New Mars Forums

Well that fits into a single starship and is quite the change in direction from solid building construction that most think of but I do remember NASA doing this for the moon quite some time ago but in quite, smaller vision than to a colony or settlement..

So we have two doughnuts with a separation from the inner radius of each that brings a large common area in the center.

I see that the circular portion of the shape is mainly 20 meter diameter. So what are we doing for the internal floors with in the shape as it gives basically 8 levels at 2.5 m height each?

The center 4 floors would get to use most of the floor space due to circular shape. While the 2 upper and lower ones would get to use less of the volume.

of course we need to add into this shape multiple entry airlocks. Having separate in and out I think makes it easier on the crew

This is the size of the iss cygnus to attach like the BEAM did

I also noticed that we are not making use of the crop, greenhouse area as a volume which means the number was for horizontal growth.

Greenland 1-30
Greenland

What collections of people think people should be property?
What collections of people think people should be property?

Politics

Developing Saturn

Why Artemis is “better” than Apollo.
Why Artemis is “better” than Apollo.
Why Artemis is “better” than Apollo.

Politics

Martian Calender - I have created a martian calender...
Martian Calender - I have created a martian calender...

Copper, Silver, and other Metals

Daily Recap - Recapitulation of Posts in NewMars by Day

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Peter Zeihan again: and also other thinkers:

NASA scrambles as Orion’s heat shield glitch forces a total reentry rethink

How Artemis II’s free return path could save astronauts if everything fails

Trying to do without prefilling of numbers being generated

starting post is carried from the previous days 2026-01-27 last number for the day 237690 - last post 237706

1-28-26 posting

What collections of people think people should be property?

Multi-Ship Expeditions, Starboat & Starship, Other.

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Martian Calender - I have created a martian calender...

Housekeeping

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Ring Habitat on Mars Doughnut Torus
Ring Habitat on Mars Doughnut Torus
Ring Habitat on Mars Doughnut Torus
Ring Habitat on Mars Doughnut Torus
Ring Habitat on Mars Doughnut Torus

Greenland

Well that fits into a single starship and is quite the change in direction from solid building construction that most think of but I do remember NASA doing this for the moon quite some time ago but in quite, smaller vision than to a colony or settlement..

So we have two doughnuts with a separation from the inner radius of each that brings a large common area in the center.

I see that the circular portion of the shape is mainly 20 meter diameter. So what are we doing for the internal floors with in the shape as it gives basically 8 levels at 2.5 m height each?

The center 4 floors would get to use most of the floor space due to circular shape. While the 2 upper and lower ones would get to use less of the volume.

of course we need to add into this shape multiple entry airlocks. Having separate in and out I think makes it easier on the crew

This is the size of the iss cygnus to attach like the BEAM did

I also noticed that we are not making use of the crop, greenhouse area as a volume which means the number was for horizontal growth.

My post about stainless steel Isogrid talked about inflatable as an option.

More good news from the number crunching for "For a "double toroid" 250,000m^3 interior volume structure,"

Here is the shape

Here is the above posts boiled down

You’re thinking about the right thing—if 1,000 people are going to live on Mars, not just survive, a gym isn’t a luxury, it’s medical infrastructure.

Here’s a compact set of requirements for a gym designed to support the health of a 1,000‑person crew inside a ring‑shaped Quonset‑hut‑style structure.

1. Space and layout requirements
Item    Rule of thumb    For 1,000 people
Active users at once    10–15% of crew    100–150 people
Area per active user    4–6 m² (mixed cardio/strength)    400–900 m²
Total gym area    ~1–1.5 m² per person    1,000–1,500 m²
Practical target:

1,200–1,500 m² of gym space distributed around the ring

Broken into zones: cardio, resistance, rehab/physio, flexibility, and small group classes

For a ring habitat, this works well as a continuous “fitness band” around part of the circumference, doubling as a circulation corridor.

2. Equipment mix (Mars‑appropriate)
Key principle: minimize mass, moving parts, and maintenance; maximize bone and muscle loading.

