Exploring how we could build textile, fiber, and polymer manufacturing plants beyond Earth—starting with the resources beneath our feet.
A shared manufacturing question, with very different resource streams and operating environments.
Lunar regolith contains mineral fragments and glasses. NASA identifies oxygen, silicon, aluminum, iron, and other elements in lunar crust minerals.
Mars offers regolith and a CO₂-rich atmosphere. MOXIE demonstrated atmospheric oxygen production—a resource-processing precedent, rather than a polymer production demonstration.
Select a pathway to examine the proposed factory sequence. Each is a research framework, with feasibility still to establish.
Cross-cutting plant systems: energy supply · heat rejection · dust containment · process atmosphere · maintenance · material testing
Initial concept briefs developed from Stephen’s thesis direction. These are proposed investigations, not completed experiments or established findings.
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Fabrics of Space is an MLQS research initiative led by Stephen McGuinness, bringing a background in polymer and color chemistry and textile product development to the question of manufacturing beyond Earth.
The thesis direction centers on designing lunar and Martian textile, fiber, and polymer plants. Wovens, nonwovens, and polymer extrusion take priority, with knitting as a future research branch.
What would it take to turn local resources into useful materials—and build the plant that makes them?
The research agenda follows feedstock selection, processing routes, plant architecture, and product performance. Every concept should identify assumptions, missing evidence, and a practical next investigation.
Current phase: defining the research questions and building the concept library. No institutional affiliation or endorsement is implied.
Selected NASA articles and NASA Technical Reports Server records connected to resource processing, mineral fibers, and surface plant design.
Describes equipment designed to draw continuous glass fibers from simulated lunar soil and investigate formation at one-sixth gravity.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
Direct starting point for planning fiber drawing equipment and a reduced-gravity test matrix. This is a test apparatus report, not proof of a production-ready lunar textile plant.
Reports glass fibers and glass reinforcement produced from molten lunar regolith simulant for sulfur-concrete research.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
A mineral-fiber precedent to investigate. Structural reinforcement results do not establish suitability for wearable textiles or weaving.
Documents development of a lunar highlands simulant using natural minerals and synthetic glass, targeting characteristics of Apollo 16 material.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
Helps frame simulant selection, glass chemistry, particle sizing, and reproducible feedstock preparation.
Examines dust challenges for radiators, mechanisms, bearings, seals, and spacesuit fabrics, with mitigation advice and a substantial bibliography.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
Useful for clean/dirty process boundaries, rotating textile equipment, thermal systems, and material handling.
Describes the completed Mars demonstration of oxygen production from atmospheric carbon dioxide across varying conditions.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
A real atmospheric-resource processing precedent. It demonstrates oxygen generation, not polymer or fiber synthesis.
Introduces acquisition and use of local resources, including regolith, water, and the carbon-dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
Frames upstream resource operations and the interfaces a materials factory would need.
Introduces lunar crust minerals, their constituent elements, and the fragments and glasses that make up regolith.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
A foundation for distinguishing mineral feedstocks from organic polymer precursors.
Outlines physical science questions associated with lunar conditions, resource utilization, and on-Moon manufacturing.
Relevance to Fabrics of Space
A guide to environmental questions that terrestrial extrusion and fiber processes must address.
Use the original reports and their bibliographies to build the next literature review.
These sources inform the research agenda; the relevance notes are Fabrics of Space interpretations. Historical simulant studies and technology demonstrations do not establish a complete Moon or Mars textile production system. Links do not imply NASA affiliation or endorsement. Curated 09 October 2026.