A futuristic 3D-printed house that lets guests 'experience Mars on Earth' will soon offer you the chance to experience what an interplanetary vacation of the future may be like, its creators say.
Nestled in the woods of upstate New York along the Hudson River, Tera will be hired out to holiday-makers hoping to experience what sustainable life could be like on Mars.
'Tera' is the brainchild of AI SpaceFactory, a New York City design agency that was awarded $500,000 (£386,000) earlier this year for winning NASA'S 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge with its previous 'Marsha' habitat.
Each stay will be used to fund the mission of the firm behind its design, which hopes to research and develop the renewable and sustainable technologies of the future.
This technology will be used both here on Earth and, they say, will be one day form the basis of a sustainable colony on the red planet.
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A futuristic 3D-printed house that lets guests 'experience Mars on Earth' will soon offer you the chance to experience what an interplanetary vacation of the future may be like, its creators say. Nestled in the woods of upstate New York along the Hudson River, Tera will be hired out to holiday-makers hoping to experience what sustainable life could be like on Mars
Tera's design and materials can be composted at the end of its life, bringing the out-of-this world, sustainable technology built for Mars back to Earth.
Tera was built from the same 3D printing technologies and compostable materials as Marsha for longterm, sustainable life on Mars.
Like its predecessor, the NASA-award-winning Martianhabitat Marhsa, Tera was constructed from from a 3D-printed biopolymer basalt composite, a material developed from crops like corn and sugar cane.
It was tested and validated by NASA as at minimum 50 per cent stronger and more durable than concrete.
Writing on the firm's website, a spokesman said: 'This material has the potential to be leaps and bounds more sustainable than traditional concrete and steel, leading to a future in which we can eliminate the building industry’s massive waste of unrecyclable materials.
'It could transform the way we build on Earth – and save our planet. Each Tera will build on the last until we achieve highly autonomous structurally performing human-rated habitats.
'Just like Marsha informed Tera, all the knowledge we gain from Tera will feed back into our extraterrestrial design and construction – ultimately enabling human life on Mars.'
Each stay at a pod will be used to fund the mission of the firm behind its design, which hopes to research and develop the renewable and sustainable technologies of the future. The technology used to build the pods will be used both here on Earth and, the firm behind it says, will be one day form the basis of a sustainable colony on the red planet
First invented in the 1980s by Chuck Hull, an engineer and physicist, 3D printing technology – also called additive manufacturing – is the process of making an object by depositing material, one layer at a time.
Similarly to how an inkjet printer adds individual dots of ink to form an image, a 3D printer adds material where it is needed, based on a digital file.
Many conventional manufacturing processes involved cutting away excess materials to make a part, and this can lead to wastage of up to 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) for every one pound of useful material, according to the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
By contrast, with some 3D printing processes about 98 per cent of the raw material is used in the finished part, and the method can be used to make small components using plastics and metal powders, with some experimenting with chocolate and other food, as well
