tested recently spent a few days at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley
to explore a few of the labs workshops and testing environments used in the
development of space exploration technology one place we felt right at
home was building n 220 the Technical Services Building housing in the
campuses large machine shop it's also the home of space shop a full-fledged
makerspace NASA's first were trained staff used CNCs 3d printers and laser
cutters to fabricate model miniatures equipment parts and prototypes for the
other labs at Ames we had to take a tour so of course NASA Ames has their own
makerspace it's called the space shop Alex thank you for having us here you're
the manager of this building yes this is our humble abode space shop it's the
first makerspace in the federal government
it's actually really unique in the sense that we train people on how to use our
equipment and that's typically a liability for the government so the fact
that we're doing this and we've been extremely safe over the 7 years we've
been open we've demonstrated that federal maker spaces are a safe learning
environment that's awesome can we go and check out somewhere today I'd love to
show you around oh yes makers making
yeah this is very familiar already I see big Universal laser cutter that's a
really big bed Wow awesome yeah 3624 that's amazing you got some 3d printers
I see some cruises yeah we're there yep we got some additive so we're makerspace
right we're unique in that this is the government and this is a research center
that does a lot of different things it's kind of difficult to provide the tools
that everyone's looking for we have a lot of different competences out here at
Ames Research Center so we started out with the general
Fablab MIT kind of lists the stuff we work with the Center for bits and atoms
to get this place operational and we kind of adapted to what Ames needs we
realized we need to kind of cover the generalities of a makerspace right some
subtractive some additive assembly post-processing and then see where
projects kind of need a little bit more support on and go from there so in terms
of projects when different departments all on the campus come to you what are
they looking for look for models looking for a prototyping part you know we do a
little bit of all of that we help people just get from where they are to where
they want to be and that's what I guess making is right yeah figuring out how to
connect that loop so even things like repairing parts of you know parts of the
facility yeah no no definitely right I mean just earlier Terry we're working on
some parts for our wind tunnel a lot of that is closed loop you don't really
send that outside the center it's typically expensive to do that type of
work in the government but out here we're able to find solutions that are
just as sustainable but a lot quicker and a lot cheaper saves a lot of tax
money so yeah a lot of additive in here we're unique in that we train people on
everything we do you'll see Randall Randall looks like you're in a lab
manual huh yeah yeah great documentation as well right here intern cycling
through we trained everyone on pretty much everything that's connected to a
computer so we try to make sure that within an hour and a half people go from
any background to training we do that via a series of Latin items that are
pretty self-contained I see among the things that you have examples of what
you made from whether you've molded or three-point today you guys can like look
up here even I mean we have Mars escapes that we've milled out Randall you want
to talk about Mars escapes we use up here they've just paid out a
standard pink insulation from like what you get at the hardware store the one
over the door is yousef crater that is where these spear ruber landed and the
one on the left is Gale Crater that is recommended yeah of course you're using
like the best data sets in the world right from NASA logos to actual apology
from yeah always have to incentivize people somehow so we show them what
they're comfortable with is there a specific tool that the team here loves
using I think this color printer is pretty cool this is a powder jet printer
and it's fairly conventional as far as additive goes but we love making
meatballs on here and it comes full-color yeah yeah yeah the cool thing
about this is you can print out pretty much see my you know we try to use each
tool appropriately obviously you would only really want to embed color for
visualizations right so whenever you need to create a model for something
that's a really really really appropriate tool this is actually the
highest fidelity additively manufactured model of the International Space Station
we know that because we made the model and the Visitor Center wanted to create
a model for this so we were like sure leverage what we got but yeah this is an
area where you post process and you take a look at what your design looks like
and it's a space for you to be able to iterate it right fairly quickly we have
like PCB prototyping equipment bread boarding SMD soldering obviously
embedded systems are really important with regards to NASA's increasingly
digital mission in traditional machine shop you got your Bridgeport's you got
caddy sometimes you're the CNC right so you know cutting something in half
doesn't necessarily need to involve a computer and we want to make sure that
people have a safe space to do all that work and it's typically not at your desk
love it this is such a familiar space to us visited so many makerspace is so cool
to see that at Ames you guys have one I've been running it for a few hours you
look always sir to new tools as new things come out are you not afraid of
adopting things like you know the newest 3d printers and well you know for the
most part we try to make sure that we're extending every
much as we can and sometimes that means that you're using processes that are
very well defined because you know exactly what outcome is going to be
sometimes that means that if this is a capability people want you consolidate
