Fancy printing yourself a house, on the moon?

It seems a consortium consisting of some famous architects and ESA and a number of other organisations.

They plan to first send an inflatable frame to the moon, then use purpose built 3D printers to harvest raw materials from the moon itself and then print a hard shell onto the inflatable frame.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21293258

All sound very sci fi to me. We live in interesting times. Although there's one phrase I can't seem to get out of my head. It goes something like, 'this is the voice of the mysterons'.

 

Cor! Saves carting all those bricks & mortar up there. Imagine having to wait for Jewsons to deliver.

 

WARNING *Very old joke alert*

Reminds me of the bloke who once tried to open a pub on the moon.
Didn't work though.....place had no atmosphere.

 

3D printers have been around for a while, in fact, they have print blood vessels already... it's quite astonishing really. Aside from the obvious ethical pitfalls, the ability to take your genetic code, and print organs on a 3D printer has such massive implications to life span.. it's unreal.

 

We used "3D printing" in the early 90's . It was just called stereolithography then and the part was made by firing ultraviolet light into a plastic curing material . It was used to make prototype patterns for turbocharger parts . The complexity of the parts made was very impressive.