Building Bricks on the Moon from Potatoes
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 มิ.ย. 2024
- Scientists came up with a method to produce concrete on the Moon and Mars using potato starch. In this interview, I'm talking with Dr Aled Roberts, who is the Principle Investigator of this research.
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00:00 Intro
01:06 Building materials from biomaterials
07:06 Challenges of building on the Moon and Mars
10:20 From human blood to potato starch
19:02 How to implement the tech
26:46 DNA manipulation
32:36 Alternative applications
38:00 Outro
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I know my Pappenheimers, it is only a question of time before the moon dwellers will make vodka of their houses and we must send tents to them so they have somewhere to sleep at night
Sounds legit. Checks out.
We'll have to decide what's more important - fermenting potato starch for moon vodka, or making breweries for moon vodka out of potato starch.
You just know it'll be the vodka.
There are portions of the Great Wall of China where rice starch was added to the mortar used to hold the stones or bricks together. It has resulted in the mortar being more durable than the masonry, leaving behind voids surrounded by the mortar. Of course, this is undesirable in a masonry structure. It results in both the masonry unit and the mortar needing to be replaced, where normally the masonry unit can be preserved and only the mortar has to be replaced. But quite interesting I think.
Wow, I had no idea. That's really interesting.
Always love the ideas on how to use plants and bacteria to help us in space. Id love to see more interviews like this, especially ones talking about using nitrogen fixing bacteria to create nutrient soil from regolith
They also make plastics or plastic-like materials out of potato cellulose. It's you're growing potatoes to make starch, you could also use the cellulose from the same potatoes to make plastic linings, a plastic outer shell for the bricks, and/or even line the inside and outside or the shelter to make sure it's extra air tight and add another layer of protection.
You can also make simple tools from it.
The potato spoons and forks I've had experience with seemed to be a lot harder to break because they would just bend and flex instead of snapping. They seem a lot more resistant to snapping than regular plastic utensils. I'm sure the formula could be adjusted easily to make it as rigid or soft as you want/need and then 3d print a screwdriver, or some drill bits from it.
Basically, the potato could give you almost everything you need. A source of food to eat in your moon base made of potato starch and cellulose, full of shelves made out of the same stuff, and fastened to the wall using potato cellulose screws and screwdriver (or drill bit).
I think I've also seen or heard of potatoes being (or could be) used to make biofuels.
Such a fascinating interview. The excitement and enthusiasm on both sides of the conversation were more pronounced than some interviews, which was uplifting to hear and see. Thanks for all you do Fraser!
(Edit: grammar)
This is totally the dude who starts the zombie apocalypse while trying to make moon bricks. That’s the sci-fi novel premise.
"You'd have to take a couple of extra humans..."
I lol'd! This was a great interview. Thanks!
More efficient than a bio-reactor! 😂 Vampronauts.
Super interview! Man, that was fascinating. Thank the both of you.
Wonderful chat ! Especially loved the part about programming cyanobacteria to produce necessary molecules / medicines / materials…. really fascinating
I love the thinking toward sending tech to interplanetary outputs that can potentially do things we haven't thought of yet, and can send the details on photons. This means that new tech can spread faster than Hohman transfers. This matters a lot in modeling how fast we can take over the Sol system. (I'm writing fiction in that domain.)
Potatoes are versatile. You can make vodka, the world's best comfort food (poutine), bullets, batteries and now moon bricks.
Has a study on the storage of whole blood in a low gravity been performed (for human med use)?
What about composting? Would that have to happen in a pressure dome? Do things rot the same way on Mars? Would we have to provide the microbes to get the composting process started? Is there radiation proof glass for greenhouse use? Or so we garden in radiation suits? Thanks - great work
😁💪🏽🎓
Yes, you would have to compost inside of a pressure dome as bacteria need some atmosphere and heat to survive. At the very least an insulated plastic bag or container. As long as you bring along bacteria either in your fecal matter or specifically for the purpose, things will still rot on Mars if you had it in a compost heap in a pressure dome. If you left it outside it would just get freeze dried. You would have to bring bacteria because there are none on Mars. Yes indeed, leaded radiation-proof glass does exist and was in every old CRT monitor and TV. Such glass domes would stop most radiation but you'd want to be having robots do that anyways as you would have far more important tasks to be doing.
