Mars Colony Concept

[tater]

Given the necessarily synodic nature of Mars resupply, and the long time intervals that this results in, any Martian colony must rapidly become self-sufficient due to the lag in resupply. How many years worth of parts and supplies must be laid in initially, "just in case?" I'd think ~58 months (per person, and per system), so that a failure at one resupply window would not be 100% fatal. 

Consider an early timeframe in Musk's own ITS plan. Early in the 100 people at a time phase. They launch one of a few ITS to deliver more people, and to resupply the colony's couple hundred people already there... and they have a launch failure. The failure itself is bad enough (loss of vehicle and crew), but they are also now in a profound rush to return to flight. Let's say they don't make the launch window---now what? 

The answer is that they need to become self-sufficient as quickly as possible or such a resupply failure is a grave threat. The more people that go---the worse the danger of any failure.

This is why LEO is so much better.

[KAL 9000]

I just read this thread. Pretty much everyone has great ideas to contribute. But @Darnok, giving colonists guns? SERIOUSLY? And no, New York is not 100% artificial. You can go outside without a spacesuit and NOT DIE.

Edited November 4, 2016 by KAL 9000

[VincentS]

On earth, biosphere does a pretty good job at harvesting and concentrating available resources required for human life preservation. Obviously, you can't duplicate that on Mars surface directly, and won't for a long time. So, how will we get our minerals, breathing gas and energy on Mars ? Adapting (useful) life forms to Mars surface condition looks way too hard, but I'm no biologist so who knows. I'd say, let's go with the next best thing to natural life : artificial life (i.e. robots !)

The good news is that landing robots to the red planet is obviously possible. The bad news is that robots we sent so far are not very useful for building anything, not to mention an operational colony. We face many critical problems :
- Piloting robots that far away is very slow. Some kind of IA is needed. We need to improve automated decision making, and/or make the colony easy to assemble, operate and maintain. We could wait for colons arrival to operate the robots, but it seems risky to send anybody before ensuring that the colony is operational (or will be) .
- Sending enough robots and material in order to bootstrap the colony is huge. Basically, we need tools and materials to build and maintain a gigantic ground ISS, plus a farm complex etc.. However, we could reduce required payload by using as much local material as possible ( smelt raw martian rock may not have great mechanical properties, and will make robots bulkier, heavier and less durable. but who cares, it's free and already there ! ). We should have a robot plant sent there, and only enough robots to assemble and operate the plant, so that if any robot breaks it is replaced. But sending a robot plant raises problems of its own :
- Some part are very hard to manufacture, and will have to be sent anyway. Some are small enough to be sent in great numbers : chips and various captors. 
Others are heavy or bulky, such as battery, power source and bearing.
- Self replicating machine is not yet a thing on earth, so self-replicating machines in Martian environment is but a dream. However, in a strict sense, we don't need
to replicate every part of our machine, only those we cannot send.


I have a few ideas that may (or may not) help solve those problems :
1) Don't use rotating parts if you can avoid it : martian proof bearings and lubricant will probably be very hard to manufacture and assemble. Materials will be hard to come by. Many things can be done without rotating parts (I cannot thing of a single specie using rotating parts -- except humans). Maybe some pneumatic or muscle like system could bend material, and we could do much by bending and unbending things. Robots would probably have between one and six limbs (jumper or crawler for exploration, three legs walker for operating things, six legs for moving things ?)
2) Don't build for durability or efficiency. When something breaks, recover parts ( anything you cannot build has top priority ), build a new one and who cares ? Easy assembly and servicing is highly desirable here.
3) Some kind of martian rock solar smelter will probably be top priority. Design your original plans to use smelted rock whenever you can. Mechanical properties will be lame, but with low gravity you will probably be OK. 
4) Having some kind of metal and/or plastic material plant would be great, and it is probably possible to achieve. It requires the ability to mine martian soil, but we want to dig for living space anyway.
5) Life support will be challenging, but reusing lander system could obviously make things possibles.

So, in my idea the first Mars colony will be founded by robots. The first one would setup a solar smelter and cast required parts for other almost-complete robots and plants. Those robots will in turn complete and start the martian power and/or compressed air plant. Mining and mineral processing will be next. New robots will be created for mining, operation and maintenance until almost every chip is in use. Reinforced tunnels will be made into (almost) airtight living space using plastic and/or metal coating. Perfectly airtight seals will probably be hard to come by,  (Airlocks being the most challenging) but you could probably make do using multiple imperfect airlocks in a row, if you produce the air faster than it leaks.

Then, build and fill tanks with the various useful commodities you extracted (water, oxygen, nitrogen etc…). Your colony will not be auto sufficient already, because you still rely on earth shipping some components, but now the amount of parts to ship should be made reasonable enough (spare parts for various plants, chips etc…). Plants and animals ( human among them) should be next to come to the colony

[kerbiloid]

More avatarbots.
And such thing on orbit to rule them all. This eliminates lightspeed delay. First to study, then to build.
 

[Codraroll]

On 10.11.2016 at 10:14 AM, kerbiloid said:

More avatarbots.
And such thing on orbit to rule them all. This eliminates lightspeed delay. First to study, then to build.

You beat me to it, kerbiloid. I read this entire thread thinking "wait, haven't anybody thought about...", and then its very last post makes the same point I was going to make. Then again, it's been ten days, so I take the blame for being late. But since the thread is stickied, I hope it's OK for me to bump it?

