Mining Mars for a self-sufficent colony

[Spaceception]

Alright, imagine this: The newest arrival of Humans recently landed on Mars in ____ (Whatever date you feel is realistic), but this time, with a few additional (Unmanned) ships, those unmanned ships contains equipment for use in mining, and Insert number here of the insert number here ships has miners, before Insert company name here sent the people, the insert number here ships landed on Mars, said that the colonists will be required to begin mining materials from and under the martian regolith for the construction of a Martian city that will also begin to make the colony self-sufficient.

Okay, drop all criticisms you may have for Mars colonies, as this is a thought experiment; Here are the questions

1: Where would be the best place for the colony to be?

2: What materials would they mine?

3: What would the city look like and function, and what would the social structure look like?

4: How long would a Martian city take to build?

5: What is the minimum level of technology needed to survive on Mars once you get there?

6: For further discussions on a similar topic, go here;

Edited February 23, 2016 by Spaceception

[SargeRho]

1: I'd say Terra Sabaea or Terra Sirenum, these are 2 regions near the equator that have some abundance of water, you don't really want to colonize the poles.

2: All of them. Martian dirt is full of Titanium, Iron, Silicon, Aluminium, Nickel, and all sorts of other metals.

3: A martian city would probably be composed of a LOT of greenhouses, and several garden domes. Sleeping quarters, and a lot of the living areas would likely be located underground for radiation protection. Think this: https://gwendolynhoff.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/mars-city.jpg , just at much, much bigger scale.

Edited February 22, 2016 by SargeRho

[Spaceception]

14 minutes ago, SargeRho said:

1: I'd say Terra Sabaea or Terra Sirenum, these are 2 regions near the equator that have some abundance of water, you don't really want to colonize the poles.

2: All of them. Martian dirt is full of Titanium, Iron, Silicon, Aluminium, Nickel, and all sorts of other metals.

3: A martian city would probably be composed of a LOT of greenhouses, and several garden domes. Sleeping quarters, and a lot of the living areas would likely be located underground for radiation protection. Think this: https://gwendolynhoff.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/mars-city.jpg , just at much, much bigger scale.

What do you think transportation would look like with your Martian city? And how long would it take to build?

[sevenperforce]

2 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

What do you think transportation would look like with your Martian city? And how long would it take to build?

Hyperloop, naturally. What else?

[Spaceception]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

Hyperloop, naturally. What else?

What about transportation with stuff closer to you, and not across the city, or another one entirely?

[sevenperforce]

1 minute ago, Spaceception said:

What about transportation with stuff closer to you, and not across the city, or another one entirely?

I was kidding.

I wonder whether RTG-powered stirling engines could efficiently power rovers.

[Spaceception]

9 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

I was kidding.

I wonder whether RTG-powered stirling engines could efficiently power rovers.

Actually, Hyperloop would be a good transportation system on Mars because it needs a near vacuum environment to go to the extremely high velocities

You'd need a lotta RTGs.

[SargeRho]

19 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

What do you think transportation would look like with your Martian city? And how long would it take to build?

Long-distance transportation, like, between cities, or if it's large enough, between districts would be done with hyperloops or maglev trains, within the city, by foot, with elevators, electric scooters and cars, and maybe the occasional exoskeleton.

I can't say how long it would take to build, decades until it can feed itself at least, probably a century or two before it can actually be called a city.

Power is produced using solar panels and nuclear reactors, and outside of the city, people would use pressurized rovers with a special "door" that prevents dust from getting inside the city or the rover, and with suit-ports in the back. The rovers would either be electric or using methane and oxygen.

[sevenperforce]

There is a big advantage to using a lot of underground space. Particularly for transportation. If you can construct reasonably large tunnels connecting different areas, then you can pressurise them fairly easily. Gives you access to a lot more elbow room then you would otherwise get.

Does anyone know what the underground temperature of Mars is? On earth, it's a fairly steady and fairly tolerable temperature. Mars is probably a little chillier underground, but it might be warm enough that a nice coat would be all you need.

Also, with significantly reduced gravity, don't forget the utility of human power to move stuff around. The average person can lift three times as much on Mars as on earth. Since you need exercise anyway, carrying 100 or 200 kilograms of supplies from one place to another isn't a bad idea, since wouldn't weigh any more than you already weigh on earth.

Lower gravity also means that skyscrapers are a good deal easier to build. Of course, they are also a lot less important. It is hard to know how Construction & real estate would be affected. Your structures need to be able to support the pressure difference, but they don't have to support nearly as much weight. I can picture large geodesic domes opening up over deep pits from strip mining, converted into open habitats.

