A 3D-printed bubble house to live on Mars

French 3D-printing company Fabulous has brought together scientists and architects to imagine a bubble-shaped habitat for Mars that can be printed on the red planet.

The Sfero house features an internal and external dome, with a protective pocket of water between the two. A single corridor rests on the planet’s surface and allows access to the interior, which would have an upper and lower level linked by a spiral staircase. Conceptual drawings show plants being grown indoors, with workstations upstairs and suspended sleeping areas down. The team united a range of disciplines, with scientists, architects, image specialists and 3D-printing specialists all contributing to the Sfero habitat design. The house would start off as a central drilling rod that burrows several metres into the planet’s soil to extend two robotic arms, which would harvest materials to be used for 3D-printing the habitat’s internal and external dome-shaped shells. The spherical shape has been designed to offer high resistance to Mars’ low atmospheric density.

The design aims to use the red planet’s abundance of iron oxide which would form the raw material for 3D printing. The powdered iron particles would then be fused together by laser, and the levels of the habitat printed layer by layer.

The arms would also seek out permafrost to be melted and used as a 30-cm-wide water pocket in between the two shells to protect against solar radiation.

Fabulous founder Arnault Coulet believes the water layer could be a “permanent psychological reminder of the main element of the mother planet — water constituting a sort of protective amniotic fluid for humans”.

The team has identified the planet’s Gale crater as an optimum landing point, with a high deposit of iron oxide and the possible presence of liquid water.