NASA RAMA funding project to transform asteroids into spaceships: Report

NASA recently announced that it would give funds to a California-based 3D printing company to find ways to. According to media reports, the Made In Space project, known as RAMA (Reconstitution of Asteroids in Mechanical Automata), might one day allow the colonization of space by helping the company plans to use 3D printing to turn the asteroids into autonomous vehicles by 2030.

The concept has received funding through the Innovative Advanced Concepts program at NASA. "Today, we have the ability to bring Earth's resources," said Jason Dunn, co-founder and chief technology officer of Made In Space. [19] 659004] "But when we come to a tipping point where we need resources in outer space, the question becomes," Where do they come from and how do we get them, and how do we get them? do we deliver them to the place we need? & # 39; That's one way to do it, "he said.

The company plans to send a cutting-edge robot" Seed Craft "to rendezvous with a succession of near-Earth asteroids in space, as part of its long-term project.

The Seed Craft would collect material from the space rocks, then use that load to build propulsion, navigation, energy storage and d & # 39; Other on-site key systems with the help of 3D printing and other technologies., Asteroids could be programmed to fly to a mining station in the Earth-Moon space or anywhere else.

This approach would be much more effective than launching a new capture probe (or probes) in each space, but since RAMA is still in the early stages, Dunn estimated that the effort could take 20 years and that the first Seed Craft could take off at the late 2030s.

RAMA Project c. Mr. Dunn added that machines similar to Seed Craft could do a variety of jobs around the world.

"You can build the infrastructure in remote locations rather autonomously, and convert the resources into useful devices and mechanical machines.This could actually solve very big problems on Earth, from housing to construction of things that improve people's lives, "he said.