'Concrete Canvas' Makes Erecting Permanent Buildings As Easy as Pitching a Tent

Hmmm... "Erecting...pitching a tent...impregnating...rigid"

Anyone else think this writer has something on his mind other than the article?

now thats a useful invention

Moon Base or Mars Terraform mission anyone?

@Igot1forya
I was thinking the same thing, this would be extremely useful for building on new worlds, however I do think the 'add' water part might be a little difficult, now If you could make it so that it comes with the water in a thing layer cover that allows it to permiate the concrete upon being inflated then we would have a structure that can be erected anywhere.

@combatko
Grow up, all your comment does is let everyone know what is on your mind.

thin* not thing damn you pop sci give me an edit button

That's a get rich idea!

@BaPef
Yes, we're all very impressed with how very serious and mature you are. Would you like a cookie?

I want a cookie.

@BaPef - BUILD NEW WORLDS???

I wish I could send locusts like you to Mars now. You dont deserve to live on Earth. We cant feed or house all of our own people here on THIS planet, but you wanna start life on a dead planet so we can use more of our Earthly resources and starve even more people???

I hate humans sometimes.

@BaPef:

Concrete is perhaps one of the worst things for a space colony structure, being a porous material and requiring both air and water to form properly.

@Mikhalian and Combatko:

I have hoped that this place- at least- would provide some solace from the idiocy that plagues the rest of the internet.

It really was an immature comment. Which either displays the kind of person who will giggle everytime the word 'penis' is uttered- or someone who really went to the effort to string along every word that has a potential double-entendre in order to make a weak joke.

Anyways, this is a remarkable invention, which should make relief efforts much easier- provided that these tents do not sacrifice structural integrity. If they cannot stand up to future quakes or other disasters any better than the buildings that they replace, it really is just a huge drain on money.

hey Cadillac you seem to be making a healthy contribution to the world, would you like a cookie? oh wait there are people starving in Africa, let me go send this to them instead.

I'm calling you out, what have you done to make this earth any better?

seriously, while it's a tragedy and a statistic that millions of people are starving, it is not my problem or my responsibility to make sure they are fed.

So.... When you are done with it... how easy is it to take down?

This was first shown on the BBCs Dragon's Den programme in 2007. I'm not sure why it's news today.

@ ghost

I dont have anything to prove to you, but I work in renewable energy.

My point is still valid. Space exploration is a gross waste of money and resources when we cant even house or feed all of our own people. Americans not Africans.

Ill take that cookie now and you can sponsor an African child on your own 80 cents a day.

@Cadillac
We can't feed or house all the people because there are too many of them, however thats never going to change unless you want to be the one to institute controlled breeding and commit mass murder to get the population under control but I highly doubt anyone is willing to touch that with a 10 meter pole. However just because we can't take care of everyone here doesn't mean we shouldn't venture forth into the unknown. If humans lived by that mantra we would be extinct because we never would have left our original habitat to find new lands to populate and new sources of food. Heck we never would have left the trees even.
P.S. I would gladly go off with a group and colonize mars and leave all the under educated masses on this earth to kill themselves over semantic differences. Why you might ask, well it would be mostly scientists who would volunteer for that one and as such we would likely have a better gene pool then the afore mentioned masses. Which would increase our chances of survival long term. I also would be perfectly fine not being able to ever come back. As you can see we do agree on one point though, I hate humans sometimes too. lol

@Doug very good point I was looking at it more as a starting point for structures on say mars as opposed to the moon(the sealed interior used to inflate it makes it air tight wouldn't it) Although I can't say how well concrete would work on mars given the atmospheric pressure and temperatures.

@ BaPef
Concrete wouldn't work at all. Conrete needs air to set, it literaly needs to dry.

I can see some great military potential have a hardened Forward operating base in 24hrs. Just need a readily availible source of water. I wonder if you can add extra layers of canvas to increase the strength? Plus its army proof hehe

Okay, now for some completely out-of-the-box thinking:
Why go with the preconceived notions that define prefabricated shelters?
Why not go with a modular, easily transportable and operational Industrial size 3D Printer and simply 3D print houses? Logistics of refills (standardized and universally applicable with likewise standardized coloring/texturizing modules.
It's existing technology and a heck of a lot easier to shlepp around than low-tech concrete soaked textiles.
Taking it a step further, one can imagine to also 3D-print a set of basic requirements like furniture and utensils.
Just thinkin...

