Short Jaunts to the Store are Out, but the 3-D Printer is In-Part II
IdeaLab is not the only company who is getting on the band wagon for selling 3-D printer where blueprints can be downloaded from online, and actual objects are automatically made from them. Many companies have stepped into the sales ring, offering excellent prices to consumers and businesses. The Z Corp offers the standard Three Dimensional Printers and Solutions, such as the Zprinter 310 Plus or the Spectrum Z510 at affordable prices for the public. Also, three-dimensional printing tubes of living tissue are now being printed using modified desktop printers filled with suspensions of cells.
These 3-D printers, called rapid prototypers, make objects out of “an array of specks” of material, very much like the dpi or toners in the traditional printers, except they stack thin layers upon layers to form a product of the downloaded blueprint. Previously called self-replicating machines, or referred to as nano-technology, a better term is the “clanking replicator” to distinguish it from the nano-technology assemblers. Used in popular movies such as “The Terminator” and “The Matrix Trilogy” the machine relies on conventional large-scale technology and automation.
The key issue with a human mission to Mars is supplies and spare parts, especially when manufacturing techniques to replace failed parts with temporary repairs is two years away if there are no parts available. Presently, we have a choice to go on with the mission, or wait. The ability to repair is a determinant whether the mission fails or not, so we revert back to the prior choices. But a general rule of thumb by NASA is that any systems support of a mission involves spares, repair parts, and consumables, tools, and documentation.
When the Freedom Space Station, similar to the International Space Station, received their typical resupply mission, science items and maintenance items were the largest supply items needed, with estimations for spare parts approximately 6% of dry mass per year. After that, crew accommodations, propellant, and cryogenics were the next needed items. Most NASA Mars mission focus on its system health monitoring, or crew time, but J. L. Chretien, one of the French astronauts aboard the Freedom Space Station, said concerning Mars missions, “Why do you want me to cross a desert in a car I know I cannot repair?” These are the reasons why a new supply support concept is extremely important even if it seems unavailable, with two planning objectives regarding rapid prototyping : plan what is foreseeable and prepare for the unexpected.
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives, Technical Concerns, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
