The Las Vegas-headquartered modular housing manufacturer Boxabl Inc. is setting its sights on a new territory: the moon.
The company has unveiled UFO (Unidentified Folding Object), which is described as “a conceptual off-world habitation system.” According to the company, UFO is a foldable habitat that can be packed into a compact launch configuration and later expanded on-site. It can be linked with other modules to form larger communities for crews, research, tourism, and support infrastructure.
Boxabl also unveiled the concept for Rego-Brix, which can be added to the UFO as a “modular radiation-shielding concept designed to utilize lunar regolith to help protect future moon habitats from galactic cosmic radiation.”
The company added that it plans to make the UFO intellectual property available on a royalty-free basis to encourage the development of future off-world habitats.
“While the Boxabl mission is wholly focused on Earth, as enthusiasts we saw no viable public disclosed solutions for early-stage habitats off world,” said Co-CEO Paolo Tiramani. “Our after-hours skunkworks engineering team got to work to see if we could help early settlers. Issues to solve for are straightforward; rocket cargo-cost is defined by volume and weight so minimize both, and onsite, in this case the moon, solve for ease of setup, flexible configurability, link ability and redundancy from rapid decompression. One of the bigger challenges of deadly long-term cosmic radiation is solved by our Rego-Brix IP that surrounds the structures using easily available local material in a structured easy-to-build manner.”
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