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The Renegades Of Research & Development
SwampWorks researchers inside a chamber filled with syntheitc regolith used to test new in-situ technology at Kennedy Space Center. Photo: SwampWorks / Facebook
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At the Kennedy Space Center, there’s a groups of scientists and engineers that think outside the box when it comes building the tools that will one day take us to Mars. I’m calling them the Renegades of Research and Development — but they call themselves Swamp Works.
One of the biggest challenges in space exploration is fuel. It’s kind of important, right? But it’s also really heavy. And we’ll need fuel to get astronauts back from Mars. That means, we’ve got to pack extra fuel. That takes more fuel to send the fuel…Ah, it gets so crazy!
But what if we can make fuel when we get there? The term scientists use for that is in-situ resource utilization — or in-situ for short. I met some of the folks at Swamp Works to find out their crazy, out of the box plans for exploring places like Mars.
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