Cardio:

Treadmills: 10–20 units (with harness options if partial‑g is an issue)

Bikes/ergometers: 20–30 units

Rowers/ski‑ergs: 10–15 units

Strength & bone loading:

Resistance machines using bands/flywheels instead of heavy plates

Squat/deadlift platforms with adjustable resistance devices

Multi‑station cable/flywheel rigs (high utility per kg of mass)

Pull‑up/dip stations, suspension trainers

Rehab & mobility:

Mats, balance tools, light dumbbells/kettlebells, physio tables

Scheduling assumption:

Each crew member gets ~1 hour/day of structured exercise

Gym must support 100–150 concurrent users without bottlenecks

3. Power requirements for the gym
Most power goes to cardio machines, lighting, and ventilation.

Cardio equipment:

Treadmills: ~1–2 kW each × 15 → 15–30 kW

Bikes/rowers: 0.1–0.3 kW each × 40 → 4–12 kW

Total cardio peak: ~20–40 kW

Lighting:

10–15 W/m² × 1,500 m² → 15–22 kW

Ventilation & air handling:

Higher CO₂ and humidity from exercise

Plan for 6–10 air changes per hour in gym zone

Fans/blowers: 10–30 kW (depending on ducting and pressure drops)

Electronics & controls:

Displays, sensors, monitoring: 1–3 kW

Total gym power budget:

Peak: ~50–90 kW

Average (over a sol): ~20–40 kW (since not all equipment runs at once)

4. Structural and ring‑geometry considerations
In a ring‑shaped Quonset hut:

Location:

Place gym near the outer radius if the ring is spun for artificial gravity—this maximizes g‑level for exercise.

Use the gym as a buffer zone between noisy/industrial and quiet/sleep areas.

Floor loading:

Dynamic loads from running/jumping/lifting: design for 3–5 kN/m²

Add vibration isolation to avoid transmitting shocks through the ring.

Ceiling height:

Minimum 2.7–3.0 m for safe overhead movements and psychological comfort.

5. Environmental and life‑support coupling
The gym is a CO₂ and heat hotspot:

CO₂:

Exercising humans can produce 2–3× resting CO₂

Local CO₂ scrubbing or high‑flow ventilation from main loop is needed.

Heat:

100–150 people exercising → 10–20 kW of metabolic heat

This is useful in cold climates but must be removed to keep comfort.

Humidity:

Sweat drives local humidity up; dehumidification or dedicated air handling is important.

6. Health and operational goals
Design the gym to support:

Bone density maintenance: heavy‑load resistance, impact or pseudo‑impact training

Cardiovascular fitness: daily moderate‑to‑vigorous cardio

Injury prevention: mobility, physio, and rehab space

Mental health: open, bright, visually varied space—this is a pressure valve for stress

If you want, next step could be:

tie this gym into your overall power budget and ring geometry (radius, spin rate, g‑level),

or sketch a ring cross‑section showing how the gym, living quarters, and utilities stack together.

Here’s a clean power budget table for your 1,000‑person Mars colony, based on what you already calculated plus the big missing pieces.

Power budget summary for 1,000 colonists
Subsystem    Power (MW electric)    Notes
Minimal life support (air + water)    0.42    CO₂ scrubbing + wastewater recovery (your 417 kW)
Ventilation & circulation    0.06–0.90    4–15 ACH, depending on how “wind‑tunnel” you go
Crop lighting (potato staple)    ~9.2    Your 9.23 MW constant for 2,083,333 kg/year potatoes
Food processing & storage    0.5–1.0    Refrigeration, drying, milling, cooking
Habitat heating    1.0–2.0    Depends heavily on insulation, burial, and layout
Computing & communications    0.2–0.5    Local servers, comms, control systems
Medical facilities    0.3–0.8    Small hospital + labs
Manufacturing & fabrication    1.0–3.0    Machine shops, 3D printers, CNC, welding
Construction ISRU (bricks, glass, etc.)    1.0–5.0    Regolith processing, kilns, furnaces
Mining & raw materials    1.0–3.0    Regolith, ice, ores, hauling
Transportation (rovers, haulers)    0.5–1.0    Fleet of pressurized and utility vehicles
Waste processing (solid, chemical)    0.2–0.4    Beyond water: compost, plastics, hazardous waste
Atmospheric N₂/Ar extraction    1.0–2.0    Compression + separation from Martian air
Margin & redundancy    +30–50%    Backup systems, peak loads, failures
Roll‑up totals
Life support core (air + water + crops):

CO₂ + water: ~0.4 MW

Crop lighting: ~9.2 MW

Food processing: ~0.5–1.0 MW
→ ~10–11 MW

Habitat & people overhead:

