NASA is holding a 3-D printer construction competition for applications in outer space specifically on Mars. Apis Cor has won in various segments of this competition. There are many other companies competing in this NASA Space construction competition yet Apis Cor continues to stand out among the crowd. Construction on Mars comes with its own set of challenges. The atmosphere of Mars is less protective from radiation in the atmosphere on earth. This means that in order to ensure the safety of a human being on Mars a building will need to shield the people inside from the radiation in the external environment. This also means that the buildings will need to be perfectly airtight if the outer shell is permeable then the structure will not be safe to inhabit on mars.
Another massive consideration when contemplating construction on Mars is the material that you will build with. Due to the astronomical costs of sending things in this space per pound, it would be extremely costly to ship in all of the building materials. It is likely that initial structures will have material shipped in but in order to sustainably build on Mars we will need to come up with material solutions that are made from Mars’s natural soil. This natural soil on Mars is called regolith. Regolith is made up of a variety of metals and other elements that can absolutely be used in construction. It has been hypothesized by Universities that regolith can be heated up to temperatures around 3500°C in order to burn off excess elements and leave only the strong building materials. Regolith is abundantly available on Mars so if we are able to team the soil on the planet of Mars into a practical construction material it will get us one step closer to establishing a human colony on what was once thought as an uninhabitable planet