Mars Colony Concept

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, Emperor of the Titan Squid said:

What about growing plants in an aboveground geodesic dome? Would that provide enough sunlight on Mars? 

Maybe.  Insulating it so it doesn't get too cold is going to be a bear though.

[NSEP]

3 hours ago, Emperor of the Titan Squid said:

What about growing plants in an aboveground geodesic dome? Would that provide enough sunlight on Mars? 

Solar radiation is the problem with that.

[tater]

Sunlight used as sunlight (for growing) would likely be piped in. You could grow underground for the insulation DerekL1963 mentions, and use a heliostat to direct sunlight indoors. I think above ground (except where buried in regolith) is sort of a nonstarter. I'd think any colony design should try and have some deeply inset windows looking out on the landscape, though. Moving to someplace like Mars, but being trapped inside with no windows would make me crazy, frankly. Screens are not the same.

Edited October 23, 2016 by tater

[NSEP]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

Sunlight used as sunlight (for growing) would likely be piped in. You could grow underground for the insulation DerekL1963 mentions, and use a heliostat to direct sunlight indoors. I think above ground (except where buried in regolith) is sort of a nonstarter. I'd think any colony design should try and have some deeply inset windows looking out on the landscape, though. Moving to someplace like Mars, but being trapped inside with no windows would make me crazy, frankly. Screens are not the same.

I think a few cupolas like modules on top of the underground base could solve the "being trapped" feeling, but not the entire base, because again, solar radiation. And the sunlight pumping idea sounds cool, could be very usefull. And the passage tubes are transparent too :). 

Im thinking of a water extraction via boiling and heating the regolith so the water vapor can rise up into a pipe, so it can go to a condensing (or condensation or whatever) room to let it condense and boom water. Im sure there are better ideas though.

 

32 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

Maybe.  Insulating it so it doesn't get too cold is going to be a bear though.

Could the greenhouse effect be usefull? 

[DerekL1963]

20 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Could the greenhouse effect be usefull? 

Maybe.  Insulating it so it doesn't get too cold is going to be a bear though.  (The "greenhouse effect" isn't a magic wand.)

[tater]

Anything with sufficient insulation is likely going to absorb a lot of light. The benefit of a heliostat is that you can concentrate sunlight as needed before sending it inside.

Ambient light could be done with the air-tight equivalent of a solatube (I have a few in my house, and they are kind of amazing).

"Cupolas" make little sense to me, frankly. I could see someplace to see the stars being nice, I suppose. But deeply inset windows would allow a more constant view outside, while substantially mitigating radiation exposure.

Cosmic rays are isotropic, so if you have a view of the horizon/sky, they will be hitting the window through that solid angle of sky view. Site placement of a colony could allow for many widows that are shielded just by geometry. My home is almost underground, for example. I have a couple cinder blocks behind the house that act as steps for me to gain the roof. If the vigas were steel instead of wood I could put a bunch of soil on the roof (sod would not be out of the question even with the wooden vigas). Anyway, because I'm on a hill---on Earth--I have windows looking both uphill, and downhill---the later allows me to see mountains well over 100km away. On Mars, you could place habs in such a way that inset windows do not allow much if any of the sky into the view, but look at the ground slowly (or rapidly) sloping upwards. No, it's not a sweeping vista, but it's outside, and interesting to look at. 

My east facing clerestory widows (uphill) are like this. In much of the living room, you see nothing more than the ground (rocks, cactus, etc) out those windows. From just the right spots, you can then see the mountain and sky. But even the nearby "dirt" view is actually nice.

Really awful online sketch:

The blue line is line of sight. Depending on geometry (arieometry?) the hill/crater wall could in fact be quite far away depending on how inset the window was.

Edited October 23, 2016 by tater

[NSEP]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Anything with sufficient insulation is likely going to absorb a lot of light. The benefit of a heliostat is that you can concentrate sunlight as needed before sending it inside.

Ambient light could be done with the air-tight equivalent of a solatube (I have a few in my house, and they are kind of amazing).

