High-Level Project Summary
Our final development is called the “Mars Pod,” which is designed and built to be used for a multitude of purposes, such as a table for eating, a storage cabinet for personal items, a chair to sit on, and a bed to rest in. Think of this creation as a lego piece, simple but versatile, building on itself to create different items or objects. Furthermore, we went beyond the “Mars Pod” to develop automatic planters, a toilet, a rock sorter, a gravity-powered sorting system, hammers, rakes, hand shovels, small magnifying glasses, safety measures for lab work, human waste disposals, and more.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Why make your trip to Mars harder and more expensive when you can use the resources already available to you? Our Mars habitat is simple, modular, attainable, and durable. This habitat’s furniture would be entirely made up of 3D printed items and would be inhabitable.
We researched key topics that led us to develop both furniture and tools that would together create a livable space on Mars that is practical and comfortable. The topics that were included are as follows: Geology, survival and basic daily life equipment, and sports equipment.
Our final development is called the “Mars Pod,” which is designed and built to be used for a multitude of purposes, such as a table for eating, a storage cabinet for personal items, a chair to sit on, and a bed to rest in. Think of this creation as a lego piece, simple but versatile, building on itself to create different items or objects. Furthermore, we went beyond the “Mars Pod” to develop automatic planters, a toilet, a rock sorter, a gravity- powered sorting system, hammers, rakes, hand shovels, small magnifying glasses, safety measures for lab work, human waste disposals, and more.
Our development “solves” potential issues of space, time, and money by bringing furniture and tools to Mars by using the 3D printers to their fullest extent. This conclusion came about not only from the research, but from anticipating the unanticipated, and incorporating our unique, and individual ideas as a team.
We wanted to outfit a Mars habitat in a simple, modular, attainable. and durable way - so that the empty hub - containing almost only a 3D printer - could be settled.
In order to do this, we focused on specific topics - geology on Mars, survival on Mars, basic equipment for daily life, and even equipment for sports, and looked for things that we may not have anticipated needing or where we can enable novel/interesting designs.
Our main innovation is the “Mars Pod”. The concept is to have an easy to print concrete (8kgs of weight on Mars) basic building block for furniture that can be assembled and disassembled: a bed, table, chair or a storage unit.
This pod is easy to use and connects with other identical pods using a simple pin connector system.
The rapid re-deployment enabled by the Mars pods allows for quick adaptation of the Mars habitat according to changing mission parameters.
Trying to search for a high returns on investment in scientific equipment, we encountered geology, a field where massive breakthroughs and findings can be made with trivial tools. We went looking: What possible findings might there be? What tools do geologists on earth use, and what geologist might use when it comes to deep space exploration.
We believe that it was very significant to investigate how geologists work on Earth - since it is about decades of experience and learning lessons that they have in the field.
We found that they use simple tools, such as a hammer, a rake, and a compass - but we had to cut from these tools the tools they would have used if they had explored Mars.
In order to do this, we used a study from a research institute in Arizona where researchers examined a desert area in a way that should simulate the nature of research in outer space (in a similar way to analog habitats that exist around the world)
Finally, we concluded that the most useful basic tools for geologists on Mars are a hammer, rake, time, and a portable magnifying glass.
Another product we made is a gravity powered sorting system, the purpose of which is that given rubble from mars, it will separate the sand, small stones, and large stones - without the use of electricity, but by using only gravity.
In this way, the geologists will not have to separate different rock sizes manually if necessary
When we thought about survival we thought about one of the most basic needs a person mush have - food.
We thought of two useful basic products for the production of food for the inhabitants of the habitat, the first is an automatic self watering planters that requires minimal maintenance, built by mobile plastic boxes that resemble a strainer that are resting on a concrete planter filled with water. The roots of the plants use only with the amount of water they need for their survival, thus there is actually no need to continue watering them with high frequency.
The second product is a toilet that separates urine from feces. The goal is to use the feces as organic waste for the garden that’s in the habitat, and to get rid of the urine - which without special equipment cannot be turned into drinking water.
Additionally, we were asked to model a wheel for the Mars rover.
But, literally, we decided not to reinvent the wheel. We found a model of a proper wheel which meets our criteria for what we needed online, and edited it in a way that we saw fit our group.
Space Agency Data
Hackathon Journey
We started the night before the hackathon, with our first full team in person meetup (we met digitally once before to choose the challenge and team name). During this meetup we started looking more into the challenge and discussing what direction we want to take.
The following morning we found ourself at monkey tech HQ in tel aviv, after the morning briefing we went head first into the challenge.
Firstly we tried attacking the challenge from a variety of directions
We tried to understand the needs of the astronauts and the looks and feel of the space habitat. After a short time we already had one idea in our pocket our “marspod” a simple modular design that will be a piece of furniture in every room of the habitat (like a piece of lego) from there we continued working on ut but we kept looking further for more ideas and inspirations
During the whole hackathon we got really good support from our mentors and judges they challenged our ideas a thing that pushed us forward in addition they shared there expertise and gave us new directions to explore and we would like to thanks ohad basha and r
By the late afternoon we were trying to explore new directions with little success but we didnt give up
We decided to “regroup” and plan our next steps. We decided to explore 6 topics for new developments - medical , recycling, scientific tools, geology, cartography and sport.
After a long night of research and some sleep done on our comfy chairs we went back to work. We had new ideas to design and work on.
Sadly at this time one of our team member became ill and had to go home so from 4 we became 3.
Then when the time to present came we made our final edits and worked on our presentation. We felt we had made a good work pitching the project, and rewarded ourselves with some dinner. After a short lecture, we were headed for some final touches and the submission of this very form.
When we started we thought the challenge wasn't clear enough and was to broad and with no specific direction but after seeing what we and other group made and the different directions each group took we think it was great and we had a lot of fun.
Thank you MonkeyTech and SpaceApps for this opportunity!
References
Lens for geologists - https://www.printables.com/model/254759-handle-for-36mm-lens/files
Rover Wheel - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4794817
Tags
#Mars, #3D-Printing #Mars-Habitat-Solutions