Potatoes is a fantastic idea at first glance Sir Star, I think I have heard in a previous podcast/ Q and A, where you described mycelium as well as a form of creating structures on various “foreign”(for now) planets/moons as well as a way to use the planets/moons substrate to facilitate infrastructure ❤️😊
My mate made algae based solar panels was just commenting on mycelium waiting for site to open up to build an autoclave to bake mycelium airframes i like the idea of carbon capture to generate physical tangible things people consider to be high tech or fossil fuel related plus when you autoclave the mycelium in space most the places have low atmo so you're kind of getting a good energy recovery by being able to use a small amount of bleed from the gas off cycles to recapture the water and with clever bleed tubes can even separate the oxygen to boot
Great interview, thanks!
That's why the aliens are harvesting cattle. Aliens need GLUE!
Speaking of crazy. Send teens to build space habitals.. They have a lot of excess body fluids :)
The overall idea is to work there, not only secrete bodily fluids
Oh man I just love that some scientist pointed out that it's not water resistant and helped somebody in the future
Details. Years ago I read an article/photoshoot with a model wearing a non waterproof bikini. Apperantly not meant for bathing. The problem was rust if I don't misremember. Another problem with the classical fantasy troupe of a chainmail bikini.😄
Aled Roberts said constraints were important. Long ago Ben Franklin said it better: "Necessity is the mother of invention."
If your heading to Mars then you probably have a nuclear reactor with you for nearly unlimited power, if it's a thorium reactor it can happily chug along at 700C, enough to sinter bricks if you get their chemistry right.
If you are on the moon, a solar furnace would work fine, and could easily reach temps of 4000C with only 200 square metres of reflectors, and you could run it constantly 11 days out of 22. And it could be made out of foil so would be incredibly easy to ship there.
Fascinating indeed! Thanks for the interview, Fraser! 😃
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Starch breaks down under UV, so for this to be viable you'd have to see if the mixing of cement with it would negate the damage that high UV environments like the Moon and Mars would cause
I wish you were on Nebula. I hate all of youTube's commercials!
As for water availability for whatever you're trying to produce, if you have sufficient energy (a 50 MW fission reactor would be nice for a settlement), and you're located at mid latitudes on Mars, water is not an issue -- you have a very, very large amount of water ice available. Mars _does not_ lack for water.
Yeast can be engineered to produce starches. That might be useful. Mushroom bricks is an interesting potential area also -- myceliated bio-substrates.
I wonder what is dissolved in Martian water? Perchlorates? Will it be difficult/pricey to filter into potable water?
@@eddyelectron9234 - If you're trying to get water out of disseminated ice crystals in the regolith, at low latitudes, dealing with percholates while processing that soil could be a problem. But with higher-latitude, massive, basically glacial water ice, which is prevented from sublimating by 1 to 3 meters of regolith on top of it, percholates shouldn't be an issue.
Percholates and other sorts of chloride salts could possibly allow for liquid phase salty mush water to exist near (possibly on) the surface, maybe under ice sheets, for some time. That liquid water would be something you certainly couldn't just drink, yeah.
Another fantastic interview, Fraser! Your connection of Dr Roberts research to the amazing possibilities embodied by Cyanobacteria leads me to think their is a book to be written about the subject. Due to its speculative nature, maybe a scientist wouldn’t want to pursue that, but maybe a scientifically-oriented journalist with a tremendous interest in the subject could explore the ideas?
I understood about nothing about what he talked about, but I enjoyed it
Just a thought I had. You said that this Star Crete falls apart in water, but there's no rain on the moon or mars. But what happens if the water tank in your base springs a leak or breaks open? If there's humans there there must be some kind of water storage.
That could be a problem depending on how fast it dissolve.
Our cabin is on 40 acres' of mostly sand and the woods and marshland of a National Forest in Northwest Michigan. It would be cool to make brick, blocks, and structures, someday, with easily obtained local components from the site.
I suspect these techniques will have a role to play here on Earth first. Making concrete without greenhouse gas would be a gamechanger.