@ cadillac, i know this is just fuel for the flames but you actually do have something to prove, you made a statement, and your standing by it. you think that space exploration is stupid and that we should instead spend the money on helping the hungry and the homeless. this is a noble cause, but when it comes down to it, they are hungry and homeless because they have a f*cked up state of mind. this is america! you are free to succeed as well as fail! there will always be poor people, there will always be homeless, there will always be famine and starvation.

it is wrong to force the people who are smart and decent enough to succeed in life to help the poor, the homeless and the hungry. the decision is theirs! what your suggesting has a name, it's called socialism, and we all know how well that works out!

also your in the renewable energy business, how's that going for you? good? you actually making a percentage of the energy costs of the united states? have you taken a town or a city off the grid yet? i've been hearing about renewable energy since 93, has anything really productive come out of it? i'll answer that for you, in 2009 natural gas and coal still powered close to 70% of America with nuclear being the runner up at 20%(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2008_US_electricity_generation_by_source_v2.png), that hasn't gone down more than ten percent as of February 2011 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html) actual renewable energy has only raised to 5%. and yet we are not only spending money but time on it, if you want to talk about waste just look at the clock!

@lanredneck
Concrete doesn't dry, it cures. It doesn't need air to cure. It will harden, even underwater.

I agree with Ghost. Famine, poverty, and wars are the products of society. It has been that way since the beginning of man, and it will be that way after everyone posting here about it dies. We need to expand. As the human population grows, we will continue to use the resources of the Earth until we reach the limits of what the Earth can support. This will only serve to worsen the problems that people like Cadillac worry about. It will lead to fighting over resources, more people being hungry, and more people being homeless and poor. It is indeed a noble idea to try to counter act these societal ills, but you only serve to place a band-aid on a shotgun wound. Society as a whole needs to change for those problems to truly be solved. In the mean time, we can expand beyond the Earth and lessen the use of the Earth's resources and perhaps even allowing room for ecological recovery.

Love it. - could be even simpler w/ a diy frame - just the cloth draped over the frame & wait til it rains - imshala. :)

A clever engineer i knew helped a local he befriended build a house in the mountains of new guinea - they did almost just that.

They had hessian & a drum of tar & a couple of bags of cement they taxed from some local roadworks, using a barrow as a getaway car.

They built a sapling frame for a small raised hall, draped & wrapped the upper part in hessian, & painted the walls w/ cement slurry & roof w/ tar. Big eves & opening at each end for smoke blow thru - a good house he reckoned.

Perfect for disaster areas like haiti. No shortage of recycled building material in most disaster areas.

for humanity to survive, it must migrate off of earth, the earth is not an indefinate place for us to live, some of you need a reality check, while others will never believe this

CenturionMk5-205/19/11 at 2:45 pm
Wrote: Why not go with a modular, easily transportable and operational Industrial size 3D Printer and simply 3D print houses? Logistics of refills (standardized and universally applicable with likewise standardized coloring/texturizing modules.

Actually you should look into the device known as a UBM Or Ultimate Building Machine. It is a roll of steel with a computer aided cutting mechanism and a power source which can produce the parts for several buildings from each roll of steel fed into it. They have been in use for almost a decade now and are very good at producing hangers and military buildings which are screwed together then sprayed with insulation inside and fitted with whatever operating equipment is needed like power, water, kitchens, automotive handling equipment, whatever is needed. The machines are self powered and can stamp out pieces for many models of free standing buildings from small sheds to giant aircraft hangers. The only limitation on colors is that you have to load colored steel bands to get colored steel plates but they paint well so that really hasn't been a need so far.
A UBM structure is not as fast as propping up a tent but much has more permanence and much denser transportability since each building is shipped as a roll (or several rolls) of steel.

Most of the buildings I have seen using this start with a poured concrete base to ensure long usage but they can be made for immediate use by using the slide-together balsawood filled textured aluminum floor plates in common use by the US military for deployed motor parks.

The 3D printer might be able to print a building someday but the UBMs have been stamping them out for years already.

Makes me go hmmmmmm.....

They were pitching the idea of a tent a while back. I read about it in an informative blog
www.fiatsfire.blogspot.com/2011/05/theatrical-thursday-greenpeace-slams.html
and now what worries me is that a Super Typhoon is coming to Japan. This is not over.... open your eyes!!!
Also check out
www.ex-skf.blogspot.com/
for more info on Japan...

Well, first of all, cudos to the guys that thought of this concept. Second, concrete and cement are not the same thing. Cement holds concrete togather, and yes it is both porous and permeable. Sorry no space camps without an inside barrier to hold atmosphere. Third and final, Cement\concrete does not "dry". Cement mixed with water starts a chemical reaction the causes the cement to "set". The water and cement ratio needs to accurate within certain paramiters for the cement to reach it's maximum strength.
That all aside, good to know there are minds out there that are trying to improve life for mankind.

maybe this would be a way to lay concrete roads