Thank you BAKER
Building Moon Colonies from Urine
https://medium.com/the-cosmic-companion/building-moon-colonies-from-urine-2891cfcb173a
Colonies on the Moon or Mars could, one day, be manufactured — in part — from using human urine. The waste we flush away on Earth could play an important role in constructing the first permanent colonies in space, a new study finds. Urea extracted from urine could be used as a plasticizer, forming concrete for use in building living quarters, a new study finds. These structures could then shape the makeshift concrete using large 3D printers.
The European and Chinese space agencies, along with NASA, plan to build bases on the Moon in the coming decades. These outposts, many of which will be found near the south pole of the Moon, will serve as stepping off points for future human exploration of Mars and the inner solar system.
Challenges facing spacefarers include radiation, bombardments by meteorites (large and small), and extreme swings in temperature. Providing protection from these risks would almost certainly require massive infrastructure.
This introduces the very practical problem of how to transport all these materials from Earth to space, and eventually, to the Moon. Adding mass to a spacecraft necessitates using more powerful engines (adding more mass), which needs more fuel (adding still more mass). Each 0.45 kilograms (one pound) of mass currently costs around $10,000 to launch into space. Manufacturing materials from the lunar crust (regolith) would greatly reduce the cost of such an expedition.
“All necessary ingredients for geopolymers could potentially be sourced on the lunar surface, which is why the material might be an efficient construction material for infrastructure on the moon… Since urea is the second most abundant component in urine (after water), it is readily available anywhere there are humans,” researchers describe in the Journal of Cleaner production.
Using urine as a plasticizer allows the production of a building material on the Moon. Hopefully, even the water that the astronauts drank in the first place would come from lunar ice deposits.
“To make the geopolymer concrete that will be used on the moon, the idea is to use what is there: regolith (loose material from the moon’s surface) and the water from the ice present in some areas,” explains Ramón Pamies, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena (Murcia).