NASA is exploring 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 Center to study “mycotecture.”
The reason NASA is investigating mushrooms is that extracting or supplying conventional building materials in space is extremely costly. Sending mushroom spores and mixing them with local materials like water and regolith to create bricks would be significantly cheaper. Chris Maurer, an architect from Cleveland, Ohio, who collaborates with NASA, shared this information with Al Jazeera.
Research has shown that mushroom-based building blocks could deflect a significant portion of cosmic radiation and provide insulation from extreme temperatures. They can also be cultivated very quickly, in one to two months.
Growing a mushroom house on Mars will start with landing a special package on the planet that contains everything needed. The inner part of the package is inflated, and a mixture of mushroom spores, water, and algae will grow the outer shell, which hardens over time, creating a new life-sustaining structure.
Although initial experiments on Earth have been successful, unforeseen complications may arise in space. A team of mushroom researchers, led by NASA senior researcher Lynn Rothschild, plans to send a conceptual model of mycotectural structures into space during 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?” Rothschild states.
The technology somewhat differs from what can be seen in the game Morrowind from Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls series. There, the Telvanni House grew mushrooms in shapes ranging from small houses to enormous wizard towers. However, the principle of forming a solid shell is similar.
Sources: The Byte, Al Jazeera
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