Potato Starch and Dust Could Be Foundation of a Martian Cities

VIVA – Scientists in the UK have developed a new type of concrete that might one day be used to build Martian cities. By combining potato starch with material simulating the dust of Mars or the Moon, they created something much stronger than regular concrete.

This is so-called "StarCrete" made of Martian dust has a compressive strength of 72 megapascals (MPa), which is over twice that of regular concrete. When the material was made with the fake Moon dust it became even stronger, reaching 91 Mpa.

The team from the University of Manchester has been working on how to make concrete with local resources on the Moon and Mars, requiring very little extra material brought from Earth. Their previous work showed that concrete could be made by using the blood or urine of astronauts. For the sake of future explorers, they have to switch on to potatoes.

“Since we will be producing starch as food for astronauts, it made sense to look at that as a binding agent rather than human blood," said a project lead Dr Aled Roberts, Research Fellow at the Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub.

In addition, current building technologies still require years of development and require considerable energy and additional heavy processing equipment which all add to the cost and complexity of the mission. StarCrete does not require any of this thus simplifying the mission and making it cheaper and more feasible, reported from IFL Science site.

"That's not the only consideration. After all, astronauts might not want to live in a house made of scabs and urine," Roberts informed.

There are other things that astronauts produce that might make it stronger such as magnesium chloride, a salt found in tears.

Future cities on Mars will be built on the blood, sweat and tears of space travelers, where magnesium chloride is typically found on the Martian surface. The team estimates that it takes 25 kilograms of dried potato starch to make 213 bricks. So, if the astronauts wanted to build a three-bedroom house, they would need about 35 times that amount.

Roberts and his team have created a startup called DeakinBio that is not only developing StartCrete for space, but also for potential use on Earth as it could be a more environmentally friendly alternative to concrete.

The production of this ubiquitous material is responsible for 8 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. This is due to the high temperatures required to produce it. StarCrete can be made with a regular oven or even a microwave, making it more energy efficient.