Adobe huts for mars

[PB666]

A couple of news feed today are chattering about a amourphous sulfer compound that can be made on mars that can concretize within 2 hours, strength is not the issue however, its not resilient to heat much above the boiling point of water. 

we could see future martains out pouring red mud into rectangular forms and then assembling what look to be brick houses.

I dont see the utility here because if you want to really build you need to reinforce with tensil strength bar of some sort, and you also cant use this stuff as a pressure hull, so ...........

http://www.cnet.com/news/concrete-for-mars-shelters-made-from-martian-materials/

Two reasons for shelter, live and grow stuff. One minimally needs to be a pressure hull, the other the same but would preferably have a translucent ceiling. 

Edited January 12, 2016 by PB666

[Spaceception]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

A couple of news feed today are chattering about a amourphous sulfer compound that can be made on mars that can concretize within 2 hours, strength is not the issue however, its not resilient to heat much above the boiling point of water. 

we could see future martains out pouring red mud into rectangular forms and then assembling what look to be brick houses.

I dont see the utility here because if you want to really build you need to reinforce with tensil strength bar of some sort, and you also cant use this stuff as a pressure hull, so ...........

http://www.cnet.com/news/concrete-for-mars-shelters-made-from-martian-materials/

Two reasons for shelter, live and grow stuff. One minimally needs to be a pressure hull, the other the same but would preferably have a translucent ceiling. 

Instead of using the martian dirt to form bricks, how about you bring a few 3-D printers to turn the dirt into strong hull plates?

Also, guess what Planetary resources did: http://3dprint.com/114619/planetary-resources-asteroid/

[KerikBalm]

well, it can shield from radiation small meteors (because thats not much of an atmosphere), dust storms... etc.

Such a structure could provide thermal insulation to protect from diurnal temperature shifts?

 

but generally... yea... it seems to be of limited utility... a lot more is needed to be a viable colony that the ability to build non-hermetically sealable huts

Edited January 12, 2016 by KerikBalm

[KSK]

An adobe hut would be no good at all. Uploading patches to Mars would take forever.

Ah - the other adobe. Never mind - carry on.

[Nuke]

i think id probibly drop a small nuclear powered tunnel boring machine. have it carve out some underground infrastructure. astronauts can come in later, install airlocks, epoxy the walls, and pressurize the interior with the appropriate atmosphere. then recover the tbm's reactor to power a base.

[AngelLestat]

the adobe title was misleading.. not sure about that material with sulfur.. so I can not said much.  It might work.

[The Yellow Dart]

I think it could definitely still be useful. After all, it doesn't take that much strength to hold in 1atm. You can use the structures in the same way as a bike tire and bike tube, just bring along an air tight liner, build a cylindrical structure, reinforced by something light and packable like stands of nylon or kevlar. Insert your liner and inflate. The "adobe" holds the liner's shape and protects from radiation.

[fredinno]

3 hours ago, Nuke said:

i think id probibly drop a small nuclear powered tunnel boring machine. have it carve out some underground infrastructure. astronauts can come in later, install airlocks, epoxy the walls, and pressurize the interior with the appropriate atmosphere. then recover the tbm's reactor to power a base.

>i think id probibly drop a small nuclear powered tunnel boring machine.

>nuclear

Good luck. I really hope something like that actually ends up getting off the ground!

[Nuke]

On 1/14/2016 at 7:51 PM, fredinno said:

>i think id probibly drop a small nuclear powered tunnel boring machine.

>nuclear

Good luck. I really hope something like that actually ends up getting off the ground!

nuclear doesnt have to be fission. i dont think anyone will have issue with launching an inert fusion reactor and then powering it up while on an escape trajectory. not a today project, maybe a 50 years from now project definitely. i dont think we can build a tunnel boring machine that runs by itself yet (they all require infrastructure, like a mud plant and a lot of prefabricated reinforced concrete liner sections), not to mention a large crew to operate, and a lot of survey work and inertial guidance to keep it on course, and also someone to change the cutting wheels periodically. an you need to communicate with it underground, so it needs to set up its own communications relay system to an outside transceiver. when we can build something completely autonomous like that we might have already cracked the fusion problem.

underground does have its advantages. radiation shielding, direct access to natural resources, lots of space for hydroponic gardening. circular tunnels can be build for centrifuges in low gravity planets.

also here is some reading

Edited January 15, 2016 by Nuke

[wumpus]

The only reason  you would want to bore a tunnel on Mars is if you really needed a deep (100m?) living space.  Look at road building (on Earth).  Deep trenches are almost always preferable to tunnels.  A basic Earth-made structure (the habitats suggested by NASA) covered with adobe (as the OP said) would be much easier until you needed vast amounts of adobe above.

As far as "nuclear boring" (especially non-fission), I suppose that NASA could obtain a neutron bomb and use it to bore out an extremely large space easily (like an underground test).  I suppose that the radiation levels (after a year or so) of those underground tests are tip-top-secret (Andrei Sakharov is said to have figured out how to build a bomb based on isotopes from the Bikini Islands), but some "safe after n years" might be possible to find out.

How cratered is Mars?  I know it has an atmosphere and wind, so craters aren't eternal like on the moon, but I also know that Curiosity (or similar) rovers have gone into craters so they can't be that rare.  I suspect that building a dome over a crater can give you that much more living space (even martian gravity might make a second story too expensive, not sure).