Interesting kitchen building. What a fun adventure in materials science. Hawk enough loogies and you got a house going.
Will this concrete shed dust over time? Would you need an airtight liner inside? Fascinating interview!
Potato starch haven't heard that one as a building material I'm always hearing about mycelium as a building material
Cool!
Maybe check out the guy 3D printing with sand and a fresnel lens. There's your cheap sintering. They already have yeasts that make morphine. Very interesting.
You might consider putting a highpass filter on your guest's voice. there are booms of bass intermittently on some of your interviews. webcam audio sucks so it's a challenge, I know.
Unbelievable interview. So many ideas for my colonization novel :)
I can imagine a test scenatio where they land set up in the Sahara with some Blue Origin solar panel factories and start farming Potatoes and cranking out bricks
Would it be good to use roman concrete for rocket launch pads ?
I wonder if the excess strength means it will not require rebar. I also wonder what architecture shapes will work best in a low g environment.
I'm sure there'll be a limit, you might get more compressive strength, but not tensile strength that you get with reinforced concrete. But it's also lower gravity, so who knows what the sweet spot will be?
Question: How will some of these Moon & Mars concrete substitutes withstand radiation? Will they break down over time?
I would think that compressive strength is minimal, tensile strength is more important. You have to build shelters that can handle inside atmospheric pressures of 5 to 15psi Nd needs to be impervious to the air inside to hold it in
Blue concrete could be stunning on the Moon. Turn the moon into Santorini!
I wanted to share an idea of using mealworms as a bonding agent because they are high in protein and need less water to grow, I’m guessing... Or you could grow rock hard Mushroom Bricks.??
Tater bricks? That's nuts
No, that'd be pistachio bricks.
Ironic that someone working in Manchester should invent a building material that dissolves in the rain.
7:00 Per taking protein from blood: What about amyloid proteins being taken from human blood, in particular transthyretin? This method would be dual use: medical and scientific and could get you some rare disease government biotech grants.
"Amyloidosis is the name for a group of rare, serious conditions caused by a build-up of an abnormal protein called amyloid in organs and tissues throughout the body. The build-up of amyloid proteins (deposits) can make it difficult for the organs and tissues to work properly.
The name amyloid comes from the early mistaken identification by Rudolf Virchow of the substance as starch".
You must credit, "SomeGuy" if you use this idea.
As far as melting materials on the moon, could you use mirrors to focus sunlight? That should be cheaper than solar panels and nuclear reactors.
ESA have been experimenting with concentrating sunlight to sinter regolith into structural shapes.
I think they were using Fresnel lenses.
The bioreactor mention of making bricks from blood and urine... sounds like some weird twisted version of the sanpo... lol
As we say in Kentucky, "In'Noh' Vay' Shun'".
Would the rammed earth method of making bricks and walls work on the moon and mars?
I guess I'll believe it when I see it. I've been into mycology even on a commercial level for over a decade and keep hearing how they are gonna build houses out of fungus. Or packaging out of fungus. Yet it never seems to happen. Paul Stamets was talking about using fungus for building I think back in the eighties maybe sooner. Yet here we are and still no mushroom houses. I'll still grow mushrooms and sell spawn but I understand their place in the greater ecosystem.
Hopefully the holdback is that such buildings isn't economically viable here on Earth. If so it may be worth it for off Earth colonies.
@@michaelpettersson4919 Well fungus eats lignin and cellulose. So you gonna grow trees on Mars then make buildings out of the fungus that eats them?
@@alaskansummertime I am hardly an expert but my point is that maybe there are stuff we can grow on Mars. Perhaps build a building shaped mesh and let something grow into it?
@@michaelpettersson4919 fungi are saprophytes. Not plants.
@@alaskansummertime I know that. Lwts just say that my point is that conditions may make something unsuitable in one place but acceptable somewhere else.
Rain no, but humans do require humidity in the air inside the habitat. They must have some way of making it water proof.
would gelatinous materials be easier to produce in volumes on another planet, like with amber you could hold rocks and minerals in suspension to make floors and walls and such like with amber it might be possible to have windows if it's possible to alter opacity with pouring or setting with something akin to pouring molten metal into an ingot
Amber takes millions of years to form and is fossilized tree sap, so they won't have the time or the trees on another planet.
