He initially developed his method as a way of housing those around the world who have no adequate shelter, but he believes it could also be applied on the moon or Mars. He's quite a visionary. We're going to help where we can, we can help with community support, community organization. Architect of Skyscrapers and Mud Huts Khalili, who used to design conventional skyscrapers before turning his attention to housing the poor, reached a milestone in his career 20 years ago when he found a simple way to make the traditional domed or vaulted mud-brick houses of his native Iran more resistant to earthquakes and weather. The ceramic houses were impervious to rain or snow and safe from all but the most powerful earthquakes.
Barbed wire is laid between the rows to reinforce and help hold the bags together.
Houses built by this method in Hesperia, an earthquake zone, have passed seismic tests and been granted approval by the city's building inspectors. In 1984 Khalili was invited to a NASA-sponsored symposium on lunar bases where he explained how geltaftan and superadobe could be adapted for lunar use. He conducted an experiment at the McDonnell Douglas Space Systems laboratories to show that the heat of the sun could be harnessed to melt and fuse the soil on the lunar surface, turning it into blocks, fibers or other shapes in an outer space version of geltaftan. There Khalili said in an interview the planned lunar colony in Hesperia would demonstrate these possibilities and boost the image of earth as a modern building material of the future. Unfortunately, most third world people sneer at them, they have lost respect for their traditional houses.