Mobile Mars Printer

thingiverse

This mars base would consist of a frame to be assembled on site with the capacity to print either stationary or mobile bases and relocate itself at will. The MMP consists of a gantry allowing for X and Y movement of a print head with Z movement being handled by the wheels attached to a rocker bogie suspension frame. Power and limited shielding would be provided by a solar panel mounted on a swivel at the top of the MMP allowing it to track the sun to maximize power. Hydraulic rams mounted to the bottom of the gantry would allow the MMP to pick up and move large objects and serve as a mobile science and exploration platform. The following this line are edits made after the submission deadline, I'm not sure if that's kosher to do, if not please ignore all of this when judging my entry. The idea with the hydraulic rams/maybe linear actuators because it turns out hydraulics are heavy and don't really make sense to fly through space is that in general the things printed by this thing would be designed with these in mind so that they could be moved around and even serve as a mobile lab. As for materials it seems like maybe it would be possible to sinter things with lasers out of iron gathered from all the Iron 3 oxide that sits around on Mars and induction heating and if you were able to get CO somehow to act as a reducing agent. I'm not a chemist so I don't really know what's going on.