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Mars shelter problem can be solved with engineered yeast, gelatin and sand: paper (www.scmp.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/nottheonion@sh.itjust.works
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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/83318

Future settlers on Mars would need houses, but they must either spend huge sums transporting construction materials from Earth or use enormous amounts of energy to melt Martian soil into bricks. Scientists in Hong Kong say they have developed a quick and low-cost “living” building material made from genetically engineered yeast, gelatin and sand that can be 3D printed under conditions simulating the Martian environment. Their study, published online last month in Chem Circularity, an...

From China - South China Morning Post via This RSS Feed.

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[–] 10 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

It could also be solved by not sending fragile humans to a wholly inhospitable planet in the first place.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Building this way doesn’t look bad, but materials alone are not going to fix all the other inhospitable things over there. Like 3-6 months travel time in a glorified soup can with high radiation levels, landing and living on an extremely cold rock with barely any atmosphere, more radiation, developing skeletal issues due to low gravity, poor social conditions, high chances of meteor strikes (barely any atmosphere, remember?) and no way home. Ever.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

    We have no data about low gravity, only microgravity. Otherwise, yeah.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    Mars’ gravity is about a third of Earth’s. Living their for prolonged periods of time will deteriorate your skeletal system - or adaptation to Mars, whatever you fancy. A return to Earth will be impossible due to this as well.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    We don't actually have data on that.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (3 children)

    Wikipedia talks of an about 38%, what exactly do you mean? That we haven’t done experiments on Mars? The known gravity is used in calculations for Mars landers etc… so I don’t quite follow.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    He's saying that while we have theories about how low gravity will affect us, we don't actually have any data. Only normal g and zero g, nothing in between.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago*

    Yeah. It's probably going to be bad, but tbh I think it could go either way. The mass of your average human can vary by quite a lot, and our bones can structurally handle a 40kg human and a 100kg human, so my personal bet is that the transition would be a bitch, but I think we could go from 1.0 to long-term 0.38g to 1.0g with some work.

    Lots of open questions, though. Conception. Gestation. Birth. Adolescence. Would someone growing up entirely in Martian gravity be able to adapt? Again, probably going to be bad, but who knows for sure?

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    • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    The only way people are going to survive radiation exposure on Mars for the first decade or two is in underground shelters. A few inches of fancy mud isn't going to cut it. There's no magnetic field and hardly any atmosphere. You want several feet of rock between you and space.

    Once there's enough refined metal available for shielding you could spend more time above ground. Until that point you'd better diggy diggy hole.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Did not see your comment before I posted mine. Almost completely agree, I only think it won’t take decades, I think it’s going to be a lot more.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    Eh, I figure putting up enough shielding to have some above-ground structures will be a priority. It won't be the whole planet or even a city, it will mostly be industrial things that people don't want to live with in the underground shelters, and of course exploration and research. Workspaces where people spend 4-ish hours of a day maybe twice a week above ground, and the rest below.

    I agree it will probably be longer before people are living above ground regularly.

    *Edit: the first few generations will probably experience abnormally high cancer rates even if they're very conservative and overcautious. There will be a lot of exposures and unpredictable interactions with the new environment. No matter how much data we collect beforehand, there will be things we can't possibly know until we try.

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    • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    What is "sand: paper", Precious?

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