Mars Ice House: Using the Physics of Phase Change in 3D Printing a Habitat with H2O

Abstract

MarsIce House was the first place winner of NASA's 2015 Centennial Challenge to 3D print a habitat for Mars employing indigenous material resources. Unlike most traditional design concepts making use of Martian regolith, Mars Ice House makes use of subsurface ice in the construction of a full 3D printed habitat made out of solid H 2 O. Citing new evidence of the potential hazards of perchlorates in the Martian soil, working within NASA's "follow the water" approach to exploration, and stemming from a human centered design approach wanting to connect largely interior habitats to the light and vistas of the surrounding landscape for human psychological wellbeing, H 2 O serves as a radiation barrier, absorbing shorter wavelength radiation, while allowing light through in the visible spectrum. The resultant is a 1000ft 2 (92 m 2 ) translucent vertical habitat with a maximum of surface visibility allowing visible light into the interior of the habitat. The design covers all potential aspects of construction from water collection, concept of operations, and semi-autonomous robotic 3D printing, all which exploit the manipulation of pressure and temperature to build with phase change avoiding more laborious, high energy consuming building techniques and with potentially toxic materials such regolith. Investigating several potential methods, Mars Ice House was able to demonstrate scaled 3D printing of ice as well as use small-scale robotic technologies capable of building large-scale structures. Furthermore the design of Mars Ice House proposes spatial and scalable approaches to building with solid H 2 O as a primary building material that support human health and wellbeing.

Prioritization of habitat construction materials on Mars based on multi-criteria decision-making

“…Their different main properties, advantages, and disadvantages are also presented. There are three other types of concrete plaster of Paris-based gypsum, water-based ice concretes [51],…”

“…Water is one of the most significant components that play a decisive role in selecting materials for space habitat construction [51]. Some materials, such as Portland cement, require much water to hydrate, while materials, such as sulfur concrete, do not require water [158].…”

Design and Analysis of Homes for Mars Habitats

“…From this analysis, the ideal inflatable Mars home made of a carbon fiber composite would need an alpha ratio of 0.0005 at the minimum without any element cross-sectional area modifications, although this is only because of a large displacement at a center node of the roof because of low element stiffness in a specific element. Previous works have also created many different designs for potential Mars habitats, including a Mars ice home (Morris et al, 2016). In this paper, the design of a Mars ice home is thoroughly explained, along with a finite element analysis of the structure.…”

Multi-jet ice 3D printing

“…Humanity is exploring the possibility to create a habitat on Mars. Ice 3 D printing could prove as a house construction strategy due to the availability of ice on Mars, its properties such as thermal insulation and transparency and flexibility of the 3 D printing process (Morris et al , 2016). The summary of the ice 3 D printing research worldwide is given in Table 1.…”