While Newt Gingrich and others seem determined to turn the moon into a strip mall, a lunar Levittown of sorts may be feasible soon thanks to a quartet of USC professors and their plan for “contour construction.” From Tim Maly at Fast Company:

“First, you solve the material transport problem by making the moon base out of the moon itself. Second, you mitigate the ‘humans are expensive’ problem by keeping them on the ground until the last minute–you use robots to build the base. Recently, USC Professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture), and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) completed their first research visualization for a system to do exactly that.

Using a technique called contour crafting, they propose sending robots to seed the surface of the moon with the basic infrastructure for a moon base (landing pads, roads, hangars, etc.). Once the construction is completed, human crew could lift off and move into their new home.”

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A house printed in a day: