Not long ago, I had a quick brainstorm while I was studying 3-D printing and all the new technologies and potential applications. It occurred to me that we could use a 3-D printer to build colonies on Mars. Yes, you are thinking such an idea is out of this world, but before you say I'm crazy, let me tell you about something the Singularity Institute believes is possible; 3-D printing low income housing in Third World countries. Okay so, now that I've piqued your curiosity, let's talk.
It wouldn't be too hard to compress sand into a block and then put up temporary barriers, and next pour some sort of solution into the sand which made it hard, but not quite as hard as concrete. Then we could use a giant 3-D printer to cut the sand in the shape of a house. Then we could use robots to cut out the interior exactly how we wished it to be. Finally we could coat the walls with some sort of permanent barrier, and pour in another hardening solution which made the walls as hard as concrete. That's possible right - sure it is, let me take it to the next step.
We can do this on Mars, we could do it in North Africa, we can do it in a city in the Middle East, and we could probably even do it on the Moon and make it Out of moon dust. What else can we use this technique for? How about building rivers through the sand? How about building cement pipes in the sand and tunneling out the inside, and then coasting the inside and the exterior. Yes, I do believe it's possible to make underground rivers, or aboveground rivers in this fashion.
The other day, I was talking to an individual in Arizona who wished to revitalize a river, it appears to me that since the walls of the former river have been washed away due to mankind's unintended consequences and mistakes, we could actually fix that, and re-divert the water from the river and repair the damage. And as I said; we can use the same techniques as described for building a colony on Mars, or 3-D printing low income housing in Third World countries.
In fact creating the walls of a river would be quite a bit easier, and in the future the flow of water will indeed be one of the most important things to sustain human civilizations. It's going to be a real challenge as populations increase and the demand for groundwater is exacerbated by that need. Indeed I hope you will please consider this solution and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Future Concepts. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net
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