Martian soil produces bricks stronger than reinforced concrete.

In the solar system, there is a red planet has always been the scientists' "good heart", it is Mars.
its surface is covered with sand dunes and gravel, and it is a veritable desert planet.
, nasa announced in 2015 that it had discovered flowing liquid water on Mars, but its atmosphere was thin, its climate was cold, and carbon dioxide and dust were constant through the year.
to become a habitable planet, you first need to build strong buildings to guard against dust storms.
scientists from the University of California have recently demonstrated that Martian soil can be used to make bricks, and the quality is good! Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have been funded by NASA to develop a way to make bricks out of Martian soil, according to a new report from the US technology blog Start.com.
paper was published April 27 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
is the ultimate destination for human migration among the many sci-fi works.
people fantasize about setting up a paradise on Mars, but there are many difficulties in achieving this goal, mainly in two areas: first, mars has very little atmosphere, and second, Mars does not have a complete magnetic field.
the latter can be solved by artificial magnetic fields or the introduction of man-made moons, the former needs enough equipment to grow plants and reconstruct the atmosphere.
some people wonder, do you want to use spacecraft to transport Earth supplies to Mars? This method is feasible, but not realistic.
because Mars orbits elliptically, the distance from Earth is constantly changing, with the closest distance of about 55 million kilometers and the longer distance of more than 400 million kilometers.
it takes up to seven months for an existing spacecraft to reach Mars, and an average of about two years to get back and forth.
once Mars moves to a long-range location, the flight time will become longer.
, NASA thinks it's better to use local resources, such as Martian soil, than to transport supplies.
on the surface of Mars contains a large amount of iron oxide, which has been cured to a layer of red-yellow oxides under the long-term exposure of ultraviolet light from the sun.
researchers suggest that converting such Martian soil into solid building materials does not require the use of brick kilns or additives as it does on Earth, but rather compresses the soil with force, which is as easy as "a hammer."
The Mars brick is even stronger than the reinforced concrete University of California engineers originally studied not for Mars, but for brick-making, which reduces the polymer used in factory brick-making, so experiments were conducted using Martian soil simulators.
the latter is a collection of rocks from Earth, similar in chemical composition to Martian dust and similar in size to particles.
engineers studied the analog material for some time and found that simply adding the right pressure was enough to turn the soil into a small, hard block that was even stronger than reinforced concrete.
the first author of a new research paper, said the Mars explorers were brave enough to be pioneers of immigration and were honored to be their brick-making suppliers.
The specific brick-making process can be divided into two steps, the first step is to place the soil in an elastic container, such as a rubber tube, and the second step is to perform strong compression, such as a 5 kg hammer from 1 meter high to compress a flat round soil sample.
, a structural engineer at the University of California, San Diego, who is the project's lead researcher, said in an interview that this is a significant difference from making building materials on Earth.
, soil particles must be mixed with special types of adhesives to remain rigid.
adhesives work a bit like glue, fixing materials together.
in the Martian soil simulator, there happens to be a special chemical composition, like a natural adhesive, so that the experimental soil is crushed, with strength.
he also said that the nature of the Martian soil simulator is still fundamentally different from the real Martian soil, but if the new brick-making technology proves to be suitable for Martian soil, this is good news for anyone who dreams of immigrating to Mars.
, people's lives on Mars will require a lot of equipment, and relying solely on Earth's launch and transportation will be complex and expensive.
people living farther away from the earth, should rely less on transportation materials, otherwise they can not open up living space.
Repressing Martian soil bricks requires more research to support Jon Rask, a NASA life scientist who laughs that bringing a hammer can create solid "building blocks" on Mars, after which one can imagine explorers brandishing hammers on Mars.
, NASA has been planning to return to the moon, and engineers have been looking for ways to turn lunar soil simulations into building materials.
, unlike Martian soil, lunar soil needs adhesives to stick together.
the more adhesives you need, the more cargo you get from Earth, so the team has been looking for ways to use as little adhesive as possible.
used to require about 15% adhesive for building materials, advanced compression technology now allows for powerful lunar brick materials with only 3% adhesive content.
2010, NASA shifted its focus to Mars and found that the same compression model was also very effective for Martian soil simulators.
at first, the researchers found that just 6% of the adhesive could make it into bricks, then tested the threshold for bricking the soil and continued to reduce the amount of adhesive used, only to find that the Martian soil itself could stick together.
iron oxide in the soil is crushed, it is easy to break, forming a clean and flat surface.
when the surface is tightly pressurized, a high-strength pressure-resistant interface can be formed.
once the Martian soil can be used to make bricks, it can be used to build an craft landing place on Mars.
but the researchers also point out that brick making is not a complete solution, after all, no houses have been built on Mars.
team has only made miniature bricks, larger Martian bricks may not function well, and it is not clear how long the bonding will last.
addition, particles from soil bricks are gradually dispersed into the air, causing health problems if they are too large, and the perchlorate components contained in them also have a toxic effect on the human thyroid gland.
, more research is needed to suppress Martian soil bricks to understand the risks of using them.
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