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[Veiki]

This has been one of those simple little questions that for me recently as regards fiction writing in the New Eden setting: what are the ubiquitous building materials used.

This is not as regards spaceships, but rather what would be commonly used in civil applications. Because what is used to build with will also affect the architecture and aesthetics of a constructed environment.

At present given the technological level available in New Eden I'm convinced that Carbon variants are commonly used, cheap to manufacture, and widely accessible: carbon fullerene tubes for structural purposes, carbon fibre sheets, varied polymers and plastics etc.

From an industrial design and architectural perspective it certainly presents many different and varied uses in its application - likely replacing steel and other metals in current use?

However it does make me wonder what is the brick and concrete type material of choice used in New Eden - still brick and concrete or something else entirely?

It's becoming one of those nagging questions for me as I've started writing fiction pieces again.

[Lyn Farel]

But... Caldari STEEL !

I would perfectly expect some advanced more sciencey forms of concrete in gallente Omega cities and shantytowns while witnessing as you say high tech materials like carbon based construction, maybe the kind associating light weight, resistance, and that could also remodel itself at will or some such...

Some PI items hint a bit in that direction, with smartfab units, sterile conduits and the likes, even if it's more focused on industrial applications.

[Louella Dougans]

In Amarr, at least, bricks were used for some time after spaceflight, because of the Sacred Bricks that make up the Tal-Romon Cathedral. The Cathedral was built on a different world to the one on which it now stands.
Modern buildings in the Amarr capital city also are built from bricks. In the slave quarter at least
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Torsad-Laur

The Gallente seem to use polymers a lot, as well as glass and crystals. https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Caille#Cityscape_.26_Infrastructure
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Hueromont#Cityscape_.26_Infrastructure

Concrete does seem to be used, mainly for infrastructure, and military facilities, though some houses are built from it, seemingly on less-developed worlds.
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Falling_Skies_(Chronicle)
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/And_to_Live_in_Peace_(Chronicle)
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Sand_Giants_(Chronicle)

[The Rook]

Looking at the reasons we are using concrete and steel today it should not be too difficult to come up with a lot of sci-fi (or just future) solutions to this question. Even looking at current research goals/papers can be inspiration.
In the case of on-site prepared liquid concrete one can think of adding polymers or additives that reduce the time it needs to harden, modify electronical properties or provide self-repair capabilities. And, of course, just varying the formula to increase durability, modify tensile strength and so on.

[Morwen Lagann]

I vaguely recall mentions of some sort of glass-replacement material that is transparent but as strong as (or stronger than) steel but can't recall exactly where from.

[Katrina Oniseki]

Ignoring the fancy titles such as "permacrete" and "durasteel", I think the reality is that many of the same materials will be used as today. It's pretty much what we'd expect.

[Saede Riordan]

Yeah, when you can strip mine entire asteroids down to nothing, its not too hard to imagine building stations (or hell, even ships) out of things like concrete and steel, or upgraded versions of concrete and steel using materials abundant in space but rare terrestrially. I believe the Jita 4-4 Chronicle mentions concrete being a major material in the station's superstructure. The reason we build spaceships and spacestations out of light and relatively flimsy materials today is related to the difficulty in getting things out of a gravity well. Once your in space, there's little reason to make things out of more exotic materials. We build skyscrapers out of steel and concrete because they're strong, durable, and abundant. There's little reason to use other materials if the basic ones work just as well for less isk.

Now that being said, New Eden definitely has materials science that we don't. We can't build a space elevator because we don't have the materials science yet, New Eden has space elevators, so they clearly have some materials science further advanced then ours. 

[Elmund Egivand]

Yeah, when you can strip mine entire asteroids down to nothing, its not too hard to imagine building stations (or hell, even ships) out of things like concrete and steel, or upgraded versions of concrete and steel using materials abundant in space but rare terrestrially. I believe the Jita 4-4 Chronicle mentions concrete being a major material in the station's superstructure. The reason we build spaceships and spacestations out of light and relatively flimsy materials today is related to the difficulty in getting things out of a gravity well. Once your in space, there's little reason to make things out of more exotic materials. We build skyscrapers out of steel and concrete because they're strong, durable, and abundant. There's little reason to use other materials if the basic ones work just as well for less isk.

Now that being said, New Eden definitely has materials science that we don't. We can't build a space elevator because we don't have the materials science yet, New Eden has space elevators, so they clearly have some materials science further advanced then ours.

In New Eden nanotechnology and nanofibers are available in great abundance. Seeing that they can already make entire starship superstructures and armour plating out of nanofibers it shouldn't be too difficult to synthesize long enough nanofibers to make space elevators with.

[Saede Riordan]

Space elevators are canon afaik. They're mentioned as being fairly common on the richer Federation worlds, and I can imagine that heavily industrialized or agricultural worlds would likely also have them to get resources harvested up out of the gravity well. I wrote a space elevator into my description of Skarkon II, and there's plans to build one on Renaissance in Origin in the next few years. As far as sci-fi technologies go, a space elevator is actually really tame, and certainly much more easily grasped then teleporters and other hypothetically sci-fi transportation methods. I quite like space elevators conceptually, and I really hope that CCP lets us actually build them mechanically before too much time passes, seeing them in the trailers is such a tease.

[Elmund Egivand]

Just helping to add to the point of New Eden having more advance materials to work with. Our spaceships can have nanofiber superstructures and nanofiber armour platings while in real life we are still struggling to make nanotubes longer than 55cm.

[Samira Kernher]

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Items_(technology)#Engineering_and_Industrial


There's also the very useful t2 ship components in-game which give a good idea what the different materials used by the different empires are.

[Shal Novastorm]

Ignoring the fancy titles such as "permacrete" and "durasteel", I think the reality is that many of the same materials will be used as today. It's pretty much what we'd expect.

Yea they slap new labels on them to say 'we've SUPER refined the process now' but it's still concrete and steel at the end of the day.

[Lyn Farel]

And since genetic tampering is rather taboo pretty much everywhere, I doubt we see a lot of really advanced bioscience other than your usual genetic enhanced livestock... Although I wonder where they draw the limit, if you can have buildings made out of biological bodies like pre-programmed coral.

[Ember Vykos]

I vaguely recall mentions of some sort of glass-replacement material that is transparent but as strong as (or stronger than) steel but can't recall exactly where from.

Transparent Aluminium

[Morwen Lagann]

I vaguely recall mentions of some sort of glass-replacement material that is transparent but as strong as (or stronger than) steel but can't recall exactly where from.

Transparent Aluminium

A keyboard? How quaint.