Heating: 1–2 MW

Ventilation: 0.06–0.9 MW

Medical: 0.3–0.8 MW

Computing/comms: 0.2–0.5 MW
→ ~1.5–4 MW

Industrial & expansion capability:

Manufacturing: 1–3 MW

Construction ISRU: 1–5 MW

Mining: 1–3 MW

Transportation: 0.5–1 MW

Waste processing: 0.2–0.4 MW

N₂/Ar extraction: 1–2 MW
→ ~4.7–14.4 MW

Now add them:

Base continuous load (no margin):

Low end: ~10 + 1.5 + 4.7 ≈ 16 MW

High end: ~11 + 4 + 14.4 ≈ 29 MW

With 30–50% margin and redundancy:

Rough design target: 20–40 MWe continuous

How this compares to your original estimate
Your ~12 MWe for air/water/food is a solid core number.

Once you add industry, construction, heating, mining, and redundancy, the realistic colony looks like:

~20–30 MWe for a capable, growing settlement

Up to ~40 MWe if you want generous margin and aggressive ISRU/build‑out

So the “American‑style” energy footprint still holds—what changes is that life support is only a slice of the pie. The rest is everything that makes the colony more than a survival bunker.

If you’d like, next step could be: pick one architecture (e.g., “3×10 MWe reactors + geothermal + some solar‑thermal”) and we can see how many units, how much mass, and what failure modes look like.

We need to be careful when using ISS numbers as they are based on a crew of typical 7 with short duration of more.

I did put your and my post through copilot and we have a long ways to go. for numbers as the fact that we are  in a circular ring makes for much volume that due to a square layout is a problem.

You’re asking the right question—“what did we miss?”—because the big gap isn’t a single number, it’s a whole layer of overhead you haven’t turned into volume and power yet.

Let me pull it together and show you what’s still “un-costed” in your ring/Quonset concept.

1. Net vs gross volume
Sleeping volume vs habitat volume:
You sized 4‑person quarters at
125 m^3

2. For 1,000 crew, that’s 250 units →
31,250 m^3

3. That’s net bunk volume. What’s missing is the gross volume:

Walls, structure, insulation, MMOD/radiation shielding

Ducts, pipes, cable runs

Access corridors, stairways/ladders, airlocks, nodes
Once you add circulation and systems, net habitable volume is typically only a fraction of total pressurized volume.

2. Circulation, layout, and geometry penalties
Hallways and nodes:

Main spines, cross‑corridors, junction nodes, airlock lobbies, elevator/lift shafts (if any).

Egress routes sized for emergency evacuation of 1,000 people, not just “enough to walk through.”

Curved ring / Quonset geometry:

Rectangular modules in a curved ring waste edge volume.

You’ll have wedge-shaped gaps, unusable corners, and “dead” spaces that still need to be pressurized and serviced.

Doors and pressure breaks:

Every compartment boundary, fire zone, and pressure zone adds doors, vestibules, and clearances.

Those doors and vestibules have non‑trivial volume and lengthen the ring.

Right now, you’ve counted rooms but not the “streets” between them.

3. Support spaces you listed but haven’t volumized
You already named most of these—what’s missing is turning them into square meters and cubic meters:

Sanitation and hygiene:

Toilets, showers, sinks, grey/black water plumbing chases.

Central vs distributed bathrooms changes both volume and complexity.

Laundry and linen:

Washers, dryers, folding/clean storage, dirty storage, carts, and circulation space.

Galley and mess:

Kitchens, prep areas, dishwashing, food staging, serving lines, seating for some fraction of 1,000 at once.

Dry, refrigerated, and frozen storage sized for your resupply cadence.

Exercise and recreation:

Treadmills, resistance machines, free weights, VR/rec rooms, open space for group activities.

These are big volume hogs if you want them to be genuinely useful for 1,000 people.

Medical:

You quoted ~23–28 m² per monitored bed. For 50 beds, that’s ~1,150–1,400 m².

Add OR(s), imaging, pharmacy, lab, waiting, storage, staff areas, decontamination, and isolation rooms.

Greenhouse / food production:

You already estimated ~40,000 m³ for crops. That’s larger than the sleeping quarters volume.

You still need: nutrient mixing rooms, seed storage, tools, maintenance access, and buffer corridors.

