Scientists from the University of Manchester have created a new building material called StarCrete. Thanks to the potato starch and a pinch of salt, it might make it possible to build extraterrestrial dwellings.
After the mushroom, the potato has become the latest food to be considered for building the houses of the future.
This discovery comes following the American architecture firm Red House announced that it is working with NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to build dwellings in space made of mushrooms and dehydrated algae.
Ensuring a lasting human presence on the moon and Mars requires figuring out how to build robust and durable habitats that provide protection from radiation. There is also a need to find high-strength materials from local resources: ideally, their production should be the result of relatively simple, low-energy processes.
In their experiments, the scientists used ordinary starch with a pinch of salt – magnesium chloride, which can be found on the surface of Mars, or in the tears of astronauts – to produce “a very resistant biocomposite material” whom they baptized StarCrete.
In an article published in the scientific journal Open Engineeringthe scientists explain that the results obtained made it possible to create a material twice as strong as ordinary concrete and “perfectly suitedto construction work in extraterrestrial environments.
“After optimization, Lunar and Martian StarCrete achieved compressive strengths on the order of concrete and outperforms most other technology solutions, despite being a relatively energy-efficient process.“, say the authors of the study.
Why is potato starch so special?
“Basically, potato starch makes a better glue than other starches,” lead researcher Dr Aled Roberts told Euronews Next.
It is also not necessary to have water to use it.
“_The advantage of using potato starch is that we know that we will produce some form of starch to feed the astronauts anyway, so we can produce more of it and use it for construction. “, explains Mr. Roberts.
And if scientists fail to grow potatoes or other foods sustainably in extraterrestrial environments, “we can just take significant amounts of potato starch and use it as a binder“. The advantage is that in an emergency, the astronauts will also be able to eat it.
The team calculated that one bag (25 kg) of dehydrated potatoes (crisps) contains enough starch to produce almost half a ton of StarCrete, which is equivalent to more than 213 bricks of material.
Is the potato really a tangible idea for building extraterrestrial dwellings?
“There’s a good chance… but there’s still a long way to go before we start building habitats on the Moon and Mars“, says M. Roberts. “By then, we will probably have made many more discoveries. Someone will come up with a better idea and innovate. And that’s how things always, always go“.
Mr. Roberts’ start-up, DeakinBio, will continue to research other plant binders to build homes on Mars and the Moon, as well as explore “other crazy ideas to see what will come out of itBut for now, she’s also exploring how to apply her technology on Earth to create clean, sustainable alternatives to concrete and ceramic tile.
.jpeg?fit=%2C&ssl=1)
