Dirtbuilders
Superadobe provides an excellent manufacturing material. Construction simply requires uisng compacted earth in sandbags, built around a wire frame and covered in plaster, yet it produces buildings that are resistant to earthquakes! Dirtbuilders is a combined service by multiple, small, Earth-based companies who offer expertise and long term improvements on Superadobe lunar and Martian structures. They have done research allowing the use of martian and lunar soil in their Superadobe, minimising transport costs. Moreover, recent developments in 3D printing technology of Superadobe allow for rapid home construction with excellent thermal insulation properties.
They offer mixing agents for superadobe to make it set with exposure to other chemicals within five seconds, rather than by evaporation of moisture while also doubling the shear strength of the material. This allows more abrupt overhangs to be built into designs.
In Lunar gravity, default SuperAdobe structures can be built up to 21 metres high and 15 metres in diameter. The height may be multiplied by 1.5 for chemically modified material or doubled if the diameter is multiplied by 1.5 times. Dirtbuilders recommend usage of this product with Large Print mobile printers. They also offer an alternative tool head for 3D Logistics/Large Print mobile printers which can apply continuous fibres into the superadobe or apply a stitched layer of material along the outer or inner surfaces of the printed structure*. The fibres/fabric must be sourced elsewhere.
The additive is sold for $2,000 per kg, has a density of 2,000 kgm-3, and should be mixed in a ratio of 1:16 with superadobe mixture by volume. The print heads run to $12,000 per unit.
* The strength of the fibre/fabric reinforced superadobe along the fibre direction may be calculated by the mixture rule (XC = Xf Vf + Xm (1 – Vf)), where Vf is the fibre volume fraction, and XC, Xf and Xm are the properties of the composite, fibre and matrix respectively).
This webpage refers to a fictional company which is part of the UK Space Design Competition. No information presented here or implied herefrom should be regarded as factual. Any similarities with real events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.