[kunok]

So we in ten years magically we get a very big rocket to send a new very big lander for 100 people along with lots of supplies, knowledge of health and biology in Mars, in twelve knowledge of how to mine in vacuum and enough industrial infrastructure to do modern metallurgy, and after that nobody knows how but they get selfsufficiency. If you get that you can imagine almost everything, because is not based in our reality.

34 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Okay, drop all criticisms/pessimism you may have for Mars colonies, or a SpaceX Mars colony, as this is a thought experiment; Here are the questions

It's not pessimism, is pure surealism what did you write, this is supposed to be a science subforum, so please be rational.

Mars is not the moon, with is just close to here for doing a short trip, put a flag and return. No, you are saying about to colonise an unknown (in biologic terms) environment in one big step, not going little proving technologies and then get larger step by step.

But I will try to be constructive, of course I will screw all your initial plan because it has 0 sense.

I won't put exact ages or times because I'm bad at calculating time of development. And I will include abundant fails in the start because is unproven technology, it's absurd expect to work everything fine. Most of it is based in assumptions about biology research, and I'm not a biologist so it may be wrong.

Some of our governments (because it is a large project and most of the way is just basic and boring science research) start to think about long term space operation and to make outpost in other bodies of the solar system.

They will start to develop Bion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bion-M_No.1 like proves, for sending to free return trajectories when available or little dv to return ones, because if not he launch windows will be very limited, to Mars and Venus. This will evaluate long space travel effects in animals, also can double as a test for an interplanetary re-entry capsule.

The first ones goes pretty bad (reasonable assumption being the first) but it has data from almost half of the travel to venus (first we star with venus, less Dv requirements, and more frequently available launch windows, so a delay in development isn't that bad), like the animals food consumption rates in free fall and interplanetary radiation levels. Biology basic data.

At the same time as the animals probes, they start developing plants proves, starting a research about plants growing in low gravity, for that mission they start looking at the moon.

A little lander lands in the moon, with some short-life plants, they grow erratically but some survives the 14 day day of the moons. They all die in the night (by design), they try to regrowth again in the next moon day but it doesn't work.

The second animal probe survives the travel to venus but not the re-entry to earth, proving basic life support and food storage technologies for space travel. It also gets valuable data about the animals.

A series of landers get more and more valuable data from low g growth in the moon, looks like some plants adapt to the moon, but they are not as healthy. They keep trying new plant types. Some even regrowth after the moon night.

The third animal probe takes the same destination, this is an experiment looking how different foods affect the long term exposure of radiation or microgravity, if some of them helps to mitigate some of the effects. Maybe it also test some chems for that purpose. The prove re-enters in earth without killing everything in it.

The fourth animal probe goes to Mars, testing longer exposure in interplanetary environment, it survives all the travel, even the re-entry but it goes bad for lots of the animals. They get valuable data and start researching improvements of the design.

The next series of landers in the moon tries to growth plants, and release a laboratory mice (obviously until this moment it had other food source) when they grow enough to eat. The mice survives until the moon night. Results looks promising.

 

 

It's to late here, if people it's interested I can continue tomorrow after work, but it's a very long way to the permanent presence of humans in Mars, and even longer to develop modern metallurgy.

[Spaceception]

1 hour ago, kunok said:

So we in ten years magically we get a very big rocket to send a new very big lander for 100 people along with lots of supplies, knowledge of health and biology in Mars, in twelve knowledge of how to mine in vacuum and enough industrial infrastructure to do modern metallurgy, and after that nobody knows how but they get selfsufficiency. If you get that you can imagine almost everything, because is not based in our reality.

It's not pessimism, is pure surealism what did you write, this is supposed to be a science subforum, so please be rational.

Mars is not the moon, with is just close to here for doing a short trip, put a flag and return. No, you are saying about to colonise an unknown (in biologic terms) environment in one big step, not going little proving technologies and then get larger step by step.

But I will try to be constructive, of course I will screw all your initial plan because it has 0 sense.

I won't put exact ages or times because I'm bad at calculating time of development. And I will include abundant fails in the start because is unproven technology, it's absurd expect to work everything fine. Most of it is based in assumptions about biology research, and I'm not a biologist so it may be wrong.

Alright, I edited the OP, but to be fair, we went from satellites in really low LEO to people on the Moon in about 12 years.

[Bill Phil]

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

Alright, I edited the OP, but to be fair, we went from satellites in really low LEO to people on the Moon in about 12 years.

Except the satellites weren't randomly created, nor magically created, instantly.

