Last month, we read about how the European Space Agency was teaming up with architectural firm Foster and Partners. The idea is that they would use 3D printing technology to build a lunar base. This makes a lot of sense, since it utilizes existing resources on the moon to build those structures, rather than shuttling all those materials from Earth. It seems that NASA is working on a similar idea.

NASA is also considering the implementation of 3D printing tech for a lunar base near the moon’s south pole (where sunlight is nearly constant; good for solar energy), but they’re going about it in a slightly different way. The tech is called SinterHab and the spider robot would “sinter” the lunar dust. This means that it will heat it up to just below its melting point, allowing the super fine nanoparticles to fuse together into a solid block of ceramic-like material. The particles would reach temperatures of up to 1500 degrees Celsius during this process.

The main advantage that SinterHab has over the ESA proposition is that this doesn’t require the shuttling of binding agents from Earth. The resulting blocks of material could then be assembled into habitats and other structures that the astronauts could then use as a base.

Embedded above is a video of the Athlete rover, which is a half-scale model of what they would want to bring to the moon for this project. There are 48 3D cameras on board. All they’d have to do is attach the microwave 3D printer to one of its six legs and we’d have ourselves a lunar construction vehicle. Interestingly, Athlete can also split in half into two three-legged rovers for increased versatility.

More work is needed, to be sure, but projects like this clearly demonstrate that there’s more to 3D printers than just making awful-sounding records and 3D busts of Yoda.

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Ever since discovering Michio Kaku, I’ve become just a little more fascinated with the great beyond. I’ve come to wonder more about type one, type two, and type three civilizations, but what about the development of extraterrestial objects closer to our backyard?

NASA has just put together a fascinating video that depicts the life of our moon, starting from it was first formed an incredible 4.5 billion years ago. Shortly thereafter, and I use the term “shortly” in a relative sense, the moon began to cool down from its piping hot origins before getting continually bombarded by asteroids and other things floating around in outer space.

It almost reminds me of Missile Command on the old Atari, only this was real! Well, as real as a CG animation from NASA can be. Watching the formation of those craters is pretty neat, but of course, you wouldn’t actually hear the sounds of those impacts. In space, no one can hear you scream.

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Are you amazed after hearing about the travel distance of an elevator in the Burj Khalifa? Then get ready for this new concept from Tokyo-based construction company Obayashi Corp. The Japanese company has come out with their space elevator concept which involves constructing a space cable, which extends a quarter of the way to the moon from the Earth’s surface.

If you are thinking that this is a crazy new idea, the concept of a space elevator has been around for decades. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower, Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who introduced a concept of a free-standing tower reaching into space way back in 1895. In recent years, the topic has been discussed in many conferences and even NASA is interested in it.

Expected to become a reality in 2050, the Japanese space elevator design features a 96,000 kilometer (59,652 mile) cable made of carbon nanotubes extending into space from a station on the ground. There will be a counterweight at the end of the cable to hold the entire thing in place.

The vehicle carrying the passengers (30 at a time) and cargo will be travelling along the cable with speeds of around 200 km/h. Their destination will be a station with residential facilities and a research center 36,000 kilometers from the surface of the Earth. At the above said speed, the elevator journey might take about a week (no, you won’t be standing all the way). As you can see in the above figure, electricity for the terminal station will be generated via solar panels.

But the company isn’t talking about how much all this might cost (trillions?), or where its location will be (most likely somewhere around the equator as centripetal forces are required for keeping the cable stretched), or about the risks involved (bad weather, or an issue with the counterweight which could result in the cable becoming a waist belt for our planet).

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