Scientist’s Novel Development of ‘cosmic concrete’ to build houses on Mars

A group of UK scientists from the University of Manchester have done a novel development of concrete-like material called “StarCrete” that can be used to construct homes on Mars.

Similar to concrete, the material is manufactured from Martian dust or soil, potato starch, and a pinch of salt. Don’t try to compare it with baking by hearing about salt.

It will be an outstanding achievement as it is both prohibitively expensive and challenging to build infrastructure in space, thanks to Star-Crete being a potential solution. The substance is twice as strong as regular concrete and ideal for extraterrestrial construction projects.

The research group also demonstrated that regular potato starch could function as a binder when combined with simulated Martian dust or soil that resembles concrete.

During the compression strength test, the Star-Crete has double the compressive strength of 72 Megapascals (MPa) compared to ordinary concrete with 32 MPa. The synthesized concrete made from moon soil is also more robust, with 91 MPa compressibility strength.

According to a lead researcher, Dr Aled Roberts from the Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub, a space construction mission is costly and complex since existing building technologies require improvement, considerable energy, and heavy processing equipment.

And he ended his talk by saying that Star-Crete doesn’t require any of this, making the mission simplified, low-cost, and more feasible.

One day we will use this synthesized cosmic concrete to build infrastructure on earth as Robert’s newly launched startup DeakinBio is working on it and making cosmic concrete an eco-friendly concrete substitute.