- | Khalili looks to moon for 'superadobe' huts - Daily Press, January 25, 2000 |

ARCHITECTURE:
Hesperia City Council supports construction of base in city.

By EMILY SACHS
Staff Writer

Thursday's total lunar eclipse wasn't the only good omen for Hesperia architect Nader Khalili. The City Council became the first in the country to unanimously support construction of a moon base in the city.
"Hesperia taking the lead ... and backing up this project could get this started," Khalili said after the council's vote.
The proposed "space colony" would be located behind the Hesperia Lake site where Khalili and an ever-changing crew of volunteers and architectural students from around the world are building the Hesperia Museum and Nature Center.
The museum resembles a moon-worthy structure with its rounded buildings - the technology for which will be easily translatable for lunar structures, he said.
Surrounding the site are mountains-"it looks like you are within a crater here," he said.
Twenty-five years of study and precursors to the present technology is on display at his Cal-Earth Institute on Baldy Lane.
The final product being built at the lake, however, is steeped in its simplicity.
Khalili's "Superadobe blocks" are a mixture of Mohave River sand and a small amount of cement which fuses into roughly a 50-pound block that is held together with others via barbed wire.
Khalili said the lunar version would require only the sacks and large pieces of Velcro.
"We don't need to take things from here to pollute there," he said.
Once there, lunar dust, or regolith, would fill the sacks although much remains to be studied including how to create a vacuum to quickly and effortlessly fill the sacks.
That is why Khalili is intent on creating the lunar base and study center which would also look at putting the structures on planets such as Mars.
The center would include a moon village housing six to 100 people, areas for study and learning and, with enough funding, virtual gravity simulators to fully experience lunar living.

The 'Mars One' prototype is made of earthen material.

Khalili, who began his career designing high-rises, first presented his self-proclaimed "advanced technology" to NASA in 1984. Unlike most firms proposing lunar housing, Khalili's requires no impact be made on the moon. No factories would need to be built nor would there be any waste created from the housing.
"Because the moon is such a sacred thing to us, it should be kept as pure and beautiful as it is," Khalili, a follower of the Persian mystic Rumi, said.
Michael Duke of Houston's Lunar and Planetary Institute, which is affiliated with NASA, said Khalili's efforts have been taken seriously.
"The logic of what they want to do is straightforward and, I think, correct," he said. "If we ever want to have people residing on the moon, at least in significant numbers, we'll need to make their abodes out of things there."
Khalili's idea "is something we might well use," Duke said. "Whether we use the specific techniques he's using remains to be seen."
That vision is what drives Khalili to finish.
Seed money of $100,000 up to $2.5 million is needed to begin building the Hesperia lunar base, although $10 million to $20 million could build the entire colony "very handsomely," Khalili said.
University of Southern California faculty member Madhu Thangavelu has been associated with Khalili for about 12 years and has seen previous attempts to woo NASA sputter out due to the agency's lack of funding.
It is an indication, he said, of the agency and the field's consistent emphasis of engineering over humanities.
"The work of Nader Khalili is too visionary for even a visionary organization like NASA," he said.
Khalili's is said to be the only firm whose concepts are already being used practical purposes.
Khalili's huts are being built in a number of Third World countries and put into use as emergency shelters because of their proven ability to withstand natural disasters and not further deforestation or introduce foreign matter to other soils, Khalili said.