One of the barriers to building a lunar settlement is that you can’t exactly hire a construction crew or buy cement in space. Flying materials and people to the moon is expensive, which is why Behrokh Khoshnevis, professor of industrial engineering at the University of Southern California, is developing automated construction technology that can build habitats layer by layer using a paste made of heated-up lunar soil. If his simulation at NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies facility in Arizona is successful, human beings could be on their way to living on the moon.
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