Maybe humans will be soon literally pouring his blood, sweat, and tears on Mars he colonizes.
It takes a lot of money and labor to cover the 246 million kilometers needed to reach the red planet, much less to build the infrastructure needed to make it habitable.
This is the impetus for the new painstaking effort of researchers: saving a dollar by engineering construction components using human fluids. They have already done so with urine; they are now out of blood.
Researchers at the University of Manchester in England led the study, published Monday in the journal Materials Today Bio.
“The proverbial phrase‘ you can’t get blood from a stone ’is used to describe a task that is virtually impossible regardless of the force or effort exerted,” the authors wrote. “This phrase fits well with humanity’s first mission to Mars, which will probably be the most difficult and technologically challenging human endeavor ever undertaken.”
They continue to reiterate that Earth-bound materials would necessarily remain there, as the cost of transporting them would make the effort futile for the vast majority of humanity. Rather, we will need to harness Martian resources and, instead, our own bodies.
Introduce AstroCrete, a conjugated substance developed by astrochemists and engineers to serve as viable building blocks for space infrastructure. Scientists believe that the strengthening of human blood proteins imparts biological properties that could produce especially resistant bricks when mixed with Martian regolith, the dusty substance that covers the dehydrated planet.
In fact, the blood protein will coagulate, or “curdle,” to help create a more robust bond, helping to strengthen the AstroCrete block.
“The concept is literally blood clotting,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Aled Roberts.
Research is being done into the feasibility of using other body fluids. Other human resources in situ, such as hair and nails (keratin), dead skin cells (collagen), mucus, urine and humans [feces] they could also be exploited for their material properties in the early extraterrestrial colonies, ”the team said.
“Unfortunately, due to safety and health issues, we have not been able to explore humans [feces]-based [extraterrestrial regolith biocomposites] in this study, ”they added.
AstroCrete is so efficient that it can increase the compressive strength of regular blocks by 300% or more and can also be easily produced by 3D printing. Models indicate that a crew of six astronauts on Mars could produce more than half a ton of organic bricks, about 1,100 pounds, in two years.
This is enough material to “[double] available housing ”during each mission.
Researchers say they only take one page out of the book of prehistory, where archaeologists have returned time and time again to discover ancient innovations.
Said Dr. Roberts: “It’s exciting that a major challenge of the space age has found its solution based on the inspirations of medieval technology.”