“According to the design of the architect Vertibutylkin, even two rotating buildings were built on Kolokolchikov Street. One five-story, tower-type, with a spiral descent and a swimming pool around (going down the spiral descent, you could dive straight into the water), the other six-story, with swinging balconies, a parachute tower and a devil's wheel on the roof. A lot of cars, helicopter robots, truboletov, avia-hydroland, caterpillar off-road vehicles and other different cars appeared on the streets, ”so, according to writer Nikolai Nosov, author of the book“ Dunno on the Moon ”, the city on this planet should look like.
Today, the design of housing on the moon is no longer a fantasy, but a reality, a task that the British bureau Foster + Partners received from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the consortium (includes the Italian engineering company Alta SpA and the British company Monolite UK).
The architectural bureau of Norman Foster solves a number of tasks: how to build exactly, what options must be implemented. "In connection with significant difficulties in the delivery of building materials to the moon, the use of lunar soil (regolith) for the construction of dwellings is being considered," the release says.
Baron Norman Foster is one of the most famous architects in the world. He was born in 1935 year. He is a laureate of the Imperial and Pritzker Prizes. Honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts. More than once in his interviews, Foster talked about drawing ideas and inspiration from the spatial constructions of Vladimir Shukhov, who developed a light openwork radio broadcasting tower on Shabolovka.
Foster's most famous sites: the Mary Ex (or Gherkin) tower - the 40-storey skyscraper in London, one of the tallest buildings in Europe, the Kommerzbank-Tower in Frankfurt, the Reichstag dome in Berlin, and Hong Kong International Airport. In Russia, the most famous tower "Russia" in Moscow City, the project of reconstruction of "New Holland" in St. Petersburg. For Khanty-Mansiysk the architect designed a diamond-shaped skyscraper.
Alta SpA, which created material similar to the lunar soil, and Monolite UK, which is exploring the possibility of using 3D-copying for building residential buildings on the Moon and providing the D-Shape 3D printer for testing, are now deciding what to build housing on the moon.
However, you can’t build a foundation from regolith, so the architects suggested using a basic cylindrical module from a rocket as a “stand” for the house. It is planned to stretch an inflatable dome above it, which will subsequently be overlaid with regolith parts formed using a 3D printer. This material will be closest to foam concrete, one of the architects explained to BFM.ru. This material will be light enough, and at the same time will be able to protect against radiation and other space threats. Construction will be carried out by special Robots.
It should be noted that the consortium has already built a model of a lunar house weighing 1,5 tons and conducted tests on a smaller model in a vacuum room.
Architects say that the use of local soil solves the main problem - the delivery of materials to the satellite. The authors of the project claim that theoretically enough for the construction of a week.
Alexander Zheleznyakov, academician of the Tsiolkovsky Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, is skeptical about the project: “If this is feasible, then it is feasible in a very, very distant future. Now it is unrealizable, because there is no technology that allows all of this, firstly, and secondly, astronautics is now developing a little bit in a different direction, and such ideas are at the level of virtuality, not reality. ”
According to the authors, the base will be an object with 4 domes. They will protect people from meteorite precipitation. Inside, inflatable spheres will be installed in the form of cocoons, where the astronauts will settle.
Foster's passion for space construction is commented by independent architectural expert Kirill Zavrazhin: “Of course he is present, I would not call it a delusion of grandeur, I would call it ambition, and space construction is, of course, his self-realization, because, in spite of everything , he is not the first, but given the seriousness of customers such as Virgin, I think he would not have been engaged if it were not not realizable, but a paper project. Therefore, Foster is a man of course of extraordinary thinking, he has the strongest specialists, I’m not afraid to say this, of the world. ”
How much a lunar house will cost is not reported. Experts told Business FM that a square meter of just a building envelope for such an object would cost about 7 thousand dollars.
The moon base is necessary for mankind - all experts admit it. Sooner or later, earthly civilization may require fossils: there are deposits of aluminum, titanium on the satellite. The moon will give new knowledge about space and you can experience new interplanetary technology on it. No wonder colonization programs are developing several countries. The United States, for example, wants to send robots avatars there. Scientists in special suits will manage them from the ground. In Russia, too, take steps. Last fall, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin proposed creating a lunar base.