it so sin bio wants to create something on a specific type of fluidics machine
maybe we can consolidate usage of that machine right that's really a dream job
here well everyone has their own little you know task and we just try to make
sure everyone has a place to do it awesome thank you so much for you know
it's for sure to be a pleasure to meet you as well
the larger-than-life simulators testing facilities and workshops were just a few
of the labs that make up the vast NASA Ames campus in every building we drove
past scientists and engineers were at work on the numerous hard problems
related to space exploration there's the lab of synthetic biologist Lynn
Rothschild Lynn tackles some of the hard challenges of how humans could one day
live on Mars by using biology synthesizing tiny microbes that could
help build houses or new electronics for a Martian city it's made last year and
that is a genuine stool made out of fungal mycelium totally human-rated so
has roman structural stability as organic so it's actually looking into so
I did a Kickstarter will be looking into mycelium that's a part of the packaging
uh-huh yeah and that it yes still I never use of it as well yeah because
it's completely compostable exactly in but it did smell a little bit funky
that's one of the things because I ordered this
big mycelium stolen and it made my house smell like barn for a very long time but
this one doesn't smell as much maybe you used a different maybe it's a coffee
grind it depends a little bit what you grow it on we've actually shown that you
can grow with a little nutrients on Mars regular salmon and lunar which is ideal
obviously because if we could start using it to grow things like habitats on
Mars which it's something that we've also been funded to do so let's give you
a stool or a break you could grow it into any
shape you want that's the beauty of this yeah absolutely hat there are a couple
of companies I know who are working on high-end Couture they're making handbags
that fungal mycelium because you can end up making imitation leather but for us I
mean it's amazing structural material and think about it you get to the Moon
or Mars and the ground isn't level you don't have a bunch of you know trucks
that have come through and excavated there's you know craters and bumps and
so on so imagine you put up this may be a double bag structure with some
mycelium and it grows into shape able to conform to the ground I'm starting to
understand why this has the reputation of being the creative idea because this
is quite the breadth of we also met engineers working on the challenges of
landing NASA's Rovers on other planets Wendy o coleauxv is an aerospace
engineer exploring different ways for landing those spacecrafts on the surface
of other worlds so basically when you think about entry V holes what do they
typically look like the blunt bodies right when you think about a Ryan the
Apollo capsules but there's a different class of entry vehicles they're called
deployable inter vehicles D V's they're interesting right because they're stowed
and then when it's time during entry they deploy and they can deploy
mechanically or pneumatically but what's interesting about Divi is is they have
no back shell so it's like the one we're working on is actually like an umbrella
it looks like that it's a variation of that one so it likes toes and then it
applies like an umbrella so because it has no back shell where do you put the
control surface effectors in something like that like typically when you're
controlling entry vehicles and capsules to steer during entry D so you put RCS
thrusters on the back shells of those but there's no back sho so where do you
put it where that's the kind of questions I'm trying to answer those are
the kinds of things we're trying to solve using a deployable entry vehicle
called the lifting nano a depth but the technology is applicable to other
classes of vehicles that are not devs or better long body shapes as well
conducting scientific exploration of these new worlds won't be easy either
with extreme and sometime unpredictable environments to grapple
with geo biologists Darlene Lim travels to some of the harshest environments
around the world to study how astronauts could fare on places like Mars and
develop the protocols for future missions there so you know all of this
work is about analogs and getting to explore these really exciting places
here on earth that are like places like on Mars or Enceladus where they've got
an ocean and you know all these exciting places and where you get to actually be
like I could realistically be at Mars right now like what is that like for you
like is that really exciting it's super exciting but but the big twist is that
we can't go to these places just yet so I can't physically go to Mars yet I
can't send a robot you know just yet to Enceladus so what we do is we use our
earth as a place to start ourselves up to reduce the risk that's associated
with these incredibly high-risk missions and also to learn about our planet
because there's so much to explore so much that's unknown to us and every time
we go out the scientific process is on full display and it's so much fun and I
love it as well when we build these truly interdisciplinary teams not
multidisciplinary we have different disciplines but you want to bring them
together in one cohesive mass that you know kind of then works in lockstep to
solve all these incredible problems so that's really a fun thing to be part of
as well perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising but we were struck by the
diversity of ideas and technical disciplines on display here from
Asheville biologists to engineers the humans furthering space exploration come
from different backgrounds and tackle very different challenges but they all
share the same passion curiosity and drive that led them at NASA Ames it was
an epic trip to be able to peer into some of the amazing work that takes
place inside a NASA center settled in the middle of Silicon Valley
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