"Cupolas" make little sense to me, frankly. I could see someplace to see the stars being nice, I suppose. But deeply inset windows would allow a more constant view outside, while substantially mitigating radiation exposure.

Cosmic rays are isotropic, so if you have a view of the horizon/sky, they will be hitting the window through that solid angle of sky view. Site placement of a colony could allow for many widows that are shielded just by geometry. My home is almost underground, for example. I have a couple cinder blocks behind the house that act as steps for me to gain the roof. If the vigas were steel instead of wood I could put a bunch of soil on the roof (sod would not be out of the question even with the wooden vigas). Anyway, because I'm on a hill---on Earth--I have windows looking both uphill, and downhill---the later allows me to see mountains well over 100km away. On Mars, you could place habs in such a way that inset windows do not allow much if any of the sky into the view, but look at the ground slowly (or rapidly) sloping upwards. No, it's not a sweeping vista, but it's outside, and interesting to look at. 

My east facing clerestory widows (uphill) are like this. In much of the living room, you see nothing more than the ground (rocks, cactus, etc) out those windows. From just the right spots, you can then see the mountain and sky. But even the nearby "dirt" view is actually nice.

Really awful online sketch:

The blue line is line of sight. Depending on geometry (arieometry?) the hill/crater wall could in fact be quite far away depending on how inset the window was.

So something like this or not?

 

[tater]

Really to entirely mitigate isotropic radiation the eaves (or inset) needs to prevent viewing the sky at all.

I just think from a psychological standpoint, being able to see outside---not with a screen---well, matters.

[NSEP]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Really to entirely mitigate isotropic radiation the eaves (or inset) needs to prevent viewing the sky at all.

I just think from a psychological standpoint, being able to see outside---not with a screen---well, matters.

Ok.

[radonek]

1. Powerplant have to go first. What would you power your excavating equipment with?
2. Radio beacon go second to guide further incoming supplies.
3. Add a battery farm for night power. And given the weight (and low solar power),  you might as well go for nuclear power.
4. Garden of that size would probably not sustain a single person. If you want to use plants for both CO2 recovery and food production, biosphere is gonna be huge. And tricky to maintain.
5. I have doubts about feasibility of clothes production, iron forge and such. Industrial production is more complicated than that, and tend to need chemicals and lots of water.
6. Piping oxygen around is a huge risk of fire and should be minimized. Oxygen vent in every outer wall is sure handy, but it virtually guaranties that any structural failure will add oxygen loss and fire to fun.
7. "Machinery room" is just accident waiting to happen. Seriously, handling flammables like hydrogen or methane close to each other is a bad idea in any  case and presence of oxygen is against all safety codes in existence.
8. Only one airlock? How will crew evacuate once bloodthirsty martian zombies start bashing on front door? Also, mechanical failure may easily trap crew inside or force them to depressurize to get out.
9. Waaay too many people. While I don't subscribe to idea of purely robotic exploration, hauling humans across solar system just to shovel dirt is wasteful. Everything that could be done remotely before crew arrival should be.
10. Martian soil is toxic. Earth soil would not do much good without supply of fertilizers. Hydroponics is probably way to go, but you'd still need regular supplies of chemicals.
11. I can't see any redundancy or contingency measures in whole scheme. For project of such complexity, this is outright suicidal. If there is a decompression, everybody dies. If there is a fire, everybody dies. Ecology instability, power outage, gas leak… only option is to abandon whole base, and that only during a launch window.

Sorry for spoiling fun, but if establishing outworld colonies were this easy, there'd be Moon cities by now.

[NSEP]

1. You dont need electricity for shovels and pickaxes, those tools are going to be enough with an entire team of people.

2. Ok. But cameras and all that tech could also be used for tracking, tracking fancy shiny solar panels on a barren red desert should not be hard, right?

3. Ok, but nuclear power? That stuff is complicated to build, unless you go full on KSP and slap RTG's everywhere. It is also quite expensive to set up.

4. Trees and oxygen from water is not enough?

5. Im pretty sure you can get rnough minerals from underground Mars.

6. Replacing the Nitrogen in the air with nothing decreases the pressure and also makes it less of a fire hazard, and how often do you get a fire in your house? Not very often unless you are clumsy.