We could've orbited a satellite in 1952, perhaps earlier. And if we really wanted to, we could have had an exploration expedition to Saturn by 1975, with Project Orion, had we used it.

[Spaceception]

5 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Except the satellites weren't randomly created, nor magically created, instantly.

We could've orbited a satellite in 1952, perhaps earlier. And if we really wanted to, we could have had an exploration expedition to Saturn by 1975, with Project Orion, had we used it.

I was just pointing out that we progressed fast from the time we put a satellite into orbit to a man on the Moon, And I agree, we could've had a satellite around Earth before 1957, but we didn't, because of reasons.

[Bill Phil]

11 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

I was just pointing out that we progressed fast from the time we put a satellite into orbit to a man on the Moon, And I agree, we could've had a satellite around Earth before 1957, but we didn't, because of reasons.

Putting a man on the moon =\= colonizing the moon.

[Spaceception]

5 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Putting a man on the moon =\= colonizing the moon.

That was only because the Gov't didn't want to fund the Apollo program anymore since it was getting to expensive for their liking, we could've easily put a colony on the Moon by 1990-2010 (Maybe even before) if we continued the Apollo program.

Also, isn't it '=/='?

EDIT: Around Apollo 20, NASA planned to send astronauts to the Moon for Months at a time, which would've helped with Lunar colonization efforts.

Edited February 23, 2016 by Spaceception

[tater]

The MIT guys slammed Mars One for their logistics, showing that each deliver of 4 people would incur an additional 4 Dragon 2 landings (from memory, it might be more). I want to say each Dragon2 was 2 tons landed. MCT claims 100 tons to the surface (wiki). That's 1 ton per person. Using the MIT figures (as I remember them), it's then 2.5 tons per person (the bulk being replacement parts). So 1000 people would require 25 launches, and they'd be living in the spacecraft, that's aside from any industrial equipment.

They'd need some substantial inflatable habs, some sort of passageway inflatables, and equipment to move soil over everything for radiation shielding. They'd likely need substantial nuclear power plants landed to facilitate any mining of regolith past using it as shielding, as the mechanisms usually involve lots of heat. Seems like CO₂ "mining" would be more of the equipment. I know concrete is another possibility that has been worked on.

[Bill Phil]

16 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

That was only because the Gov't didn't want to fund the Apollo program anymore since it was getting to expensive for their liking, we could've easily put a colony on the Moon by 1990-2010 (Maybe even before) if we continued the Apollo program.

Also, isn't it '=/='?

EDIT: Around Apollo 20, NASA planned to send astronauts to the Moon for Months at a time, which would've helped with Lunar colonization efforts.

What abou Antarctic expeditions? They go there for months at a time, and yet they don't colonize it. But the challenges are likely similat...

I don't care what does not equal is.

A science lab, even occupier for months at a time, is still not a colony, not very close at all. And it only helps in that there's a relatively regular delivery of cargo, albeit there probably isn't much.

And no, that would likely be unrelated to Apollo program. It would likely involve the STS, or, rather, the 1969 version.

[Spaceception]

21 minutes ago, tater said:

The MIT guys slammed Mars One for their logistics, showing that each deliver of 4 people would incur an additional 4 Dragon 2 landings (from memory, it might be more). I want to say each Dragon2 was 2 tons landed. MCT claims 100 tons to the surface (wiki). That's 1 ton per person. Using the MIT figures (as I remember them), it's then 2.5 tons per person (the bulk being replacement parts). So 1000 people would require 25 launches, and they'd be living in the spacecraft, that's aside from any industrial equipment.

They'd need some substantial inflatable habs, some sort of passageway inflatables, and equipment to move soil over everything for radiation shielding. They'd likely need substantial nuclear power plants landed to facilitate any mining of regolith past using it as shielding, as the mechanisms usually involve lots of heat. Seems like CO₂ "mining" would be more of the equipment. I know concrete is another possibility that has been worked on.

Since when did this discussion talk about MO? I know I'm sometimes really optimistic, but MO is WAY too optimistic, for 4 things, 1st: the amount of people they want to send to Mars per year is way to low for colonization, 2nd: The amount of people they're employing is ridiculously low, 3rd, while the budget may work with rapid-reusable rockets (If you perhaps double it for wiggle room), they have absolutely no way of funding it, and 4th, on the note of rapid-reusable rockets, even if they're around by the time they're ready to launch, (Which they probably will be), they have no way of guaranteeing that they'll be able to get a rocket launch every 2 years, much less rescue ships in case something goes wrong (Which it probably will).

