, a team from Penn State University,
finished its gray concrete double igloo a few minutes before.
Think of housing on Mars, and that’s the kind of shape that might come to mind.
But Montes, an architect who spent 17 months designing Marsha (for Mars habitat)
and the equipment to print it, sees something that looks more like a jar. Or an urn.
Or an egg. “It even has this hermaphroditic quality where on the outside it’s kind of
phallic, and on the inside it’s...” He pauses. “Whatever the opposite of phallic is.”
(Yonic.) Inside, Montes envisions several floors where residents of the Red Planet
will live and work and play, and a skylight under which they will gaze at a starry sky
or bask in sunlight refracted through the thin Martian atmosphere. But that means
securing the round window atop a 15-foot structure that’s still squishy. The mix-
ture sets quickly, but not quickly enough to meet NASA’s looming deadline. As the
printer nozzle climbs higher, Marsha’s upper layers slump ever so slightly.
The robot finishes with three minutes to spare, then inches the polycarbonate
skylight into position. With seconds remaining and dozens of people—including
a film crew from NASA—watching, Montes
gives the order to release it. Everyone holds
their breath, hoping Marsha doesn’t cave in.--
People settling on Mars will to some degree
have to live off the land. At its closest, our
neighboring planet lies 35 million miles away.
Transporting supplies there will cost roughly
$5,000 per pound and take at least six months
using current technology. Better to enlist the
natural resources of their new home when
possible, an approach called in situ resource
utilization. “It totally changes the logistics of
a mission,” says Advenit Makaya, a materi-
als engineer who develops processes like 3D
printing at the European Space Agency. “You
don’t have to bring everything with you.”
Humans on the Red Planet might draw
power from the sun, mine water from
buried ice, and harvest oxygen from the at-
mosphere. With NASA’s encouragement,jeffrey montes stands
high on a ladder in
dirt-floored arena, squinting
his khakis and black t-shirt
are remarkably tidy for
someone deploying red (^) g
oo
at the oculus of what
looks like the
world’s largest vase.
CO
UR
TE
SY
AI
SP
AC
EF
AC
TO
RY
86 FALL 2019 • POPSCI.COM
the middle of a