Scientists are developing cosmic concrete from space dust and astronauts’ blood

Transporting a single brick to Mars can cost more than a million British pounds, making the future construction of a Martian colony seem prohibitively expensive. Scientists at the University of Manchester have now developed a way to overcome this problem by creating a concrete-like material made of extraterrestrial dust along with the blood, sweat and tears of astronauts.

In his study, published in Materials Today Bio, a human blood protein, combined with a compound of urine, sweat, or tears, could stick simulated moon or Mars earth to produce a stronger material than normal concrete, perfectly suited for construction work in extraterrestrial environments.

The cost of transporting a single brick to Mars has been estimated at about US $ 2 million, that is, future Martian settlers may not bring their own building materials, but will have to use the resources they can obtain in situ for construction and shelter. This is known as in situ resource utilization (or ISRU) and usually focuses on the use of loose rock and Martian soil (known as regolith) and scarce water deposits. However, there is one resource that by default will also be available, by definition, in any manned mission to the red planet: the crew itself.

In an article published today in the journal Materials Today Bio, scientists showed that a common protein in blood plasma – human serum albumin – could act as a binder simulating the moon or Mars dust to produce a concrete-like material. The resulting new material, called AstroCrete, had compressive strengths of up to 25 MPa (Megapascals), roughly the same as the 20-32 MPa seen in normal concrete.

However, the scientists found that the incorporation of urea (which is a biological waste product that the body produces and excretes in urine, sweat and tears) could further increase the compressive strength by more than ‘300%, with the best performance that has a compressive strength of almost 40 MPa, substantially more resistant than normal concrete.