So... Lets not talk about them

Edited February 23, 2016 by Spaceception

[tater]

I wasn't suggesting this was the exactly the same as MO, I was saying that in their critique of MO, the MIT guys provided useful benchmarks in units of 4 people and D2 landings on the martian surface. Using their data, which seems reasonable, their logistical train for 4 people was about 4 D2 landings (2 mt useful payload each). MCT claims 100 mt to the surface (unsure if this is payload or includes the craft, let's say payload for kicks), that's 1 mt per person. Apparently improved life support from ISS extrapolates to another mt per year of parts, etc, per person. So you need 25 launches for the 1st 1000 people, and 20 every other year just to support them, plus the new 1000 people.

The MO counter-arguments still apply, though we might get some economies of scale for LS... or more people might wear out LS faster than our tiny ISS experiments have shown... who knows?

So it's sort of the same thing. Logistics is all that matters for an endeavor of this kind. I'm assuming the MCT is a thing, and it can launch as often as needed. I'll assume anything you like, but this isn't Sonoma, CA we're dropping the people off at, you cannot simply dump 1000 people, and then forget how many launches they need ever launch window going forward. There is zero chance they are self-sufficient from the start. What is a reasonable time window for this to be achieved? 10 years? Is that 10 years for just 1000, or for 5,000? It matters.

 

Year 1 launch 25 MCT. (1000 people, plus supplies)

Year 3 launch 45 MCT. (1000 new people, plus supplies for previous 1000)

Year 5 launch 65 MCT. (1000 new people, plus supplies for previous 2000)

Year 7 launch 85 MCT. (1000 new people, plus supplies for previous 3000)

etc. How sustainable is this scenario?

Edited February 23, 2016 by tater

[tater]

A better plan would be to send the minimal amount of people required to build a certain infrastructure first, only sending others when it can support them. So perhaps the first 50 people build stuff, start farming, etc. When they can support another 50, send more. When those can support 100 more, etc.

[sevenperforce]

Then again, if you just spam people toward Mars, you end up with an obligation to support them, which will get the job done faster.

[tater]

53 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

Then again, if you just spam people toward Mars, you end up with an obligation to support them, which will get the job done faster.

I'd say no sane government would do that, but then I look at "programmatic" spending, and who knows.

[Nibb31]

14 hours ago, Spaceception said:

Please note: This topic assumes SpaceX lands 1000 people on Mars (Via 10  MCT's) in 2030, and continues doing so every 2 years until they can increase launches

This topic assumes silliness.

[tater]

How long is a good Mars launch window? Let's call it a month on either side of the ideal launch. A few years into the planned (OP) 1000s of colonists, they need to launch a huge spacecraft to Mars every day for 2 months.

I didn't get an answer on how sustainable that was  . I also don't see any estimates of how quickly they could become self-sufficient in manufacturing complex items required for survival using only indigenous materials. The MIT guys who debunked MO did a great service in pointing out the logistical hurdles, and how the number of launches quickly grows to a point where it would eat any even ridiculously optimistic budget, and indeed even eat up the entire budgets of all space programs on earth, combined, just to keep the few people there from croaking.

 

[Spaceception]

11 hours ago, tater said:

How sustainable is this scenario?

Depends on what you mean by sustainable, if it's a sustainable colony, then when the population reaches at least 10,000 and has the ability to mine for resources/Turn those resources into useful stuff, if it's a matter of launching people, not very in terms of the resources used to get them there.

39 minutes ago, tater said:

How long is a good Mars launch window? Let's call it a month on either side of the ideal launch. A few years into the planned (OP) 1000s of colonists, they need to launch a huge spacecraft to Mars every day for 2 months.

I didn't get an answer on how sustainable that was  . I also don't see any estimates of how quickly they could become self-sufficient in manufacturing complex items required for survival using only indigenous materials. The MIT guys who debunked MO did a great service in pointing out the logistical hurdles, and how the number of launches quickly grows to a point where it would eat any even ridiculously optimistic budget, and indeed even eat up the entire budgets of all space programs on earth, combined, just to keep the few people there from croaking.

 

In the WBW article (In the SpaceX Mars colony prediction OP) I think it said they plan to launch a "Colonial fleet" 1 year prior, and then end a huge amount of people all at once to Mars in the optimal launch window, and continue doing so until the population reaches 1,000,000 (Which is sometime before 2100), after that, people will either vacation there, or just wait their turn to go to Mars and expand the colony with smaller "Colonial fleets".

If they have robots to help out, it may take a matter of years until they're self-sufficient in making complex items, after that, SpaceX won't need to send as much (Or none at all) Backup resources.