Translator: Robert Deliman Reviewer: Denise RQ
Let's start with a dream: suppose that you want to go to the Moon today,
and you want to go there to build a moon base on the Moon.
Well, this dream is a bit complicated, if not impossible;
meaning, imagine you want to build a house on Earth:
you have to put personnel, tools, materials.
Now you want to build it on the Moon,
so you want to put all this into a rocket and you have to send it to the Moon:
personnel, materials, tools.
Unless you do something completely different, that is 3D printing.
You send a 3D printer to the Moon, and the 3D printer using the dust
that is already on the Moon, the Moon regolith,
will build automatically, around itself, the moon base.
Now this sounds a bit like a science fiction movie.
Well, we did it already.
We have already 3D-printed a 1.5-ton moon base demonstrator
using moon regolith.
Actually using a simulant of moon regolith
because when Neil Armstrong went to the Moon,
because Neil Armstrong went to the Moon,
he brought back a sample of moon regolith.
We duplicated it here on Earth
and then we did it, 3D-print it.
Don't believe it?
Well this is it. It's here. It's real.
How did we do it?
Well that's the principle and here is also the principal of 3D printing.
You build objects, 3 dimensional objects,
in this case, the moon web base
by adding material layer by layer
as it's shown here.
Now, this is done with moon regolith,
but you can do it with any other material you can think of.
You start with plastics, metals, ceramics, glass, even human cells.
Now that we have a moon base let's look a bit at the concept.
How can this work?
We could send there, to the Moon, an inflatable,
and then, with a 3D printer we build around this shell.
By doing this - that is a very interesting concept -
because by doing this,
you protect the astronauts from the two main threats they have
on the Moon surface, that is solar radiations and micrometeorites.
Let's bring back this concept to Earth.
What could we do with this?
We want to use a solar oven
so, using the Sun, having a lens, and then bake the material.
Now we can do exactly the same in the dessert,
to build houses for people, to protect them.
Or after earthquakes or tsunamis, we can protect people
by building quick shelters and houses
just using the resources you have there.
Since we are in space though, let's stay in space.
Where else can we print with 3D printing?
Well, the obvious idea goes to the International Space Station,
and as Andrea was saying, we want to build things on the ISS.
But the first question you should ask yourself is why?
Why should I build on the space station?
Well, the answer is here. The Apollo 13 mission.
They had to come back due to the many troubles they had.
They had to come back to Earth,
and they were using a part of the spacecraft
that was built for two people, but they were three.
So they were consuming oxygen much faster than it was designed for.
They were saturating the filters, the CO2 filters.
So you probably remember in the Apollo 13 movie,
there is this guy who says,
"Hey guys, we need to go
from this square filter to this cylindrical fitting."
And it didn't fit.
And they had to this with the tools and the materials they had on the spacecraft.
So, extremely difficult.
On the spacecraft, they could have simply sent an email there and print it.
Well, here it is.
This is the Apollo 13 filter.
Now 3D-printed.
With the cylindrical fitting they needed, and with the shape they needed.
This is the true filter. It took us minutes to print it.
That's why you need a 3D printer on the space station.
And that's why we have now a 3D printer for plastics on the space station.
But maybe you want also to have one for metals.
Why? Well, because everything can fail.
And you don't need to bring all of the materials
or all of the possible spare parts that could possibly fail
but maybe will never fail.
You just bring a limited amount of powder and if something fails, then you print it.
If it doesn't fail, then you don't print it.
Or you can even print tools on demand to do some work
that you didn't even think you needed.
Funny enough, the story of 3D printing started in ESA 10 years ago
with the failure on the space station.
Actually, we got this valve.
This is a true piece of equipment that was flying on the space station.
It's a water valve
that keeps the temperature balanced on the side of the space station.
It failed!
We got the shuttle flight coming down to Earth.
We got an astronaut coming to ESTEC, to our laboratories,
to ask for a failure investigation, to understand what happened.
We did the failure investigation, we understood what happened,
we fixed the problem.
But once we had this valve in our hands, we said, "Well, wait a minute."
This is an ideal case for doing 3D printing.
Why is that?
Well, it's a very complex design.
It starts from a big block of stainless steel.
You remove all the material away until you get to this final shape.
And then you have to put a weld here. Very complex, very difficult shall we say.
This is an ideal case for trying out this 3D printing, that at that time,
for metals, was just about to start.
So, we did it.
And we got this.
I wish you could have it in your hand, you would go, "Wow!"
This is half of the weight, it took us a few hours to manufacture it,
- this takes days to manufacture -
it's done in one piece so you have no welds, no points of failure.
