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SpaceX Mars City Buildings / Plan


Krez

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I'm sure everyone has seen the beautiful proposed Mars City that SpaceX put out a while ago. I can't tell if that is only an artists fanciful drawing, or is there an actual plan here. Has anyone seen a plan view, or something that tells what each of these buildings are actually supposed to be?  There is a lot of repetition, but I would expect that to be true for any modular city or outpost. Obviously you can see Green Houses, Solar Farms, and tanks, lots of tanks, but what are those football fields? What is that round thing in the bottom right, a convention center?

 

e73a68c9794193e16e7169af793bfb94.jpg 

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Im 99,99% sure those are purely artistic renders, as accurate as the buildings from an Anno game. SpaceX doesnt have the manpower for serious colony planing, they have at most some guys working on absolute basics like mining for water (for fuel), deployable solar panels and options for simple building materials.

The first habitats on mars will likely be converted starships, you can start proper planning after archieving that stage because then you know way more about the enviroment and its challenges.

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SpaceX has no idea how to colonize Mars. 

They know what kinds of rockets we'll need to do it, and they're working on those. We know what kinds of things a base will need for professional astronauts staying on Mars on scientific missions. But to send hundreds of ordinary people to live in a city on Mars is somewhat far off (not to say that it's impossible, or even that some of us won't see it happen in our lifetimes). Anyone is supposed to be able to go to Mars, but Elon touting off about loans and alluding to indentured servitude on Twitter hardly qualifies as an equitable and thorough plan. SpaceX's idea is to make it possible to send LOTS of stuff to Mars, whatever may be necessary to support human life in the long run. What exactly all that stuff is is yet to be determined, but we know there will probably be things like greenhouses and solar farms, hence their appearance in this purely artistic display.

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42 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Elon touting off about loans and alluding to indentured servitude on Twitter hardly qualifies as an equitable and thorough plan.

Capitalism is an extremely poor mechanism for establishing a base on another planet. It kinda sorta worked on Earth (but with massively bad downstream consequences we still live with), but that was when the places that were being colonized were already terraformed, usually had people already living there, had plenty of edible plants and animals and drinkable water, and had valuable resources that could be used to fund the colonization.

Mars has none of that.

My god, "indentured servitude"?

And what do you do if somebody goes there and then says "scrw you, I'm doing my own thing now". Cut off their air? Wouldn't that be wonderful -- slaves to our corporate overloads who will kill us if we don't work off our debt at the company store....

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33 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

And what do you do if somebody goes there and then says "scrw you, I'm doing my own thing now". Cut off their air? Wouldn't that be wonderful -- slaves to our corporate overloads who will kill us if we don't work off our debt at the company store....

SpaceX seems to recognize Mars as a sovereign planet even now, so at least it won't be them in particular doing that. And they want people to be allowed to return to Earth at any transfer window available. Even still, that's no system for ensuring that everyone can afford the $200,000 ticket (if it even gets that low). It's a complicated, strange question, and I hope that whoever ends up in charge won't make living on Mars any harder than it already is.

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1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

sually had people already living there, had plenty of edible plants and animals and drinkable water, and had valuable resources that could be used to fund the colonization.

And in places where people actually decided to move to, in most cases you can literally walk around outside naked, and not be dead within a couple minutes ;)

That seems like the point anyone making analogies to Earth should just stop, lol.

If the place someone is comparing to "age of exploration" colonialism is instantly fatal sans technology more complex than "a jacket" the analogy is not worth going forward with.

Edited by tater
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Honestly - Mars is going to be one of those 'cool to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there' places.  Download speed is garbage and upload is worse.  Really hard to keep TikTok content up to date, and it plays havoc with FPS titles. 

 

There is no sports, and while there are plenty of beaches - the surfing is non existent. Unless you are a heck of a bartender or a whiz at acoustic guitar, you are limited to oiling and cleaning the automated oxygen extraction equipment - and since everyone has a Ph.D., unless you have three you can't get decent coffee. 

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42 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

and since everyone has a Ph.D., unless you have three you can't get decent coffee. 

Hah! 

