A NASA engineer's plan | Live on Mars has become possible

A NASA engineer's plan | Live on Mars has become possible





The pioneering professor in engineering at the University of Southern California has been working with NASA on the possibility of building a colony on Mars since 2011.





You're not the first person to suggest building on Mars. What makes your plans better?

When I read about the moon and Mars -- the conditions, the habitats -- I realized that almost all of the existing ideas involved taking materials and components from Earth and building with those materials.





Does the weaker gravity on Mars pose a problem?

The gravity on Mars is a third of that on Earth, and the moon's is a sixth. But actually that's beside the point, because my 3D printing processes don't depend on gravity. The printers extrude by force, with pressure



Before we start building, what will the robots need to set up?

On Earth, there would be people to install the 3D printers, connect them to an energy line of some sort -- like a power grid. But in space, it all has to be done autonomously





What's the time frame for all this?

I believe building in space is going to become commonplace in less than 50 years. There's an abundance of energy and materials (in space) -- all we have to do is design self-replicating factories and build a lot of objects. In a short time, our capability to manufacture in space will be many times what we can do on Earth.