So we said, "We won; this is it."
Well, no!
Because in that time, we did the biggest failure you could do
while doing 3D printing; the biggest mistake.
That is we duplicated an existing design.
And why did we do that? It's because of this.
Because since the Stone Age, the mankind does exactly this.
You start with a big block of stone.
You remove material until you get to the shape you need.
The rest, you throw it away.
Now with 3D printing we can do this, we can do what Mother Nature does.
Mother Nature does two things.
It 3D prints, first, because it builds layer by layer,
and second, it designs and builds for performances.
Meaning it puts materials where the loads are.
Like in a tree, bent by the wind, the loads of the wind,
the pressure of the wind comes on the bottom.
That's why Mother Nature puts all the material at the bottom.
Mother Nature does not put any material at the top because there are no loads,
so no need for it.
We learned our lesson then.
And we were able then to go from this
- this is a spacecraft support for the antennas;
it's in all of our spacecrafts, we have one of these -
to this.
As you can see, same old kind of manufacturing process: big block,
you remove material, you throw everything away.
It's so complex that you have to have bolts here, bolts as a weld can fail.
Here it's done in one piece;
a few hours of manufacturing time versus days manufacturing time.
Weight: is amazing, it's half of it.
But yet, the ideal is not there.
What we needed to do is this.
This is what we called the bionic design.
This is how Mother Nature would build it,
meaning it's putting material where the loads are.
On another bionic design, time ago, we were about to test it,
and it was so different that the company who built it
- not this one, another one - didn't want to test it.
They didn't even want to manufacture it, because it felt so strange.
They said, "No, we are afraid of this."
Actually I remember a colleague of mine saying to me That this is asymmetric.
Well, forget about symmetry, Mother Nature is not symmetric.
You are not symmetric. I am not symmetric.
I play squash, and my right arm is much bigger than the left arm.
Not just the muscle but the bone. Why is that?
It's because Mother Nature, for me, does this.
Mother Nature puts a very light structure in the middle of my bones,
so what we call a lattice structure
- because there I don't need it, there are no loads -
and puts a much thicker layer, where the red area is,
meaning where all the loads for playing squash go.
So now, thanks to 3D printing, we can do this.
This is a bone on a spacecraft. This is a human bone put in a spacecraft.
As you can see, here you have a lattice structure
- because there are no loads as in the center of my bones -
and here, where the loads are, you have a much thicker layer of material.
This is incredibly light, and now we have a human bone on a spacecraft.
Though don't get me wrong, it seems all so easy, it's not easy.
We need to qualify the material, we need to qualify the process.
We need to standardize, qualify this part, inspect it.
But all of this is all happening. It's happening already.
We are working on it.
The biggest challenge we have with 3D printing is something different.
It's this one.
Meet my children, Francesco and Marcelo.
They like to play with toys that are additive.
Probably you played as well with this. I did.
You add material until you get to the final shape
layer by layer; so natural.
Then what happens?
I went to the university, and I was taught exactly the other way around
that is removing material.
I was a good student at the university, believe me.
But I was a disaster to the limit of embarrassment
when it comes to technical drawings.
Why? Because it's completely natural.
You have to go from a 3D shape, putting it to a 2D shape,
because that is the only way you can manufacture it.
Well, now, my children, your children
have a technology that can enable two things.
First, they can keep thinking additive, and second, they can design bionic.
But we need to teach them; that is the biggest challenge.
Now, if you do that, there are no limits.
You can even print organs, cells, blood, bones,
and this is happening already.
This is a prototype kidney. It's printed with stem cells.
And the amazing thing is that it's printed to the design, yours,
but second is that it knows that it is a kidney.
So it does what the kidney does, that is filters water, separates toxins,
and produces waste.
If you think this into a space mission,
then you can really enable long-term missions, like going to Mars,
where you can guarantee sustainable life for the astronauts, telemedicine.
I have two main messages for you today about 3D printing.
The first message is I'm a believer.
I believe that this is a technology that can enable missions
that today are not possible.
To the Moon, remember the dream of the Moon.
To longer missions. Mars, but also on Earth.
But the second message I have is that the biggest challenge we have to face
is we need to change the way we think today.
And we need to educate people.
Professor Richard Feynman used to say
- the Nobel Prize for Physics so a respected opinion -
"In engineering, Mother Nature cannot be fooled."
I would add, it shall not be fooled, it shall be imitated.
And now we have a technology that can enable this: 3D printing.
Thank you.
(Applause)