NASA and the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, known as America Makes, are hoping that additive construction innovators will design a deep space exploration habitat and then fabricate it in a new competition worth US $1.1 million for each of two winners. Phase One registration opened at the Bay Area Maker Faire on Saturday, and the second stage begins September 27.
The goal for the first stage is for competitors to design a workable 3D-printable habitat. In the second stage we will see teams working to develop fabrication technologies, and then implementing them in constructing the habitat with indigenous materials, and perhaps also recycled materials. The team that wins at phase one will be awarded $50,000; the two phase two winners will each receive $1.1 million.
Janet L. Anderson, a Marshall Space Flight Center spokesperson for NASA, emphasizes that NASA hopes competitors will "think outside the box," and be creative as they work to create their designs by leveraging advanced technologies.
"Teams may perhaps develop a way to use heat to fuse materials, or use a chemical reaction to solidify a slurry material," Anderson says. "Any of these groundbreaking technologies could win the 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, and go on to be a game changer for future NASA missions or commercial ventures."
3D printing is the technology that many, including NASA scientists, see as the best shot for further and safer space travel. In NASA's 2014 collaboration with Made In Space, a 3D printer was used at the International Space Station (ISS). Many of the competitions NASA has designed to elicit innovation from the public focus on the creation of 3D printed products to be used in space.
3D printing requires less material and power than traditional fabrication techniques, and this competition is designed to expand the current limits of what is capable with 3D printing.
"The challenge addresses the first major hurdle for printing a habitat, and hopefully spurs advancements in the material and systems capable of producing a habitat from indigenous and recycled materials," Anderson says. "Successful solutions may offer tertiary capabilities for sealing and pressuring the living space."
One of space exploration's most knotty problems today is the need to minimize payloads, while properly equipping astronauts and spacecraft for longer trips. Even colonization of other planets like Mars is hampered most not by getting or surviving there, but by the need to construct livable habitats there. This challenge is designed to solve this problem efficiently.
"Why carry spare parts when files can be uploaded from Earth and printed?" asks Sean Peasgood, president and CEO of Sophic Capital.
NASA and others believe that innovation from the general public and broader innovation community will be necessary to reach these goals.
"The future possibilities for 3D printing are inspiring, and the technology is extremely important to deep space exploration," says Sam Ortega, of NASA's Centennial Challenges program. "This challenge definitely raises the bar from what we are currently capable of, and we are excited to see what the maker community does with it."
One of NASA's challenges is to keep people engaged in their work even when the payoff from projects is far in the future. These competitions are part of that effort.
"It seems they've done an excellent job with the probes and the rovers in creating social media accounts to engage the wider public," says Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research, "but NASA is still pushing very hard for a manned program. So how do you keep people interested in a manned program that's still a ways off?"
$2.25 million is nothing to sneeze at, so it seems likely that there will be plenty of takers for this competition. The winners may well be instrumental in the colonization of other planets. And given how many young people have been solving major problems of humanity using 3D printing, there will almost certainly be many youthful competitors.
"NASA seeks to engage our youth to make this vision a reality," Peasgood says. "By engaging and partnering with the most creative and persistent minds on Earth-our youth-I am confident that off-planet colonies will happen in my lifetime."
If amazing, creative ideas about how to colonize space have always been floating around in your mind, now's the time to take a chance. Sure, you might just express your ideas in the form of an innovative proposal. But you might even become part of human history, key to the expansion into other worlds. If you're the kind of person who can solve NASA's problems, all of the possibilities should be irresistible.
