[ad_1]
NASA recently announced that it would give funds to a California-based 3D printing company to find ways to turn asteroids into giant, self-contained space ships capable of flying to outposts in space. The In Space project, known as RAMA (Reconstitution of Asteroids in Mechanical Automata), could someday allow the colonization of space by helping to make above-ground manufacturing efficient and economically viable, Space.com . use 3D printing to turn asteroids into autonomous vehicles by 2030.
The concept received funding through NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program, which will provide $ 1,00,000 for feasibility studies.
"Today, we have the capacity," said Jason Dunn, co-founder of Made in Space and chief technology officer, quoted by the newspaper.
Image of representation. Reuters
"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 to the place where we need? & # 39;
The company plans to send an advanced robotic seed robot to get to the rendezvous with a succession of near-Earth asteroids in the space, as part of its project to long term.
The Seed Craft would harvest the material from the space rocks, then use this load to build propulsion, navigation, energy storage and other key systems on-site with the help of l & rsquo; 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 efficient than launching a new capture probe (or probes) in each space. However, given that 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 in the late 2030s [19659002] RAMA Dunn Project added that machines similar to Seed Craft could do a variety of jobs around the planet.
"You can build the infrastructure in remote locations rather autonomously, and convert resources into useful devices and mechanical machines, which could actually solve very big problems on Earth, from housing to housing. building things that improve people's lives, "he said
[ad_2]
Source link
