Mars astronauts could live in houses made of yeast and jello, say scientists
And they could build those shelters out of yeast and gelatin, if a method described by Hong Kong-based researchers makes it out of the lab. A paper published on Thursday by a group of researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University describes a method for building structures on Mars that doesn’t rely on energy-intensive heating to turn regolith into building blocks. REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); Qiu’s idea is a relatively simple one once you break it down: Take one part yeast bioengineered to produce adhesive proteins that bind the components.
- ▪And they could build those shelters out of yeast and gelatin, if a method described by Hong Kong-based researchers makes it out of the lab.
- ▪A paper published on Thursday by a group of researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University describes a method for building structures on Mars that doesn’t rely on energy-intensiv
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); Qiu’s idea is a relatively simple one once you break it down: Take one part yeast bioengineered to produce adhesive proteins that bind the co
Hacker News (Front Page) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 1,549 of its stories. Top-voted stories on Hacker News.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | theregister |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/09/11/mars-astronauts-could-live-in-houses-made-of-yeast-and-jello-say-scientists/5295931 |
| Publication time | Sun, 13 Sep 2026 13:34:23 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-13T14:11:52.637Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-13T14:11:52.637Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 0EWNhvsxGHvq · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); offbeat Mars astronauts could live in houses made of yeast and jello, say scientists Low-energy 3D printing could turn Martian dirt into sturdy structures Brandon Vigliarolo Brandon Vigliarolo GOVERNMENT AND IT NEWS REPORTER Published fri 11 Sep 2026 // 17:50 UTC READ MORE Britain's technology brief is now everyone's job and nobody's responsibility 1 day ago Chinese researchers find egg-cellent way to keep space debris from scrambling craft 3 days ago Britain reboots its space strategy…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at theregister.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from theregister