All of these need to be explicitly sized and then placed in the ring geometry.

4. Systems volume (the “machine rooms” of the colony)
You’ve got good power and mass numbers for life support hardware—but not their physical footprint:

Life support equipment rooms:

CO₂ scrubbers, O₂ generation, water processors, tanks, pumps, compressors, filters, spare units.

Redundancy (N+1 or N+2) multiplies both mass and volume.

Power systems and distribution:

Switchgear, inverters, transformers, batteries, control rooms, cable trunks.

If you’re using nuclear, geothermal, or solar‑thermal, you also need heat‑to‑power conversion plant and interface spaces.

Thermal control:

Heat exchangers, coolant loops, pumps, manifolds, expansion tanks, radiator interface hardware.

Internal ducting and plenum spaces for air distribution.

Waste management:

Sorting, compacting, storage, recycling, and possibly incineration or feedstock processing.

1,000 people over years means industrial‑scale trash handling, not a closet with a bin.

These are often stacked in “utility decks” or dedicated rings that can easily rival or exceed the volume of living spaces.

5. Redundancy, spares, and logistics
Spares storage:

Filters, pumps, valves, electronics, suits, tools, structural repair materials, medical supplies, etc.

For a remote colony, spare parts inventory is huge—think warehouse, not cabinet.

Logistics and cargo:

Incoming cargo staging, unpacking, inspection, and distribution.

Outgoing waste or return cargo storage.

Emergency infrastructure:

Refuge rooms, extra air and water tanks, emergency rations, firefighting gear, emergency power and comms.

None of that is in the 125 m³/crew‑quarters math yet.

6. Human factors and “soft” space
This is the stuff that keeps 1,000 people sane over years:

Quiet zones and privacy:

Sound‑isolated areas, small meeting rooms, private work pods.

Workspaces and labs:

Offices, mission control, science labs, engineering shops, fabrication/repair bays.

Social and cultural spaces:

Common rooms, lounges, “town square” or auditorium, art/music spaces, spiritual/meditation rooms.

If you don’t allocate this up front, it gets squeezed into leftover corners—which is exactly what you don’t want in a long‑duration, high‑stress environment.

7. Power: you’ve got a floor, not a ceiling
You already see the gap:

Life support baseline:

~0.4–0.5 MW for CO₂ and water processing is just “keep them alive.”

Ventilation and thermal:

Tens to hundreds of kW more, depending on air change rates and radiator design.

Food production:

LED grow lights and associated systems push you into multi‑MW territory by themselves.

Everything else:

IT, comms, robotics, mining/ISRU, manufacturing, vehicles, construction, science.

So 5 MW for 1,000 people is a minimum survival plus a bit. Once you include food and industry, 10–15 MWe for a thriving settlement is very plausible.

The short answer
What you “missed” in the ring Quonset hut sizing is:

Circulation and geometry overhead (hallways, nodes, airlocks, curvature losses).

All the support spaces you listed but haven’t turned into area/volume.

Systems and utility volume for life support, power, thermal, and waste.

Redundancy, spares, and logistics storage.

Work, social, and psychological spaces beyond bunks and a mess hall.

Growth and contingency margin—you’ve sized for exactly 1,000, not 1,000 + failures + expansion.

If you want, we can take a next step and build a rough “volume budget” table—sleeping, hygiene, food, medical, greenhouse, systems, circulation—and see what the total ring volume really looks like.

You’ve done a very thorough first‑pass accounting of the power, air, water, and food loops for a 1,000‑person Mars settlement. The numbers you’re using are grounded in real ISS hardware performance, which is exactly the right way to avoid sci‑fi hand‑waving. What you’ve built is essentially a “minimum viable colony” energy budget.

But you asked: what did we miss?

A few major categories haven’t been included yet, and they matter a lot—some even more than the life‑support loops themselves. I’ll walk through the big ones, explain why they matter, and give you a sense of how they change the overall power and mass picture.

?️ 1. Thermal Control: The Hidden Giant
You accounted for radiator load from life support, but you haven’t accounted for habitat heating.

Mars is cold. Really cold.

Typical equatorial night: −70°C

Mid‑latitudes: −100°C

Worst‑case: −120°C

Even with insulation, a large pressurized structure leaks heat. On Earth, a well‑insulated building loses 30–50 W/m² in winter. On Mars, with a 100°C temperature delta, you’re looking at 100–200 W/m² unless you bury the structure.

