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3D Print Moon Dust Bricks
Nifty bit of engineering here - 3D print your own moon dust bricks using solar power.
(3D print bricks from moon dust)
"We took simulated lunar material and cooked it in a solar furnace," explains materials engineer Advenit Makaya, overseeing the project for ESA. "This was done on a 3-D printer table, to bake successive 0.1 mm layers of moondust at 1000°C. We can complete a 20 x 10 x 3 cm brick for building in around five hours."
In his 1951 novel The Moon is Hell, John W. Campbell wrote about marooned members of the second lunar expedition surviving by manufacturing solar cells using lunar materials.
It will be fun to have orbiting factories, like the ones in Arthur C. Clarke's still excellent 1978 novel The Fountains of Paradise
See also this related article on a robot that fabricates endless tools and this article on how moon dust can be used to fabricate solar power panels.
Via PhysOrg.
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Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
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