How Urine Will Be Used to Build Moon Bases

A team of researchers has a solution and it involves a 3D printer, moon dust, water (from lunar ice) and astronaut urine.

 

Space agencies from the U.S., Europe and China have plans to build moon bases.

Colonizing the moon is essential for mining exotic materials and establishing a pitstop to Mars.

Moon base construction faces many logistical challenges, especially when it costs $10,000 per 0.45 kg to ship materials.

A team of researchers has a solution and it involves a 3D printer, moon dust, water (from lunar ice) and astronaut urine.

They use urea as a plasticizer, to soften the material and make it more pliable before it hardens.

The mixture is printed into “mud” cylinders which, in tests, supported heavy weights and stood up to wild climate swings. 

Researchers are now looking for ways to extract urea from Astronaut urine, and contemplating if it’s even necessary.

After all, using the water in Astronaut urine could mean less moon ice to harvest and melt down.

We live in some wild times.


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