Your urine could be more valuable than you think because astronauts may begin using it to create bases on the moon…well, their’s – not yours, sorry.
NASA astronauts are planning on returning to the moon in 2024 and intend to learn more with new advances in technology. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, astronauts will need to learn how to live on the moon’s surface with more than what they’re bringing.
This brings us to how they could one day build a lunar base using a combination of their urine and moon dust to create concrete. Once astronauts make the concrete, it can be used to 3D print a potentially inhabitable base.
Researchers published a study in the Journal of Cleaner Production analyzing how realistic this idea is and if it’s possible. Part of the reasoning for using urine is because of how expensive it is to transport materials to the moon. A CNN report cites a previous study about how one pound can cost $10,000 to transport to the moon.
“We have not yet investigated how the urea would be extracted from the urine, as we are assessing whether this would really be necessary, because perhaps its other components could also be used to form the geopolymer concrete,” said Norway researcher, Anna-Lena Kjøniksen, in a statement.
While it’s impossible to know how well it will work without actually testing it on the moon, researchers are continuing to experiment with the idea. The end of the published study states, “Additional work regarding these aspects are currently in progress.”
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Learn more about space with how engineers created a method to deflect asteroids like the one NASA identified in February. Or if you’re looking for a little more video games in your space, get excited for Kerbal Space Program 2.
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Jeffrey Lerman is a Freelance News Writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @Snakester95.
Source: IGN.com Moon Bases Might be Built One Day Out of Astronaut Urine