Engineering fungal mycelium to create viable building materials for on Mars is not a small challenge. This project, which was inspired by conversations with Lynn J. Rothschild from NASA, whom we owe thanks both for the inspiration and subsequent sparring on ideas, has relied on a several scientific fields to try to tackle the problems we have found along the way. Our design inspired by the idea of simple and cost-effective construction on Mars, which its simplest terms says that instead of spending millions if not billions on transporting the materials needed for habitats to Mars, one could instead bring a set of vials: One vial with a cyanobacteria, which will harness the carbon in the atmosphere and the oxygen in the martian ice to create biomass that can be used as ‘substrate’ for fungal cultures to create range of biomaterials. Our project focussed on the fungal aspect of such a system and how it could be used to create building materials for habitat construction on-site. This exciting challenge raises many questions that have to be answered and even more problems have to be dealt with. First off, how does one cultivate fungi on Mars? Moreover, Which fungal species should we use? How do we make the system cost-effective? Are the strength of fungal materials determined by any distinct genes and it is possible to regulate these in a way that will make our materials even tougher? We set out to answer these questions, the answers of which guided the creation of our final design

Building Buildings on Mars

How to build buildings on Mars

When the first Martian settlers arrive, They’ll want to erect livable habitats; buildings. When using conventional construction methods, they’d be restricted to either having to use heavy machinery in order to move local building materials, or having to bring the construction materials with them. Both options are an expensive cut in the weight and volume budget of any space mission, where, especially, mass is the key parameter of the mission cost. This Projects’ novel approach is for the astronauts to pack a bag with fungal spores, in order for them to bring a super lightweight building material that is able to quickly grow into any shape by the aforementioned procedure in the first section. An obvious question is then: What physical parameters will the fungal bricks have to withstand, for them to be used as building material on Mars? Initially, constructed as a building, they’d have to be able to contain a livable pressures. The average pressure on earth is 1.013 bar with 21% oxygen. The lowest “human life sustaining” pressure is 0.121 bar, assuming a 100% oxygen concentration. The average Martian pressure is 0.006 bar. This is a meere 0.6% of the average barometric pressure on earth. What building design/geometry is the best at containing pressures? Let’s investigate a dome design and a box design.

Based on this small review, using an arbitrary volume, it was concluded that the dome is the superior design for the building geometry. Reasons are as follows: It uses less building material per volume, the strength demand is lower in the dome because of the force build-up in the corners in the box; demanding a stronger brick material for the box design. The dome is as a whole intrinsically better at distributing the forces throughout the structure. The dome can be constructed from a singular unitary brick design; the triangle. A dome can be constructed from a mix between hexagons and pentagons, but it turns out that if the dome is constructed from triangles, it is stronger and it is more convenient to only need to bring one mold for the bricks. After having sifted through the literature, it was decided that we are aiming to build and simulate a 3v dome. This means that the dome is constructed from two kinds if triangles with only slightly different side lengths. the combination of side lengths are as follows: AAB and BCC, where each letter denotes a distinct length. Our Final Brick design was based on these triangles with a meshing pattern, so that the triangles wouldn’t need additional materials to hold them together. They do it by utilising friction fit. When a dome has been erect, it would be sprayed with some curing agent, making the structure air-tight.