7. Again, how often do do you get a fire in your house? Not very often. How often does some kind of factory gets on fire? Not very often! Even though it is claimed to be very dangerous!

8. Yes, one airlock, you could also just pull both doors open if there is a real emergency, so every body can run out. (That would be a blast though) And they could also put on their pressure suits in case of a depressurization emergency. And mars zombies? No, just no.

9. You think i am crazy with that many people? Elon Musk wants to send 100 people to mars!

10. Yes, martian soil is toxic. But nobody said i want to grow plants out of Mars soil! And mars 'concrete' would not be a problem, because you cant breathe in concrete bricks, so it would not be very toxic.

11. Same with the ISS.

12. You seem to only point your head at the danger, but the ISS has the same problems, and it had almost no deadly problems expect for small air leaks or ammonia leaks.

[radonek]

Oh my.

1. You'd have to haul over every calorie and every liter of air. Every swing of shovel would literally cost milions. That just does not make sense. Not to mention that idea of doing this kind of labor in pressure suits is silly.
2. Optical tracking is complicated, can be disabled by dust, and has a way lower range. Radio beacons are used in air traffic for a reason. Would be even better to have fullblown GPS network in place, but I guess there'd be no money for that. So one will have to go with several rtg powered beacons across planet to provide reference points during entry. You need WAY more precise landing than what is currently practiced on earth.
3. Nuclear reactors were used in LEO already. Cost is small compared to cost of moving stuff there. Real problem is political - this kind of compact and powerful reactor need highly enriched fuel, which is strictly military stuff. In short, you have to be backed up by nuclear superpower. Either that, or send another tens of tons of batteries and solar cells every few years. That stuff degrades over time you know.
4. No. Maintaining ecosphere is way more complicated. And amount of greenery to keep one person alive is rather large.
5. Even if you could get raw minerals (running a strip mine with single rover and in pressure suits? come on) turning them into anything useful is a bit more complicated. Unless you want to go back to medieval age (hint: medieval technology will not keep one alive there).
6. You are completely missing point here - nitrogen is not a problem, oxygen is. I don't handle pure oxygen in my house. If I did so without all kinds of safety precautions (and inspections and permits) I'd be in violation of a law. And common sense too, it IS a dangerous stuff. In fact, pure nitrogen atmosphere would help a lot, it is often used as fire retardant, including in rockets. But in this case, it would be much easier to just ditch idea of machinery room and put machinery outside, into nice, cold, nonflammable vacuum (which is essentialy what passes for atmosphere there), nicely spaced apart. Or bury it in separate rooms, with pressure bulkheads. But that would add a lot of shoveling, see?
7. My house? Well, if you terraform Mars to give it breathable atmosphere and put a fire station within a few blocks, you can compare that. My house would probably come ahead :-) Fire code in my country is pretty strict. And fires are uncommon, thank you very much… Fire in enclosed space with no way to escape is much more serious business even without adding dangerous flammables into mix. Your crew have nowhere to hide, any fire is fatal. Dying "not very often" is sure consolating. This kind of nonchalance already killed three astronauts and one cosmonaut.
8. If you have to resort to blowing air out, your ecosystem is essentially dead. If you don't have resources to reboot it, and more resources to keep you alive while doing so, you have people dying. In short, you turn any minor issue with airlock cycling into life threating situation. Yes, spacecraft on LEO rarely posses redundant airlocks, but they don't really need them and have ready safety measures. I guess your base need more then one EVA every few months and after days of preparation. Having dedicated and trained EVA specialists would help a lot though, you have a good point there.
9. I am not questioning size of a colony, I am questioning packing them all into single room. Also idea of transporting people across solar system just for performing unqualified labor that could be made by machines. Or, as in case of flight crew, seemingly no work at all.
10. Well then, what about the chemistry? I guess you could ship trace elements from earth, water will provide for oxygen and hydrogen. If you can get hands on nitrogen and carbon, fertilizers can probably be synthetised in situ.
11. No. Every human rated spacecraft, including ISS, have either redundant systems or equally effective contingency measures. Critical systems are often triple redundant or even more. You really should learn something about real space technology before making statements like that. Also, ISS is not much of a model for martian base - final contingency plan for any serious troubles is "burn retro, get back home" (Iron rule of ISS is that there can be no more crew then number of seats in soyuzes). This is not an option for martian base, so safety margin have to be even higher.
12. I take hints from real spacecraft engineers and those guys are very serious about safety. Outright obsessed. People tend to die when they are not. But if you prefer to take cues from marshal Nedelin…
     