 

[SuperFastJellyfish]

2 hours ago, wumpus said:

The only reason  you would want to bore a tunnel on Mars is if you really needed a deep (100m?) living space.  Look at road building (on Earth).  Deep trenches are almost always preferable to tunnels.  A basic Earth-made structure (the habitats suggested by NASA) covered with adobe (as the OP said) would be much easier until you needed vast amounts of adobe above.

As far as "nuclear boring" (especially non-fission), I suppose that NASA could obtain a neutron bomb and use it to bore out an extremely large space easily (like an underground test).  I suppose that the radiation levels (after a year or so) of those underground tests are tip-top-secret (Andrei Sakharov is said to have figured out how to build a bomb based on isotopes from the Bikini Islands), but some "safe after n years" might be possible to find out.

How cratered is Mars?  I know it has an atmosphere and wind, so craters aren't eternal like on the moon, but I also know that Curiosity (or similar) rovers have gone into craters so they can't be that rare.  I suspect that building a dome over a crater can give you that much more living space (even martian gravity might make a second story too expensive, not sure).

 

Topography map of Mars:  http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2782/i2782_sh1.pdf

[Spaceception]

2 hours ago, Nuke said:

nuclear doesnt have to be fission. i dont think anyone will have issue with launching an inert fusion reactor and then powering it up while on an escape trajectory. not a today project, maybe a 50 years from now project definitely. i dont think we can build a tunnel boring machine that runs by itself yet (they all require infrastructure, like a mud plant and a lot of prefabricated reinforced concrete liner sections), not to mention a large crew to operate, and a lot of survey work and inertial guidance to keep it on course, and also someone to change the cutting wheels periodically. an you need to communicate with it underground, so it needs to set up its own communications relay system to an outside transceiver. when we can build something completely autonomous like that we might have already cracked the fusion problem.

underground does have its advantages. radiation shielding, direct access to natural resources, lots of space for hydroponic gardening. circular tunnels can be build for centrifuges in low gravity planets.

also here is some reading

Fusion might be closer than you think if Lockheed Martins Fusion reactor works.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html

[KerbonautInTraining]

Who said it needs to be pressurized to 1 atm? This might be worthy of its own thread but can't people easily survive in 0.5 or even 0.3 atm? 

[Nuke]

5 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Fusion might be closer than you think if Lockheed Martins Fusion reactor works.

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html

there are a lot of compact reactor designs that might work well for space power applications. it will certainly make colonization more plausible.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Nuke

[Bill Phil]

3 hours ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

Who said it needs to be pressurized to 1 atm? This might be worthy of its own thread but can't people easily survive in 0.5 or even 0.3 atm? 

In pure oxygen environments, the pressure is much less than 1atm.

So if you change the percentage of nitrogen and oxygen, you can lower the pressure, I think.

Edited January 15, 2016 by Bill Phil

[tater]

They tested nuclear (fission) tunnelers at LANL in the 1980s. The space application was typically considered to be the Moon. They also did quite a lot of work on lunar concrete using simulants. I don't think the goal was to hold pressure, but to function as radiation shielding.

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, tater said:

They tested nuclear (fission) tunnelers at LANL in the 1980s. The space application was typically considered to be the Moon. They also did quite a lot of work on lunar concrete using simulants. I don't think the goal was to hold pressure, but to function as radiation shielding.

The problem isn't technical, it's public and political support.

[tater]

True, the public are not terribly smart.

[DBowman]

On 1/15/2016 at 6:27 AM, KerbonautInTraining said:

Who said it needs to be pressurized to 1 atm? This might be worthy of its own thread but can't people easily survive in 0.5 or even 0.3 atm? 

0.5 atm is like about 5,000 m - which is the highest permanent human settlement, La Rinconada Peru pop 50,000. Settlements at 4,000m are common. So you could easily do 0.5 atm and bump the oxygen from 21% to 25%, it would be comfortable/liveable and fire safe.

[fredinno]

20 minutes ago, DBowman said:

0.5 atm is like about 5,000 m - which is the highest permanent human settlement, La Rinconada Peru pop 50,000. Settlements at 4,000m are common. So you could easily do 0.5 atm and bump the oxygen from 21% to 25%, it would be comfortable/liveable and fire safe.

Doesn't increased oxygen percentage increase fire risk, like in Apollo 1? 

Or am I just ignorant?

[DBowman]

3 hours ago, fredinno said:

Doesn't increased oxygen percentage increase fire risk, like in Apollo 1? 

Or am I just ignorant?

Apollo 1 was a 'worst case scenario' of 100% oxygen (where some things will spontaneously combust I think, anyway they burn enthusiastically at least) I'm only proposing raising the concentration by 5% (of total, or 20% of oxygen). Apollo moved to 34% oxygen at 1 atm - so 25% at 0.5 atm should be a lower fire risk than Apollo. I'm not sure how the concentration compares to the partial pressure as a risk factor, I read somewhere fire risk increases 'dramatically' over 21% - but that was for 1 atm...

Worst case bumping up the pressure a little, to the 4,000m level, and leaving O₂ earth nominal would work for habitability while reducing structure mechanical stress (and resource buffers etc...).