Making potato-concrete that's... out of this world
After all we have to build our houses on mars out of something
It’s not often that I get to follow up on previous stories that I’ve done for the newsletter or the podcast but I can’t help it when I see stories like this. Back in the long-forgotten 2021, I had talked with Dr. Aled Roberts that had just released a paper that described how to make construction material out of mars dust, blood, and urine. While at first, this fact sounds like a joke, it meant that we now don’t have to carry the extra load on spaceships in order to start our colonies on mars (or anywhere else for that matter). NASA plans to start sending astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s with the round trip lasting about 500 days. [source] While their first priority will not be to start construction on Martian soil, scientists are trying to solve that problem before we are faced with it.
But we can’t be serious right? we don’t expect astronauts to start bleeding into buckets of mars dust in order to make buildings. And yeah you’re right. This doesn’t sound very sustainable in the long run, not to mention that you wouldn’t want to say “You like this wall? I used my own sweat, and blood to make it… literally”. Scientists are aware of these facts and they started looking into other possibilities, and this is what we’ll look into in this week’s newsletter. What did the crazy scientists think of now? Is the material only useful for buildings on Mars? How strong is this material? We’ll travel all the way to the University of Manchester and discover more things about this otherworldly construction material. But of course, before we dive in we have to go through our normal housekeeping. If this is your first time here and you want to receive news from the world of science and academia use the sexy button provided by substack right here.
The making of… ‘StarCrete’
The new material is made out of space dust, potato starch, and a pinch of salt that could come from the tears of the astronauts (Yay, your tears may now not go to waste). These materials are all very inexpensive, simple, and easily available to astronauts. The team from the University of Manchester continued to improve their work from 2021 that used blood and tears as a binding agent and this time thought of potato starch since it’s something that will already be available for astronauts for their food intake. The team has calculated that a 25 kg sack of dehydrated potatoes has enough starch to produce half a tonne of ‘StarCrete’ which could lead to more than 200 StarBricks.
The use of starch in construction is not a new development. Sticky rice mortar was used in ancient china to make a composite material that was very strong and water-resistant. In fact, sticky rice mortar is still the best available material for restoring ancient buildings. [source]
What’s even more fascinating than the fact we can use starch to make construction material, it’s that we won’t have to worry about safety since ‘StarCrete’ is more than twice stronger as ordinary concrete. We don’t get to see sample preparations very often but the lead author of the paper has uploaded a video showing you all of the equipment and materials you need so that you can make StarCrete at home! (you will need to get your grandpas’ hydraulic press out of the basement though)
A potential for greener buildings on earth
While thinking about the house you can build on Mars is nice and important in terms of progress and ambition, this new material could be useful for far more pressing issues here on earth. The cement industry is one of the two largest producers of CO2 at around 8% [source] and if it were a country it would be the third largest emitter in the world. The emissions from concrete come from the very high firing temperatures that are needed to produce. As you saw in the video above, ‘StarCrete’ requires only 120 degrees celsius, and since it’s so much stronger than ordinary concrete we would be able to use less of it. These two advantages make this material very appealing as a greener option for the construction industry. You can learn more about the material and the technology behind it on the website from the spinoff company that is looking to scale up the production here.
Why do we disagree so often?
Asking if an ostrich is more similar to a salmon or a seal might be more serious than you think. Psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, found that people's concepts about basic words like animals and politicians vary widely, and they tend to overestimate how many others share the same beliefs. The researchers suggest that when you have a disagreement over the Christmas table, the problem might be different than what you think it is. Simple misunderstandings of words or concepts might give rise to disagreements which could be easily resolved with the question “What do you mean”.
The study recruited over 2,700 participants who were asked to make similarity judgments about animals and politicians. The two groups were of course intentional since researchers know that people are more likely to view common animals similarly while politicians might be more polarising. Nevertheless, people had big variability even in conceptualizing basic animals. For example, there was a 12% chance that people will share similar concepts about penguins. Do you think a penguin is heavy? I’ve never lifted one but I assume that it would be! What do you think? don’t google it and give me your answer below!
Find out more about the research and the difference in understanding similar concepts in the press release from UC Berkeley here.
Any more news?
People in academia are constantly coming up with new and exciting things so if you need more to quench your curiosity here are some more headlines.
Peanut allergies and babies, by the Science Media Center
High blood caffeine levels may reduce body weight and type 2 diabetes risk, by the Imperial College of London
Don’t Forget: How do we build houses on Mars?
That’s all for this week! I hope that the rest of the week will be calm and rewarding. Did you like this newsletter? If you did you can subscribe to it at the top of the page and why not share it around using this sexy little button here
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Until next week… take care and be kind [=
There are different types of penguins so I'm assuming we are talking about the tiny cute ones you see in South Africa and Australia. I'd say adults are about 30 kilos.
Even plaster had vegetable matter and originally we had plant based pigments. Somehow along the way we lost the plot and now have come back full circle.