ESA To Build Moon Bases Brick By Printed LEGO Brick
LEGO-style bricks printed from lunar regolith could be just what moon colonists ordered, according to European Space Agency (ESA) researchers.
"My team and I team love creative construction and had the idea to explore whether space dust could be formed into a brick similar to a Lego brick so we could test different building techniques," said Aidan Cowley, ESA's science officer, in a statement released by Lego on Tuesday (June 18). "The result is amazing, and, whilst the bricks may look a little rougher than usual, importantly the clutch power still works, enabling us to play and test our designs."
Aliens have tried the same thing on Earth - in science fiction, of course. This development was predicted in The Onslaught from Venus by Frank Phillips, published in Science Wonder Stories way back in 1929:
"Here we see ... one of their heat machines is turning out molten lava made from rock and earth, and which later will be used to make building blocks for these invaders."
(Read more about the Boring Heat Machine)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/4/2024)
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'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.' - Arthur William Bernal (1935)
Capturing Asteroids With Nets
'...the meteor caught and halted just as a small boy catches a swift ball in his cap.' V.E. Thiessen, 1947.
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Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering From Harvard
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'