<
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/realestate/nasa-homes-moon-3-d-printing.html>
"The moon is a magnet, and it is pulling us back.
Half a century ago, the astronauts of Apollo 17 spent three days on that
pockmarked orb, whose gravitational pull tugs not just on our oceans but our
imaginations. For 75 hours, the astronauts moonwalked in their spacesuits and
rode in a lunar rover, with humanity watching on television sets 240,000 miles
away. The Apollo program was shuttered after they splashed back down to the
Pacific Ocean in December 1972, and since then, the moon has hung, uncharted
and empty, a siren in the sky.
NASA is now plotting a return. This time around, the stay will be long-term. To
make it happen, NASA is going to build houses on the moon — ones that can be
used not just by astronauts but ordinary civilians as well. It believes that by
2040, Americans will have their first subdivision in space. Living on Mars
isn’t far behind. Some in the scientific community say NASA’s timeline is
overly ambitious, particularly before a proven success with a new lunar
landing. But seven NASA scientists interviewed for this article all said that a
2040 goal for lunar structures is attainable if the agency can continue to hit
its benchmarks.
The U.S. space agency will blast a 3-D printer up to the moon and then build
structures, layer by additive layer, out of a specialized lunar concrete
created from the rock chips, mineral fragments and dust that sits on the top
layer of the moon’s cratered surface and billows in poisonous clouds whenever
disturbed — a moonshot of a plan made possible through new technology and
partnerships with universities and private companies."
Via
What Could Go Right? October 5, 2023:
https://theprogressnetwork.org/natural-disaster-deaths-declining/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
