NASA is considering the possibility of growing housing from mushrooms on the Moon and Mars. The agency has signed a $2 million contract with researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center to study «mycotecture».
The reason why NASA is researching mushrooms — is that mining or supplying traditional building materials in space is extremely expensive. Sending mushroom spores and mixing them with local materials like water and regolith to make bricks would be much cheaper. Chris Maurer, an architect from Cleveland, Ohio, who has worked with NASA, told Al Jazeera.
The study showed that mushroom building blocks can deflect a significant portion of cosmic radiation and provide insulation against extreme temperatures. They can also be grown very quickly, in one to two months.
Growing a mushroom house on Mars will begin with the landing of a special package on the planet that contains everything you need. The inside of the package is inflated, and a mixture of mushroom spores, water, and algae grows an outer shell that hardens over time, creating a new structure suitable for life.
Although the first experiments on Earth were successful, unforeseen complications may arise in space. A team of fungal researchers led by NASA Senior Researcher Lynn Rothschild plans to send a conceptual model of mycotectonic structures into space as part of the planned 2028 launch of the commercial space station Starlab.
«In a general sense, there are technological risks. Will the structure be strong enough? Will it really provide the insulation we think it will? What will the material properties be? Does it really grow well?», — says Rothschild.
The technology is slightly different from what you can see in the Morrowind game from The Elder Scrolls series by Bethesda. There, the House of Telvanni grew mushrooms in forms ranging from small houses to huge mage towers. But the principle of forming a hard shell is common.
Sources: The Byte, Al Jazeera