[DerekL1963]

6 hours ago, NSEP said:

7. Again, how often do do you get a fire in your house? Not very often. How often does some kind of factory gets on fire? Not very often! Even though it is claimed to be very dangerous!

I made four patrol on an SSBN - we put out some kind of fire three out of four patrols.  Practically every sub sailor I know has a story about a minor fire.  Now, I'll give and grant that one of the fires (somebody emptied an ashtray into a trash can) almost certainly wouldn't repeat at a Mars base, the other two (high temperature machinery and an electrical short) very much will repeat.  My boat was much more like a Mars base then a house is, in that it was comparable to mid sized industrial facility with some living quarters attached.  You need more of plan to put out fires than just "hope for the best, then depressurize the base and hope for the best" (if nothing else, because of the immense amount of damage that depressurizing can cause if you haven't prepared every single system onboard for periodic depressurization).

None of the fires got very big because we attacked every fire as if it were big, basically swatting a fly with a thermonuclear weapon and because we trained and trained to respond fast.  As radonek said, fires in an enclosed space are extraordinarily dangerous because even relatively small fire can crap up the atmosphere, they can spread very quickly, and you have nowhere to go.  Sailors are, with few exceptions, much more afraid of fire than flooding.

[NSEP]

40 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

I made four patrol on an SSBN - we put out some kind of fire three out of four patrols.  Practically every sub sailor I know has a story about a minor fire.  Now, I'll give and grant that one of the fires (somebody emptied an ashtray into a trash can) almost certainly wouldn't repeat at a Mars base, the other two (high temperature machinery and an electrical short) very much will repeat.  My boat was much more like a Mars base then a house is, in that it was comparable to mid sized industrial facility with some living quarters attached.  You need more of plan to put out fires than just "hope for the best, then depressurize the base and hope for the best" (if nothing else, because of the immense amount of damage that depressurizing can cause if you haven't prepared every single system onboard for periodic depressurization).

None of the fires got very big because we attacked every fire as if it were big, basically swatting a fly with a thermonuclear weapon and because we trained and trained to respond fast.  As radonek said, fires in an enclosed space are extraordinarily dangerous because even relatively small fire can crap up the atmosphere, they can spread very quickly, and you have nowhere to go.  Sailors are, with few exceptions, much more afraid of fire than flooding.

But do fires still spread quickly in 0.34 ATM with only oxygen? And fire extinguisers, could they solve the problem? And a door that closes the connection between the base and the machinery room?

On 21-10-2016 at 10:45 PM, NSEP said:

-It is just an idea, not like i actually want it to happend.

-I am not an Aerospace Engineer, Chemist, or Architect. Dont expect it to be hyper realistic.

^^Also pretty important^^

Edited October 24, 2016 by NSEP

[DerekL1963]

17 minutes ago, NSEP said:

But do fires still spread quickly in 0.34 ATM with only oxygen? And fire extinguisers, could they solve the problem? And a door that closes the connection between the base and the machinery room?

They spread even faster in a pure oxygen environment.  (Partly because the partial pressure is almost identical.)   Fire extinguishers will help, but you still need the training to build and maintain the reflexes.  Over all, your design needs to be much more compartmentalized than it is.  And keep in mind that long term exposure to pure 02 environment carries significant health risks.  (There's a reason why ISS is a mixed gas system - lower fire risk and no health issues.)
 