I agree. They'd have to make a very convincing argument to get me to live on a red rock with 1/3 Earth gravity and a limited air supply. Is human life, long term, even possible in 1/3 g? 

This, plus the fact that there's no economic reason to put a colony on Mars. I guess we just have to wait for global land prices to go through the stratosphere....

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6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Capitalism is an extremely poor mechanism for establishing a base on another planet.

While others hardly can support it...

There is no perfection in this world. :(

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

And what do you do if somebody goes there and then says "scrw you, I'm doing my own thing now". Cut off their air? Wouldn't that be wonderful -- slaves to our corporate overloads who will kill us if we don't work off our debt at the company store....

The office crowd will even see no difference.

Upd.
After thinking twice...

The office crowd will even see no difference.
A coworking made of glass, conditioned air, water from coolers, break rooms" with gaudy "joyful" furniture for epic guys clynical enthusiasts (or more often - no at all), artificial food, and everything other.
An important difference: no loaned car is required, because no roads.
On another hand, they can pay less, because you don't need to loan a car.

Also a bright side is no office procrastination.
Because

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Download speed is garbage and upload is worse.  Really hard to keep TikTok content up to date, and it plays havoc with FPS titles. 

Actually, the best place in Solar System for both totaliarian cults and corporate offices.
 

6 hours ago, cubinator said:

SpaceX seems to recognize Mars as a sovereign planet even now,

When I said that "SN1" is "Space-X Navy One", nobody believed.

Also they rejected the hypothesis that the Starships will be marked like EMS.
(Publicly Earth-Mars Ship, privately Elon Musk Ship).

Well, of course I don't insist that's the plan, but anyway Enterprise is an obvious name for a ship of a private fleet.

6 hours ago, cubinator said:

And they want people to be allowed to return to Earth at any transfer window available.

After they pay all their corporate credits, of course.

6 hours ago, cubinator said:

Even still, that's no system for ensuring that everyone can afford the $200,000 ticket (if it even gets that low).

200 000 / 60 000 ~ 3 years of a US engineer income, afaigoogled (if not, sorry, idk exactly)

Twice if he wants to return back.

If presume that the engineer rents a pressurized home habitat on Mars (an unpressurized one is cheaper but requires more oxygen balloons, so it isn't worthy of it), for a half of his salary, so he should probably pay 10% of his income for the tickets.

As after several decades on Mars he anyway unlikely will want to return his spine and knees to the Earth gravity, the return ticket is usually not needed.

So, he just must work for 30 years there to pay for his trip to Mars, what means it's easier to sign a lifelong contract.
(See above, about the "totaliarian cults and corporate offices").

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

There is no sports

Not true.

They have darts with targets on thin aluminium walls.
Mini-golf in glassy domes.
A swimming pool with two meter high waves when somebody jumps of board, to the joy of swimmers and floaters.
Tennis and volleyball with balls bouncing from ceiling (because low gravity makes it hard to hit them against opponent's part of floor).
Baseball with doubled distances and a team of catchers (?) due to that.
Chess. (No, honestly.)
Figure skating with triple quadruple octuple lutz. Thanks, low-g.
3d hockey. Because the puck keeps ricocheting from floor, walls, and ceiling, so the hockey rink should be a hockey box made of bulletproof glass.

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

unless you have three you can't get decent coffee. 

Aren't the Martian GMO coffee algae good enough? Just use a coffee-strainer to filter out the chlorophyll particles.
Also they are smokable and nicotine-free.

Edited by kerbiloid
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6 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I refuse to smoke anything that is nicotine-free.  What a horrible thought.  You should feel ashamed.

No problem.
Due to same low g, the Martian tobacco has enormously large leaves, so usually the Martians keep smoking every cigar for a week,

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The only hope of a Mars colony is probably Musk and/or other like-minded gajillionaires. It would not be "capitalism," but "capitalism-adjacent." Adjacent in that capitalists need to make metric #$@!-tons of money (the usual way, here on Earth where people with money are) to light on fire to make a Mars colony.

 

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The only thing unrealistic in that picture IMO are the strewn around objects about the pressurized habs as well as the roads.

