Another kind of space race currently underway has engineers trying to crack the code on how best to build on other celestial bodies. While it involved using materials that could be generated, Mars scientists explored no-bake bricks and 3D-printed things using the planet’s minerals.
The team that previously developed AstroCrete made it from blood, urine and Martian soil., Here comes a slightly more palatable starcrete made with extraterrestrial dust, potato starch and a pinch of salt. The team says it’s strong enough to build a house on Earth.
When tested, StarCrete has a compressive strength of 72 megapascals (MPa), more than double the toughness of regular concrete (32 MPa). Starcrete made from moon dust exceeded 91 MPa. His previous AstroCrete for the team was around 40 MPa, with the drawback of requiring a continuous blood source to produce building materials.
“Since we plan to produce starch for food for astronauts, it makes sense to consider it a binding agent rather than human blood,” said Aled Roberts, principal investigator on the project. . “Also, current building techniques still require years of development and require significant energy and additional heavy processing equipment, all of which add cost and complexity to the mission. , which simplifies the mission and makes it cheaper and more feasible.
“Astronauts don’t want to live in a house full of scabs and urine anyway,” he added.
One of the many challenges of building in space is the need for cost-effective building materials that are generated on-site. It would be prohibitively expensive to transport conventional bricks and mortar off the planet.
Researchers found that a bag (55 pounds/25 kg) of dehydrated potato (chips) contains enough starch to produce about 0.5 tons of StarCrete, or 213 bricks. bottom. For reference, a three-bedroom house has about 7,500 bricks.
The team used simulated Mars soil mixed with starch and found that adding magnesium chloride, a common salt, greatly increased the strength of the bricks. This could be sourced from the surface of Mars, or even from the tears of astronauts.
Researchers who recently launched a sustainable building materials technology company, DeakinBio, took the biocomposite building blocks out of the lab and used a moisture-sensitive starch binder to make StarCrete earth-friendly. Hope to find a solution.
About 8% of the world’s CO2 emissions come from the production of cement and concrete, so a powerful, greener alternative to our planet could also be a welcome addition.
The study was published in a journal open engineering.
Source: University of Manchester