22 minutes ago, NSEP said:

^^Also pretty important^^

Honestly, the problem isn't what you aren't.  It's that you don't know what you don't know - and as a result you hang on to your ideas like grim death.  And you don't grasp that there are people here who do know what they're talking about and presume they're pulling it out of their nethers like you.

[NSEP]

10 minutes ago, DerekL1963 said:

They spread even faster in a pure oxygen environment.  (Partly because the partial pressure is almost identical.)   Fire extinguishers will help, but you still need the training to build and maintain the reflexes.  Over all, your design needs to be much more compartmentalized than it is.  And keep in mind that long term exposure to pure 02 environment carries significant health risks.  (There's a reason why ISS is a mixed gas system - lower fire risk and no health issues.)
 

Honestly, the problem isn't what you aren't.  It's that you don't know what you don't know - and as a result you hang on to your ideas like grim death.  And you don't grasp that there are people here who do know what they're talking about and presume they're pulling it out of their nethers like you.

Well its a good thing i only learn from your conserns.

[NSEP]

3 hours ago, radonek said:

Oh my.

1. You'd have to haul over every calorie and every liter of air. Every swing of shovel would literally cost milions. That just does not make sense. Not to mention that idea of doing this kind of labor in pressure suits is silly.
2. Optical tracking is complicated, can be disabled by dust, and has a way lower range. Radio beacons are used in air traffic for a reason. Would be even better to have fullblown GPS network in place, but I guess there'd be no money for that. So one will have to go with several rtg powered beacons across planet to provide reference points during entry. You need WAY more precise landing than what is currently practiced on earth.
3. Nuclear reactors were used in LEO already. Cost is small compared to cost of moving stuff there. Real problem is political - this kind of compact and powerful reactor need highly enriched fuel, which is strictly military stuff. In short, you have to be backed up by nuclear superpower. Either that, or send another tens of tons of batteries and solar cells every few years. That stuff degrades over time you know.
4. No. Maintaining ecosphere is way more complicated. And amount of greenery to keep one person alive is rather large.
5. Even if you could get raw minerals (running a strip mine with single rover and in pressure suits? come on) turning them into anything useful is a bit more complicated. Unless you want to go back to medieval age (hint: medieval technology will not keep one alive there).
6. You are completely missing point here - nitrogen is not a problem, oxygen is. I don't handle pure oxygen in my house. If I did so without all kinds of safety precautions (and inspections and permits) I'd be in violation of a law. And common sense too, it IS a dangerous stuff. In fact, pure nitrogen atmosphere would help a lot, it is often used as fire retardant, including in rockets. But in this case, it would be much easier to just ditch idea of machinery room and put machinery outside, into nice, cold, nonflammable vacuum (which is essentialy what passes for atmosphere there), nicely spaced apart. Or bury it in separate rooms, with pressure bulkheads. But that would add a lot of shoveling, see?
7. My house? Well, if you terraform Mars to give it breathable atmosphere and put a fire station within a few blocks, you can compare that. My house would probably come ahead :-) Fire code in my country is pretty strict. And fires are uncommon, thank you very much… Fire in enclosed space with no way to escape is much more serious business even without adding dangerous flammables into mix. Your crew have nowhere to hide, any fire is fatal. Dying "not very often" is sure consolating. This kind of nonchalance already killed three astronauts and one cosmonaut.
8. If you have to resort to blowing air out, your ecosystem is essentially dead. If you don't have resources to reboot it, and more resources to keep you alive while doing so, you have people dying. In short, you turn any minor issue with airlock cycling into life threating situation. Yes, spacecraft on LEO rarely posses redundant airlocks, but they don't really need them and have ready safety measures. I guess your base need more then one EVA every few months and after days of preparation. Having dedicated and trained EVA specialists would help a lot though, you have a good point there.
9. I am not questioning size of a colony, I am questioning packing them all into single room. Also idea of transporting people across solar system just for performing unqualified labor that could be made by machines. Or, as in case of flight crew, seemingly no work at all.
10. Well then, what about the chemistry? I guess you could ship trace elements from earth, water will provide for oxygen and hydrogen. If you can get hands on nitrogen and carbon, fertilizers can probably be synthetised in situ.
11. No. Every human rated spacecraft, including ISS, have either redundant systems or equally effective contingency measures. Critical systems are often triple redundant or even more. You really should learn something about real space technology before making statements like that. Also, ISS is not much of a model for martian base - final contingency plan for any serious troubles is "burn retro, get back home" (Iron rule of ISS is that there can be no more crew then number of seats in soyuzes). This is not an option for martian base, so safety margin have to be even higher.
12. I take hints from real spacecraft engineers and those guys are very serious about safety. Outright obsessed. People tend to die when they are not. But if you prefer to take cues from marshal Nedelin…
     

