ET Foam Home

Sticky resinous material infused with various materials is mixed with compressed air and encased in a hardened shell designed to crack along previously designated lines of weakness.

The eggs are sent wheeling towards the surface of any planet/moon/asteroid you intend on colonising and on impact, they crack, allowing the compressed air to expand, stretching the resin into a mass of sticky bubbles. In the low-pressure atmosphere, the compressed gas is expansive enough to form small (or possibly large) rooms. Over time and exposure to the elements, the resin hardens, leaving behind a retro-chic structure that simply has to have an airlock door and other life-support systems installed on the arrival of the colonists.

Further enhancements could be made by seeding the foam mixture with transmitters and other electronic devices.

For example, tiny manipulators that, mixed into the material before launch and activated on impact, burrow through the sticky foam to the bottom and form an array of foot-like, synchronised appendages that could allow for migration to a better location, or to group blobs together in clusters for mutual protection. These would operate much like the feet on a starfish.

Other mini components could include solar cells that migrate to the top of the blob providing a constant, if rather weak power supply to the other apparatus in the blob (which if it contained some quantity of metallic compound might allow for the conduction of electricity.)

Seeded control units could work on a principal of generating synchronised or syncopated pulses that the other components (or even other blobs) could tune into in order to provide some organisation (like the starfish feet for example)

Many of these eggs could be fired at a prospect-planet prior to colonisation.