Planetary construction with ISRU on Moon and Mars: Scalability and automation of the construction processes

Human exploration of the heliosphere (and beyond) is closely related to the development of the capability to use local resources. Despite the trend that sees a progressive growth in the useful payload of the new generation carriers, establishing a constant human presence and growth in the volumes of buildings on the lunar and martian surface will be possible only through mastery in the use of materials offered by the surrounding environment. Building on (or below) the surface requires a deep knowledge not only of the properties of materials and construction techniques but also of the form factor of pressurized and non-pressurized constructions. The environmental conditions (and properties of the regolith) between the moon and Mars, although very different, characterize the need to automate the construction processes right from the exploration phase. This research aims to analyze the construction techniques of terrestrial and space structures to define an abacus of techniques and technologies for the efficient use of resources in situ, to structure a methodology of approach to the design of structures suitable for welcoming human crews on the lunar and Martian surface. and finally to validate the form factor of these structures through numerical techniques (FEM) and prototyping (AM) with the use of simulants. In the same way, this work will address the research gap in the current research, identified in four main topics: Scalability of extraterrestrial manufacturing and construction techniques Preservation strategies against environmental dangers for the mechanical equipment needed for the construction Reliability of the use of simulants and space environment conditions replication in earth-based testing. Robustness of automation protocols to enable autonomous construction Those four research gaps, assumed from the most up-to-date literature analysis, are a central research topic to enable the continuation of the research on construction form factor and automation. Since reproducing manufacturing construction element manufacturing with all the different techniques considered would be extremely expensive in terms of time and resources, the analysis will mostly rely on scientific literature and results from previous testing. The scalability of the construction techniques will be assessed similarly, and testing will be conducted through simulations (FEA) and field testing at reduced scale.