You don't need roads and paths in space, you can't walk around willy-nilly anyway. I imagine more interconnecting tubes.

 

Still, problem remains that so far we only know how to explore with stashed supplies from homebase. If you truly want to live somewhere else you need to live off from it, and that means full self-sustain, which we haven't even reached back on Earth for things like Antarctic base stations. We'll have to figure out how to produce oxygen, food, process waste, all the lot, then how to make materials to build more stuff and what forms are they in.

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15 hours ago, YNM said:

Still, problem remains that so far we only know how to explore with stashed supplies from homebase. If you truly want to live somewhere else you need to live off from it, and that means full self-sustain, which we haven't even reached back on Earth for things like Antarctic base stations. We'll have to figure out how to produce oxygen, food, process waste, all the lot, then how to make materials to build more stuff and what forms are they in.

ISRU, ie farming, is currently not allowed in current Antarctic operations due agreements as a part of the Antarctic treaties - in order to prevent introduction of invasive species and environmental pollution. It is not due to technical limitations.

 

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8 minutes ago, mrfox said:

ISRU, ie farming, is currently not allowed in current Antarctic operations due agreements as a part of the Antarctic treaties - in order to prevent introduction of invasive species and environmental pollution. It is not due to technical limitations.

 

Seems my info is out of date...

https://www.businessinsider.com/antarctica-greenhouse-dlr-german-aerospace-center-2017-9#the-135-square-foot-greenhouse-can-grow-all-sorts-of-produce-indoors-harvesting-food-outdoors-is-impossible-in-antarctica-due-to-its-endless-winters-2

 

 

Antarctica's nonstop winters make it impossible to grow food outdoors. Fruits and vegetables are instead shipped long distances from overseas, just a few times per year. 

But in 2017, engineers at the German Aerospace Center (GAC) built a high-tech greenhouse that will allow Antarcticans to harvest produce.

The farm can grow food year-round for researchers at the Neumayer III polar station on the Ekstrom Ice Shelf. The team just completed its first harvest, the AP reports.

Called the Eden-ISS, the greenhouse exists inside a climate-controlled shipping container. It relies on a technique called vertical farming, in which food grows on trays or hanging modules under LEDs instead of natural sunlight.

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28 minutes ago, mrfox said:

ISRU, ie farming, is currently not allowed in current Antarctic operations due agreements as a part of the Antarctic treaties - in order to prevent introduction of invasive species and environmental pollution. It is not due to technical limitations.

 

Tomatoes and lectures are invasive species and the ones who would be most popular to grow in an greenhouse as they work best fresh, they would also have some problem surviving in the wild :) Yes you will get bacteria in the soil who might cause problems.  Noe would bother with potatoes as they store well and flying them in is way cheaper. 

Now sledge dogs is banned  for an very good reason, at some point some idiot would bring an breading pair who ran away, they could probably survive the winter breed and eat well on the  penguin colonies. 
Only way to wipe them out would be with an military operation who is also illegal, yes the US could recruit some hundred Inuit hunters and say 10 helicopters with door guns to kill the dogs but the soviets might well object as this is an overwhelming force in Antarctica. 
And dogs was not needed with more reliable snowmobiles and communications. They was very good early on as you could loose or even eat some of the dogs and still get back. 

Edited by magnemoe
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On 2/20/2021 at 12:33 AM, mrfox said:

Realistically, any initial iteration of a Mars colony will be a research base. And I’d imagine it would resemble  Mcmurdo station in Antarctica, except with a lot more life support infrastructure.

arctic%20take%20two.png

This, now fire is less of an problem on Mars and you want more interconnect as you don't want to done an space suit to go to the next building, however the landing pad will be far away and you will had earth walls between. 
My guess is that they land far away and you have some huge truck move starship to its launch pad where it can be fueled. 

Yes we will get an mars base like above, not an city as it makes no sense. 
I say an city in earth orbit make lots more sense  as it has so many more uses. All from building and servicing orbital infrastructure, an manufacturing hub and an tourist destination, later on and probably an higher orbit handling resources from moon and asteroids. 

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