In the not too distant future, giant machines will be responsible for 3D printing houses – and not just here on Earth but Mars and the Moon too.
The idea, if not yet the practice, of 3D printing is changing the world. The technology is constantly offering new ways of interpreting old ideas and offering things that just weren’t possible even a few years ago. We aren’t yet at the point where the average person will have a 3D printer in their homes or even have access to one, but the technology has astonishing potential, and that includes construction.
Realistically, 3D printing’s primary impact on construction has been fairly minimal so far. It’s most common use is possibly for architects who want to create 3D, physical models of a structure. There are also a few more practical uses, but to really have an impact on the construction industry contractors would require a commercial 3D printer, and ideally a portable one that can be taken from job site to job site.
For example, rather than shopping for dozens of different items to build and decorate a house, you could just print the necessary pieces and save a significant amount of money and time. If you need a light switch cover or a joint for a pipe, you could just bring it up in your digital inventory and let the printer do the rest. That won’t work for everything, but there is a huge amount of potential there. And that’s just augmenting standard construction. 3D printing in construction has bigger aims.
It’s not perfect, but in a pinch, the technology exists to 3D print a house. That potential has actually been around for a few years now, but it’s only recently that the technology has been proven to be viable. There are even companies dedicated to just this thing. In March 2017, a startup known as Apis Cor 3D printed a house in less than 24 hours. Using a giant industrial machine on a track, an automated process poured the cement walls of a house. Workers were still needed to step in and do the rest – including painting, placing windows, installing plumbing and electrical wiring, adding a roof, etc. – plus, the structure is just 400-square feet (which would be perfect for an ADU if not a primary living structure), but it’s still an impressive leap forward.
Once the technology improves a bit, the possible uses are vast. Imagine needing to build a research facility in an inhospitable area like Antarctica. You could send a skeleton crew with the machinery, and a week later you’d have a small base ready to move into; after a natural disaster, a group could come in and build several emergency housing structures in days; an outdoor concert could have all the facilities it needs for guests within hours. And it goes beyond that.
The European Space Agency recently put forward an idea to use 3D printing technology to build a lunar base (or at least the frame of one). Automated machines could be sent to the Moon, and from there they would use materials found on the lunar surface to build whatever structures are needed. The idea would work just as well on Mars, but the Moon is the obvious first step.
The process would begin by collecting lunar material and then mixing it with magnesium oxide, which then turns the raw materials into a malleable substance. Once the construction begins, a binding salt then turns the materials stone-like. With today’s technology, it would create about 3.5 meters of a structure per hour; within a week it would have completed work on a full building. Give it six months and it could create a moderate-sized base. Once astronauts then arrived, they could focus work on one building and convert that to a living structure, then finish work on each new building, one after another.
We’re not quite there yet, but we are very close. Researchers recently created simulated Mars dust to see if 3D printing on an alien object is a realistic possibility, and they concluded that it was a viable option. Give it a few years, if that.