You "won" the discussion mate! I might make an improved version, with help from your and other pleople's concerns. Dont know if it is going to turn out realistic though.

 

[Darnok]

3 hours ago, radonek said:

Oh my.

1. No. Maintaining ecosphere is way more complicated. And amount of greenery to keep one person alive is rather large.

 What if we would build "bio sphere" underground like 500m below surface? Would we still need for pressurised compartment so deep underground?

 

3 hours ago, radonek said:

1. Even if you could get raw minerals (running a strip mine with single rover and in pressure suits? come on) turning them into anything useful is a bit more complicated. Unless you want to go back to medieval age (hint: medieval technology will not keep one alive there).

If we wouldn't need pressurised compartment deep underground then medieval technology for digging larger sphere or more corridors would be enough for survival. We could also always make bricks... like in medieval? And build smaller compartments underground for personal space.

 

 

[radonek]

4 hours ago, NSEP said:

You "won" the discussion mate! I might make an improved version, with help from your and other pleople's concerns. Dont know if it is going to turn out realistic though.

 

It was not my intention to "fight", much less "win" a discussion and I am sorry if my ways offended you. I am curious about next iteration. And will not doubt try to tear it to pieces again :-)

 

4 hours ago, Darnok said:

 What if we would build "bio sphere" underground like 500m below surface? Would we still need for pressurised compartment so deep underground?

Sure, it would bring down radiation dose a lot and probably have some other benefits. AFAIK lots of isolation experimentation is done underground. But it won't help with maintaining ecology if that is what you are aiming at. I am no biologist, all I know is that ecology is tricky and to this date, nobody managed to get truly closed self sustaining system. I'd expect any artificial ecosystem to have full-time biologist or botanist just to monitor it and correct runaway tendencies.
 

[radonek]

Hey guys, I was sniffing around a bit and found (among other interresting things) this juicy bit on atomic rockets:

Quote

Data from Biosphere II indicate roughly seven tons of plant life per person per day, with a need for roughly 4 days for a complete plant aspiration cycle, so call it 25 to 30 tons of plant per crewman. With an average density of 0.5, each ton of greenhouse takes up about 2 cubic meters (m3).
 

So yeah, lots of space. But it gave me an idea - how about to drop "balance" from ecology and attack it as tooling problem? Have environment that is easy to work with and maintain (artificial substrate, hydroponics) and a _library_ of variants of single organism aimed at specific conditions, and switch them as needed. Lets say I got with hydroponic algae.  I start with basic, most efficient variant and grow it until something develops that cant be handled by machinery. Say, solution get too acidic or salty. So, I store seeds of last batch back to library and pull out salt-extracting one and grow it until that particular indicator is back to normal. Rinse, repeat. Yeah, I would have to start all over all the time, but that could be mechanized. Machinery would have to deal with only one organism, that should help a lot to make it reliable and efficient. Cultures could be combined or alternated to handle more complicated states. And whole thing could be incrementally improved. Hell, even if it came to worst and something developed that library could not handle, I could send a sample back to earth and have geneticists develop appropriate strain. I know this is not actually "stable" system, but its manageable and if keeping it in shape won't take more effort than ordinary farm work, I'd call it a win.

So, what do you say? Is there biologist around to point me at holes?
 

[kerbiloid]

Preliminary.

