(ominous music)
- That's how they walked on the moon, right?
- Yeah, nice big steps.
(laughter)
- [Loren] Someday, humans will travel to the moon and Mars.
But we probably won't be able to bring everything
that we need with us when we go.
So, we're going to have to get creative.
We're going to need to live off the land.
That means utilizing the natural resources
of that location to survive.
And NASA is working on that.
Welcome to Swamp Works at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
Here, engineers are dreaming up new technologies
that will help astronauts live on the surface
of other worlds, like the moon and Mars.
Nathan Gelino, a research engineer at NASA
put it more succinctly.
- You can think of us like
the pioneers during the Gold Rush.
- [Loren] Nathan is working on tools to help astronauts
use the resources they'll find on other worlds.
An obvious resource that's crucially important
to human settlement is water.
Scientists are pretty sure that large deposits
of water ice exist on the moon,
which could be harvested for future missions.
- Water can be used for life support systems,
drinking water, watering plants,
but water is also rocket fuel.
So, if you use cryogenic oxygen and cryogenic hydrogen,
and mix them together, that's what rockets use to fly.
So, you can think of it as being a
lunar gas station, as well.
- [Loren] And both the moon and Mars are covered
with another key resource.
Regolith, or interplanetary dirt.
It's the rocky, powdery soil found on the moon and Mars,
but it doesn't have the abundance of
organic materials that our soil has.
NASA's interested in using the regolith
in a number of different ways, like building tools,
furniture, and even habitats.
- It's not practical to send concrete to the moon or Mars.
And, so, we want to learn how to make building materials
out of the resources that are available there.
- So, let's say I'm going to the moon,
but I want to build a habitat there, first.
What are the things that I need to
set up beforehand, to make that happen?
- First, we need to figure out exactly where they are.
We need to do prospecting.
We have very small rovers and flyers that are designed
to quickly go and take samples in remote locations,
and find out whether or not there's the material
that you're interested in, there.
- Yeah, send the robots to do that first.
- That's exactly right.
- [Loren] The best way to design a robot for prospecting
in lunar dirt is to practice with the stuff here on Earth.
And at Swamp Works, engineers have built a mini lunar
surface based on what we know about the moon's regolith.
I swear, this job always requires me to
get into weird body suits.
(zipper zips)
Ta-da! Welcome to the lunar surface.
(techno music)
So, this is what the lunar surface feels like?
- [A.J.] Right, so this is a very,
what we call a physical simulant.
- [Loren] Okay.
- [A.J.] And, so, it mimics the physical properties
of the lunar simulant really well.
- So, when they were hopping on the moon,
it felt a bit like they were on the beach?
- Yep.
- So crazy. You just would not think
that this is the texture of the moon.
- [A.J.] Right.
- It feels very pillow-y. (laughs)
NASA has designed a prototype robot called "Razor"
designed to harvest lunar soil,
so that astronauts can build with it.
- And, so the whole goal of this robot was to be able to
dig when you don't weigh very much,
and you're in a reduced gravity.
So, we tackled this in a couple different ways.
The first was these bucket drums.
And, so, these are actually the excavation
and storage tool for the excavator.
These scoops, when it's spinning in this direction,
it's digging, and then if you spin it this direction,
it's able to dump.
- So, it's basically like one big rotating shovel?
- Right. Exactly.
- [Loren] So, once you have your lunar soil,
then what do you do with it?
Well, it's time to turn it into building material.
NASA has found a way to combine regolith with polymers
like plastics or resins in just the right way
to create the raw material for printing.
And where do you get polymers?
Well, astronaut trash should do the trick.
You can take your trash,
combine it with Mars or lunar soil,
- Yep.
- Mush it together, and you've got your printer feed stock.
- Yep. So, you mush it together
in a very specific mixture ratio.
- Okay.
- And, what you get is a polymer composite concrete.
And, so you can make that polymer composite concrete
either using the granular material right off the ground,
or you can heat up and draw out that
granular material into a glass fiber.
And then, if you use the glass fiber it makes the material
really strong, like carbon fiber or Kevlar.
- And that's what we're using today, right?
- And that's what we're going to use today.
- Right, we've got this is what we're going to
be pouring into the 3-D printer.
You have a whole bunch of trinkets here.
- So, those are called "regos".
Those aren't actually printed, those are centered regolith.
- [Loren] Yeah?
- [Nathan] But they're regolith Legos, "regos".
- [Loren] Love it.
Regos are great, but for more complex structures,
NASA wants to use its regolith concrete for
full on 3-D printing.
- [Nathan] With this material you can do any kind of
simple structure that you might need,
whether it's a habitat, or a blast wall,
or a road, or maybe a hangar.
But, you also can print furniture
or any other kind of things you need.
So, we're going to print a podium.
- [Loren] I need a podium when I'm going to
run the government on Mars.
So, I need to bang my gavel on something.
This was a pretty slow process, so we didn't get
to stick around to see the whole podium.
In theory, though, this technology is a game changer.
It could one day enable the big settlements on
the moon and Mars that we all love to dream about.
But, if NASA wants to build entire colonies
this way, they'll have to speed things up.
- [Nathan] Luckily, this is the
first iteration of this design.
And the next round, we're hoping to go to about
100 pounds per hour, which will significantly
decrease the amount of time that it takes to print things.
- [Loren] Oh, so how long would it take for this
podium to be built, if that were going that fast?
- I'd say 15 minutes. - Oh, wow!
- Yeah.
- [Loren] Call me when you're up at that rate
and we'll come back. - [Nathan] That sounds good.
(laughter)