Another disadvantage of typical concrete is its environmental record – concrete production is responsible for 8% of all CO2 emissions, as it requires extremely high temperatures, typically up to 1300 C, to create. Starcrete can be made at temperatures closer to a typical home oven of around 190 C. So there is an environmentally friendly use case for using Starcrete to replace typically made Earth concrete back here on the ground.
To this end, the researchers at the University of Manchester have created a start-up company called DeakinBio which is seeking out potential use cases for StarCrete on Earth. They’re certainly not the only start-up seeking ways to decrease the CO2 emissions of the concrete industry. And it certainly won’t be as easy to get the raw ingredients of their material on Earth as it would be on Mars or the Moon. But it’s certainly worth a shot.
If the start-up route happens to fail, though, there could be a silver lining. It seems difficult for the researchers to move away from utilizing bodily fluids to construct their materials. To be honest, there’s a good reason for that – people can be viewed simply as bioreactors that can create blood, urine, and in some cases, tears, so there will always be a steady supply of those on any long-term space mission.