Baking a mixture of saltwater and materials that mimic dust from the moon or Mars at a high temperature produced sturdy bricks that could be used to build human habitats in space
Bricks made of a mix of saltwater and dust from the moon or Mars can withstand enough pressure to be used in any future extraterrestrial construction. But astronauts planning on making these will need to figure out how to bake them first.
The plans to build a civilization or at least a colony on the Mars or Moon have been a long-time idea for both scientists and entrepreneurs. While the idea has always existed, logistics have been the main problem, but it seems that we may have a major solution. A new set of experiences have revealed that a combination of dust from the moon or Mars and saltwater can create the perfect material to create buildings in space. In order to produce the desired product, the mixture needs to be heated at a high temperature so that they create a solid structure mimicking a brick.
The observation was made by Ranajay Ghosh and his team at the University of Central Florida. They conducted an experiment to see if regolith – dust from moon rocks – can be used to create a sturdy structure. However, the problem will be finding the heat source in order to bake them properly.
This is not the first paper to suggest this phenomenon as research published in Materials Today Bio said that blood can actually be used as a binding agent to create structures with space dust.
“Scientists have been trying to develop viable technologies to produce concrete-like materials on the surface of Mars, but we never stopped to think that the answer might be inside us all along,” said materials engineer Aled Roberts of the University of Manchester in the UK according to new science.
In the future, if there is a possibility of creating structures in the space, it will be near impossible to carry the bricks and these new findings can hold the key to building a new civilization in space.
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