Growing buildings on Mars using fungi

Her final design, a tall, female, rough-looking boot, can be manufactured on board a spaceship with almost only human sweat and a few fungus spores, ideal for a seven-month trip to Mars with limited check-in luggage.

This magic biomaterial is mycelium, the vegetative part of the fungus. If you imagine that mushrooms are the ‘fruits’ of the fungus, mycelium could be regarded as its roots or stems. It looks like a mass of white thread-like structures, each called hyphae, which crisscross soil and other material in which fungi grows. Collectively, these threads are called mycelium and are the largest part of the fungus.

Mycelium has amazing properties. It is a great recycler, as it feeds off a substrate (like sawdust or agricultural waste) to create more material, and has the potential of almost limitless growth in the right conditions. It can endure more pressure than conventional concrete without breaking, is a known insulator and fire-retardant and could even provide radiation protection on space missions.

The European Space Agency (Esa) is likewise pushing boundaries with mycelium. In a joint project with Montalti and the University of Utrecht, the agency is exploring whether fungi could be used to grow buildings, like labs and other facilities, in space.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Nasa is also examining whether their Mars missions could grow surface structures on the planet itself. The Americans are considering producing on Earth a flexible plastic shell seeded with mycelium and then activating the fungal growth once in Mars. That way a thin film can become thick roof or walls in a matter of days or weeks. The building could be malleable: fungus growth stops when their feedstock is consumed, their ideal temperature is withdrawn or the mycelia is killed via heat, yet the dormant fungi can be reactivated into growth, if repairs are needed.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181031-how-fungus-and-sweat-could-transform-martian-exploration