 

My stance on colonizing planets boils down to "You might as well colonize its orbit instead". In orbit, you can have big, spinny space stations giving you proper, terrestrial gravity, rather than spine-crushing high gravity, or spine-crumbling low gravity. For Mars in particular, your colony will have to be a pressurized vessel, with proper radiation shielding due to the lack of a magnetosphere. The outside of the base will be as deadly to humans as space itself is, so you might as well stay in space where there's less dust to clog your machinery, and less atmosphere to obstruct your solar panels. You also need a closed ecosystem, recycling of water, resupplies from Earth, and a rigorous policy on life support systems and hull integrity, whether you're in space or on Mars' surface. Help is far away, the outside is dangerous, and you'll be locked in a can anyway, so why add to the complexity by jumping down the gravity well?

Any ship going to Mars would need artificial gravity and good radiation shielding, so the technology required to maintain a space station is required to complete the journey no matter what colonization concept you go for. But staying in space removes that pesky requirement of landing and ascending, so you'll save quite a bit on both mass and personnel risk. Resupply missions would also be easier since they won't have to land either, and you'll need a lot less Delta-V to get back to Earth.

What I'd suggest would be to send construction robots to Mars. Large bulldozers or excavators, cranes, and other machinery required to drill the required dozens of metres below the surface where radiation-free surface colonies can be made. Or just to mine the damn planet, if a surface colony doesn't produce any comparable benefits. The operation would be controlled by astronauts in a spinning wheel or cylinder in Mars orbit, where light speed delay is negligible and gravity comfortable. In a longer perspective, the Mars colony would operate a lot like oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea; small outposts on the surface served by a rotating crew who live in the orbital colony, and commute via rockets. The surface would have mining outposts, refineries, landing- and launch pads, maybe even some factories, but the true colonies would remain in orbit, where it's easier to create and sustain suitable living conditions for humans.

The one downside I can see for space bases over surface bases is expansion. It's a lot easier to expand a surface base than a space base, since you just need to dig out a new room or use on-site materials to build a new hut. But in space it's a lot harder to come across building materials, and you can't expand the base much radially before the centrifugal force becomes a problem.

[Green Baron]

On the probability of liquid water on mars:

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13459

Also a nice synopsis about data from mars as well as a discussion of weathering rates. The latter is a difficult thing on earth as circumstances can change quickly.

Not so on mars these days. Judging from the weathering of iron in chondrites it seems like they can lie around an mars' surface for 10s of millions of years without much change ... a bad sign for water.

 

Edited November 23, 2016 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Also

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/astronauts-could-use-frozen-lake-discovered-mars-drinking-water-1593021

P.S.
And they can plant potatoes along the shores.

[linkxsc]

I still stand by... why try for Mars when we could go for the moon first?

 

Its a vastly shorter distance away. It would be a great place to test a lot of lowG equipment. If anything does go wrong, aid and recovery can be sent in a timely manner.

We can easily throw a few satellites around the moon for a GPS system. A lot more easily than we could for Mars.

Communications for control of machinery could be done from earth during the early setup phases, or from an orbital station, testing out the station design and longevity for future stations to operate at Mars.

A base on the far side of the moon offers suprisingly good opportunities for a large radio telescope without interferance from earth in general.

Moon can be mined just as well as Mars, with aluminum being much easier to work with than pure iron. Any Martian base would need supplies of carbon shipped in for steel production. Also corrosion. 

Aluminum and iron can both be used in hybrid rockets, so both colonies can produce a fuel to get into space. But the moon's lower gravity makes it much easier.

Other misc reasons.

[NSEP]

13 minutes ago, linkxsc said:

I still stand by... why try for Mars when we could go for the moon first?

 

Its a vastly shorter distance away. It would be a great place to test a lot of lowG equipment. If anything does go wrong, aid and recovery can be sent in a timely manner.

We can easily throw a few satellites around the moon for a GPS system. A lot more easily than we could for Mars.

Communications for control of machinery could be done from earth during the early setup phases, or from an orbital station, testing out the station design and longevity for future stations to operate at Mars.

A base on the far side of the moon offers suprisingly good opportunities for a large radio telescope without interferance from earth in general.

Moon can be mined just as well as Mars, with aluminum being much easier to work with than pure iron. Any Martian base would need supplies of carbon shipped in for steel production. Also corrosion. 

Aluminum and iron can both be used in hybrid rockets, so both colonies can produce a fuel to get into space. But the moon's lower gravity makes it much easier.

Other misc reasons.

I also wondered why, but alot of people ignore the Moon, since we already have been there.

I chose for Mars because that was the first thing that came up in my mind, not because i think Mars is better.

[James Kerman]

Mars is the current "world's first contract".

[linkxsc]

What about giant battery operated humanoid robots to do the terrestrial work on low gravity bodies?

[Green Baron]

Scurvy is making a return (see the news).

I fear that greenhouse food alone (+ketchup) is not sufficient for a healthy nutrition over years.

 

[linkxsc]

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016 at 6:56 AM, Green Baron said:

Scurvy is making a return (see the news).

I fear that greenhouse food alone (+ketchup) is not sufficient for a healthy nutrition over years.

 

Hardly a real problem. The majority of current cases are people with poor diets, be they college students who eat nothing but ramen for weeks, or others who avoid fruit and vegetables.

Assuming a good starting supply of biomass, and good recycling of excrement, you shouldnt run into problems.

Also worse comes to worst, ship a couple dozen bottles of a multivatimin can keep scurvy at bay for a long time (something that will probably be sent along anyway).