“S”Martians

Ismailia | Outfitting a Mars Habitat: A 3D Print Challenge

SMartians

High-Level Project Summary

This project is concerned with developing a habitat for the astronaut in his one year mission. The project was focusing on designing tools and furniture using the least amount of materials that take up small spaces. For this purpose, a multifunctional tool that provides several types of instruments was designed for the astronaut to construct his habitat. A rover wheel was designed with some modifications that solve the limited types of materials issue. Also, to facilitate the daily life of the astronaut, a sofa bed made of concrete and plastic was designed to reduce the used space in the day and used as a bed at night. A drawer small enough was designed to be used under the sofa bed.

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cG_Yx-Lp5UYf0TD92B97MDwzyGACM7AF/view?usp=sharing

Link to Project "Demo"

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17RAnIgzNU8t1KLZ3-L8H7050Y9JbddXD?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

Our idea focuses on providing the astronaut with the habitat essentials from tools, furniture, and even games, the 3D designing of these habitat will be built by deferent 3D printers and will be collected and constructed by the astronaut. As one rover wheel is missing, another should be built. Due to the limited materials, the wheel itself would be made of plastic which can also help in adding some fine details in the tire, the fine details that will be added to the tires were chosen after research and it will make a shape of berseveralces as this shape is the most fitting to the mars ground texture . The inside metal part would be replaced with concrete with metal sticks held in between to prevent the inside from breaking. Also the kind of rover wheels in which the tires are made of chains was cancelled from the beginning as the metal supply isn't enough, and if it was made from plastic it would easily be destroyed. To make sure the astronaut can fix anything or even build the mentioned designs, it was taken into consideration to build a multi functional tool where it would take the shape of a pliers but the head (that opens and closes) would take the shape of a hammer and an ax from the outside, this head will be made from metal. The first handle would have a scissor, a sanding stick, and a knife in and out of it. A metal stick would be inserted inside the second handle with the top removable and can be switched with other tops to give a variety of choices between screwdrivers and others. Using this design, the astronaut can have all different kinds of tools in just one tool. Giving the best possible use of materials. The handles are made of plastic, the head is made of concrete, while the tools coming in and out of each handle are made from metal. Space tethers are long cables which can be used For the astronaut to control propulsion, momentum exchange, stabilization and attitude control, or maintain the relative positions of the components of a large dispersed satellite/spacecraft sensor system, we'll design him the long cables associated with these jobs called space tethers, the handles will be made of two layers, a metal layer and a thicker layer of plastic. For the astronauts to be provided with sturdy anchors to use while they are working outside the spacecraft, handrails will be designed to be printed in plastic. A ratcheting socket wrench will be designed to be printed in plastic, the astronaut can use it to tighten and loosen nuts and bolts more efficiently than other wrenches. And for furniture the idea is to take up the least possible space for all the furniture as well as the least amount of material so it was decided to make a bed, a table and a chair all of them will be belt in the bed to save space the design of the bed will be like the hospital bed that folds and after it fold it will make the table and the chair will be under the bed like a locker.the base of the bed will be made from concrete as well as the chair and the table side of the bed will be plastic. It was decided to make useful games to entertain him and also train him and make him smarter so we thought of three games two for physical training and one for brain training. The first idea was to make him a ring that can be hanged inside the spaceship or on a stick outside it and to make him a plastic ball so he can play basket ball. The second game was to make him play rope skipping by a rope that he could find on the ship or by making a rope from fine plastic. We hope that our designs reach real astronauts and help them on their missions. The soft wear that we used to develop this project were 3D designing apps called fusion360 auto disk and blender app.

Space Agency Data

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/wheels/

We used the data for determining the structure of rover wheels will, and what are the requirements for it to function properly. So, it helped us in imagining the shape and the design of the wheel.

https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/24910/curiositys-and-perseverances-wheels/

That one had a huge impact for our knowledge it made us more aware of the different types of the rover wheel, so we determined which one we are going to design based on the date there.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/3Dratchet_wrench

That one inspired us to design a socket wrench as we searched about its function and how it would be useful for the astronaut.

https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronomy/solar-system/mars.asp

Overview on mars

Hackathon Journey

Working on a team to the space apps challenge was an extraordinary experience that we learned from a lot, the challenge that we were working on was “building a Mars habitat” and this challenge required 3D designs for different astronauts habitat that can be made by 3D printers, we chose this challenge because we had imagined how important it is to the astronaut and how simple it is at the same time, also we imagined ourselves in the place of this astronaut and wanted to help him, another cause that made us choose this challenge particularly was that the technology of 3D printers is not popular to most of the world and it can make life much easier so we wanted to work on a challenge that can make using this technology more popular and easier. One of the things that we learned during the hakthone was to deal with stressed and work under any conditions, the competition was hard and all of the projects were qualified but we succeeded in taking a place and be from the winners. As every team our team phased some setbacks and challenges, most of the challenges we phased were technical problems as the 3D designs are kind of heavy on the laptop and makes it work slower but we solved this problem by transferring some of the designs to a mobile hard desk which helped us complete our project designs successfully. Finally we wanted to thank the event organizers for their effort and also our fab lab teacher MR Ahmed Khairy who was our mentor.

References