Plan A.
1. Find nice hills (like in Hobbiton, but without burrows). Consider them as the base site.
2. Deliver huge light alloy cylinders (a tip: empty fuel tanks).
3. Roll them down between the hills. Dock them together.
4. Maybe cover with superglue foam. A winter-proof cover.
5. Bury under regolith. You get a ziggurat with base inside. Minimum catwalks, inflatable tubes and other ephemers.
6. Fill with equipment.
Repeat building as many ziggurats as you need.
Instead of between-hills you can dig trenches.
 

Plan B.
1. Select the base site.
2. Drop thermonuke penetrator.
3. Watch nice movie.
4. Wait for several years until radiation level gets safe.
5. Drill from above into the hand-made cavern.
6. Force the walls with concrete or superglue foam.
7. Fill with equipment.

Edited October 25, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Darnok]

9 hours ago, radonek said:

Sure, it would bring down radiation dose a lot and probably have some other benefits. AFAIK lots of isolation experimentation is done underground. But it won't help with maintaining ecology if that is what you are aiming at. I am no biologist, all I know is that ecology is tricky and to this date, nobody managed to get truly closed self sustaining system. I'd expect any artificial ecosystem to have full-time biologist or botanist just to monitor it and correct runaway tendencies.
 

My idea is not about self sustaining bio-sphere underground, it is about living space that would require medieval technology, like simple pickaxe, to make this space larger.

Having this we would need to send some criminals to this underground colony and they would do labor for food and air. While experienced colonists would install airlocks and more advanced equipment.

[Chabadarl]

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Building_a_lunar_base_with_3D_printing

 

Here is some inspiration. The european space agency has a very serious plan to build a moon base with 3D printer drones. They already have a proof of concept prototype. 

 

shovels and pickaxes

I'm sorry to admit I laugh at that... 

Check the next schedule of extravehicular activity on ISS, and watch the live feed to get the idea of how hard it is to work on vacuum environnement....
Just a reminder it takes several hours, just to prepare yourself for EVA. 

[NSEP]

3 hours ago, Chabadarl said:

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Engineering_Technology/Building_a_lunar_base_with_3D_printing

 

Here is some inspiration. The european space agency has a very serious plan to build a moon base with 3D printer drones. They already have a proof of concept prototype. 

 

shovels and pickaxes

I'm sorry to admit I laugh at that... 

Check the next schedule of extravehicular activity on ISS, and watch the live feed to get the idea of how hard it is to work on vacuum environnement....
Just a reminder it takes several hours, just to prepare yourself for EVA. 

Know that, but better spacesuits, maybe?

[Chabadarl]

4 hours ago, Darnok said:

My idea is not about self sustaining bio-sphere underground, it is about living space that would require medieval technology, like simple pickaxe, to make this space larger.

Having this we would need to send some criminals to this underground colony and they would do labor for food and air. While experienced colonists would install airlocks and more advanced equipment.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

You know that some people will do random crimes just for the chance to have a ticket on your mission ?
This is not the 19th century anymore : just make a television show, lots of people will come at the casting. Audience will be on top, especially with the risk of operation you are willing to take. You may have some legal issue but I can't think of a court that exend its juridiction to Mars. 

 

1 hour ago, NSEP said:

Know that, but better spacesuits, maybe?

Why not better tools ? Which makes the need of power very relevant.On Mars, the gravity is a third of what we feel on Earth. The efficiency of pickaxes and shovels will be lowered by a lot.

You can tried to dig in the flank of a hill and then cover the wall inside but it's long, difficult and risky (Mine accidents are still an everyday situation). The other solution is better:

- Land
- Inflate all modules and construct your base with some possibilities of extension for the future.
- Cover the whole thing with dirt.

A small team can operate the robots needed to start building the station and install the machinery as soon as their needed. Next trips will allow your base to grow with more modules and new migrants will be installed in fully fonctionnal and fully protected modules. 

To add in some extent to the crazyness:  

-A machine that extracts the Oxygen and Hydrogen from the water, for people to breathe and to use for liquid oxygen for the return mission. Also, storage tanks.

You can stock the hydrogen for fuel cells. I think it will be ligther than bringing a nuclear powerplant and way lighter that any form of battery.