Phosphorus is a common limiting compound in biological systems on Earth because it tends to become tightly bound and removed from the cycle. I don't know how this would apply to this situation but I could see that it might be a problem.
His voice is the same as myn - I found my voice twin (see Friends series - hand twin for context and my amazement)
A solar furnace used to melt moon dust into bricks would be easer !
I don't see why earthbag construction wouldn't be a great option. It would be easy and low cost. Instead of using barbed wire between the courses, one could probably use velcro strips to hold the bags in place.
Probably better to use generic hook-and-loop fasteners, or Velcro will want royalties.
Question: In regard to galactic magnetic fields why we do not see paramagnetic elements, like Aluminum, collected in strong magnetic field regions, and diamagnetic elements, like Bismuth, collected in weak magnetic field regions? The effects of galactic magnetic fields over time should result in a separation of the elements and be visible using spectrographic techniques, shouldn't it?
The fields are ridiculously weak.
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Shouldn't this title not have been "Vampire bricks invading the Moon" or something like that? 🤣
Maybe before, but now it's just harmless potatoes.
@@frasercain So... "Vampire bricks on the Moon - only vegans survive"?
`fungus foam is the one grow fungus foam from waste materials and use algae to seal it a friend of mine made an algae based solar panel in the 90's so you could coat the foam in several layers of algae to build solar array then a protective skin of algae to seal the inner and outer surface of the foam whole thing would be light produce a miniscule amount of power on mars I'd imagine but maybe enough to run some small iot devices, On the moon you could probably get away with pumped solar lasing to fuse the regolith much more sunlight there no annoying atmosphere stealing your light this also generates oxygen as a byproduct so building and breathing materials the oxygen is an annoying byproduct here on earth so once you've established pumped laser stations on the moon would be a great way of subsidising the economy and producing oxygen
I thought nasa would use sand of moon or mars to make glass panels to expand their bases on moon and mars
I am not sure I consider it a compliment when a scientist call me a bio-reactor, notice I feel like more than a basic biological process
Would you prefer meatbag? 🤖
@@jtjames79 - no, more something like: Ah, but what a piece of work is man. How noble in reason, infinite in faculties. In form, and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!
@@doncarlodivargas5497 And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Surely all calculations should be done on the back of potato crisp / chip packets?
That only seems right.
isn't the hardest part of building on mars and the moon to make things air tight. ie expanding the actual living space, not building a garage for your rover. Why isn't this mentioned in all the construction plans?
What about toe nail and hair clippings and shaving clippings? Ear wax? Eye wax?
A ground up tooth?
I would be willing to loose a tooth for a house.....
Should have called it Spudcrete.
Ah, moon taters to make moon bricks.
So, where were they planning to get the carbon? Sinter-crete still wins.
hmm walls that dissolve in water... welcome to water wars on mars! be the 1st to dissolve your opponent's base!
Why do people think we will build on top of mars rather than boring into mars? It might be cheaper to just bore into the ground and make giant tunnel systems and use ice to make oxygen and fill the tunnels with oxygen.
This would solve a lot of the radiation issues that come from not having a magnetosphere.
You'll still need roads, landing pads, sheds, etc.
@@frasercain I’d agree with that stuff for sure, but a lot of mars mission animation videos seem to have this idea that we are going to just build a couple of yurts above the surface. Surely some of that will exist, but I think most people and “sustainable” martian society would take place underground.
Russia: Heavy breathing 🥵
A pound or two of uncompounded drugs to stock an off-planet pharmacy wouldn't cost that much to ship. It'll cost much more to send medical equipment and supplies.
🖤👽🖤
Couldn't moon dust be sintered with a big fresnel lense and sunlight? I kind of forsee a 3d printing bot that strains out a thin layer of moon dust, and then rolls around with a one meter fresnel lense, melting a structure together one layer at a time...
You've just invented exactly what ESA have been experimenting with.
Their bot lays out a thin layer of moon dust, then concentrates sunlight to sinter the edges and some internal cross members until a structure emerges.
