Inside the strange world of 3D printing Martian homes.
NEW YORK -- What are humans going to live in once they're on Mars? One company thinks it has the answer.
Earlier this fall, Space.com visited the main offices of AI SpaceFactory, an architecture and technology design agency that specializes in designing and 3D printing Martian habitats. The company recently competed in and won NASA's 3D-printed habitat challenge with a design called Marsha.
AI SpaceFactory founder and CEO David Malott took Space.com around this space factory here to see what it really takes to build a Martian habitat.
A visualization showing a potential interior for Marsha, the winner of NASA's 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge. (Image credit: AI SpaceFactory/Plomp/NASA)
"The whole reason to do that is, it's too expensive to ship materials to Mars," Malott said to Space.com. "We want a place for the astronauts to stay in," he added. When we are ready to send humans to live on the surface of Mars, they will need somewhere to live. But construction equipment and materials are large and heavy, and it would be both difficult and extremely expensive to send them to another planet....