Webinar: The Martian Mindset - a scarcity-driven engineering paradigm

The Martian Mindset - a scarcity-driven engineering paradigm

Kirsten Tracht

Bremen Institute of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bremen, Germany

Correspondence e-mail: tracht@bime.de

Abstract

The continuous geographic and demographic expansion of humankind has relied on the assumption of essentially unlimited resources and particularly on the massive exploitation of fossil fuels. This has set us on a path toward a rapidly deteriorating environment and an impending age of scarcity, which will challenge the very fundamentals of nearly all production technologies. The Martian Mindset will start from a radically new perspective, aiming at a long-term paradigm shift. Let’s place ourselves on Mars, a potentially habitable but inhospitable world with scarce resources, and rethink the production of materials and parts from scratch. The Martian Mindset is guided by scarcity constraints in four dimensions---natural resources, electric power, human workforce and information. The Martian Mindset under this scarcity-driven paradigm will focus on the production of enough-to-use materials and parts. The research beyond will hence need to address the sourcing of materials, the processing to parts and the design of operating concepts, each embracing scarcity.

Biography

Kirsten Tracht is a Professor at the University of Bremen (since 2008), teaching and researching in the fields of production design, assembly and logistics. She has numerous projects in fundamental research, applied research and transfer and published more than 150 articles in the topics. Furthermore she serves as reviewer for many research journals, conferences and research proposal review boards, national and international. Professor Tracht is currently serving as the President of the German Academic Society of Assembly, Handling and Industrial Robotics, and member of various scientific and transfer-oriented associations.

14:00-15:00 (Central European Time)

Zoom Meeting ID: 607 477 8704; Password: AET

Join Zoom Meeting: https://strath.zoom.us/j/6074778704?omn=89630324481