Yeah, they discussed that in this video but it takes far more energy to melt regolith than to use that light to grow potatoes.
For Mash get Smash ! 😁
Would the vegetables not be poisonous if grown in poisonous Martian soil?
You wash the regolith first to remove the perchlorates.
@@frasercain Thank you. That makes sense. Mind you, getting astronauts alive to Mars is another problem as they have to travel through 6 months of radiation, and then survive the radiation on Mars and an unbreatheable atmosphere which is continuously getting thinner. Would you want to live there permanently where there are no trees and bushes to turn green again every spring? I am enthusiastic about space but I still think that Earth is the most pleasant planet.
@@paulanizan6159 Radiation shielding on the ship is done though putting the water tanks on the outside. Water is an excellent absorber of radiation. Once on the surface, people would live mostly in buildings either buried in regolith several feet thick, inside caves or lava tubes, or in the sides of cliffs. All of these options use several feet of rock or more as a shield. The rate at which Mar's atmosphere is thinning does not matter on human time scales and no one is going to be attempting to breath it. Mars of course will not start with any trees or bushes, but we will bring them. The things you love about Earth die with Earth if we do not spread them to other worlds and Mars will be the first time we do this. It may take many thousands of years, but one day people will be able to walk on the surface without a breathing mask and look at the green spreading out over the red and blue.
Good luck with Mars. It is much closer to the asteroid belt than Earth.
Good luck with Mars. It is much closer to the asteroid belt than Earth.
I get it, they are planning to do a Matt Damon Martian!!!!!!!
Mark Whatney could grow potatoes to build a house on Mars.
NOPE, I AM surprised he didn't figure out how to make sheetrock with regolith and pimple juice. Maybe in a few more years he will think of mixing in beard hair in for strength.
Now that's thinking out of the box.
It's cool, but... Why? Someone already made a 3d printer that can use lunar regolith, didn't they? Don't need to grow potatoes then convert them lol
i see another potato famine
The Irish are at it again
We are going to need all the potatoes we can lay our hands on here on earth very shortly as climate change and global warming becomes apocalyptic.
Any grown in space will need to be launched back to the ground, possibly as baked potatoes.
The earth heating up will render these half baked ideas as time consuming and completely irrelevant.
Lucky CO2 liquefies so easily in tanks. It will be easy to ship carbon and oxygen over. WAY easier than shipping O2 buy itself. No cryogenic storage for CO2. Might as well let the carbon be a hanger on for convenience.
Its April the first time in desperate attempts to make moon/mars colonies viable . If only homeless people new this simple technique using thrown away chips even !
You've watched The Martian too many times
...almost like science fiction inspires science and leaves the realm of fiction, like the phone you posted with.
You have to have a Pub and a Spittoon to get the Buckets of Spit and piss to build this smelly house with,
condensation will form on the walls making them get rather wet,
And there will be a lot of Piss artists 😵💫 !
Go UK brains lol
How do you bring potatoes to the moon? Like other building materials? ;-)
What a waste of food!
Why is the camera halfway up this kid's nose? Zoom out, man. Frasier, you're cropped close, too.
Unfortunately that was his setup. The farther back, the worse his audio.
@@frasercain oh dang
So is this another depopulation plan to weaken humanity because we kinda need those for eating
this is clickbait. the original proposal was clickbait.
why not just use melted regolith? the dirt and sun are already there. why not use sulfur concrete on mars?
"let bring all this water and food to the moon and mars to build stuff even though it could be better used for literally anything else"
As he said in the interview, the downside of sintering is energy, which is one of the most demanded inputs in a lunar or martian colony. I'm not sure why you think it's clickbait, they actually did the research and built bricks with vastly more compressive strength than concrete. Stronger than what might be possible with sintering.
Do you think he should be forbidden from doing this research? Should I be forbidden from reporting on it?
How is it click bait if the video is about exactly what the title said it was? “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”
didnt know potatoes grew that well on the moon or has someone watched the martian with mat damond too many times... still it dont solve the problem of building a base with the materials in situ you would have to bring a LOT of potatoes with you.... NEXT IDEA this one is BROKEN