For a 125,000 m³ habitat, even assuming a modest 2,000 m² exposed surface area:

200 W/m² × 2,000 m² = 400 kW continuous heating

That’s before you add greenhouses, workshops, airlocks, or tunnels.

If the colony uses multiple pressurized modules, the heating load can easily reach 1–2 MW thermal.

This is one of the biggest missing items.

?️ 2. Manufacturing, Fabrication, and Maintenance
A real colony must repair and build things. That means:

CNC machines

Metal 3D printers

Kilns and smelters

Plastics extrusion

Electronics repair

Welding equipment

Machine shops

Rover maintenance bays

Industrial equipment is power‑hungry.

A modest terrestrial workshop consumes 200–500 kW.
A small industrial fab shop: 1–3 MW.

A Mars colony needs the latter, not the former.

This is another multi‑megawatt category missing from your tally.

? 3. Transportation (Rovers, Haulers, Drones)
Electric rovers on Mars will be the backbone of logistics.

A single large pressurized rover (think “Mars bus”) uses:

50–100 kWh per sol

Peak draw: 20–40 kW

A fleet of 20–30 vehicles adds:

0.5–1 MW continuous equivalent power

If you include mining trucks or regolith haulers, the number jumps.

? 4. ISRU for Construction Materials
If the colony builds anything locally—bricks, concrete, glass, metals—then you need:

Regolith heating

Sintering

Electrolysis

Chemical processing

High‑temperature furnaces (1,000–1,600°C)

These processes are extremely energy‑intensive.

A small regolith‑to‑brick plant alone can require:

1–5 MW thermal

0.5–1 MW electrical

If you want to produce metals (iron, aluminum, magnesium), multiply that by 5–10.

This is one of the largest missing power sinks.

? 5. Food Processing, Refrigeration, and Storage
You accounted for crop lighting, but not:

Refrigeration

Freezers

Drying and milling

Cooking

Packaging

Waste composting

Greenhouse climate control (fans, pumps, humidity control)

A 1,000‑person food system on Earth uses 1–2 MW of electrical power.

Even if you optimize heavily, you’re still looking at 0.5–1 MW.

? 6. Medical Facilities
A real colony needs:

Imaging (X‑ray, ultrasound, maybe MRI)

Sterilization

Labs

Surgical suites

Pharmacy production

A small hospital consumes 300–800 kW.

?️ 7. Communications and Computing
You haven’t included:

High‑gain antennas

Data centers

Navigation beacons

Local servers

Robotics control systems

A modest data center for 1,000 people is 200–500 kW.

If you want AI‑assisted operations or simulation labs, add more.

? 8. Safety Systems and Redundancy
A Mars colony must have:

Backup life support

Backup power

Emergency shelters

Fire suppression

Airlock cycling

Pressure monitoring

Leak detection

Spare parts manufacturing

Redundancy typically adds 30–50% overhead to all life‑support power.

? 9. Waste Processing Beyond Water
You included wastewater, but not:

Solid waste

Plastics recycling

Composting

Hazardous waste

Medical waste

Sewage sludge drying

Methane capture (if used)

A small waste‑to‑energy plant is 200–400 kW.

? 10. Atmospheric Processing for N₂ and Ar
You noted the need for nitrogen but didn’t include the power cost.

To extract N₂ and Ar from Mars’ atmosphere:

You must compress the atmosphere from 0.6 kPa to ~100–200 kPa

Then cryogenically separate gases

This is extremely energy‑intensive.

A rough estimate: 1–2 MW continuous for a colony this size.

? 11. Mining and Raw Material Extraction
If the colony wants to be even partially self‑sufficient:

Water ice mining

Regolith excavation

Gypsum mining

Sulfur extraction

Iron ore mining

Basalt fiber production

Mining equipment is power‑hungry.

A small terrestrial mine uses 5–10 MW.

A Mars colony version might use 1–3 MW.

? So What’s the Real Total?
Your estimate for basic life support + food was ~12 MW.

Adding the missing categories:

Category    Estimated Power
Heating    1–2 MW
Manufacturing    1–3 MW
Transportation    0.5–1 MW
Construction ISRU    1–5 MW
Food processing    0.5–1 MW
Medical    0.3–0.8 MW
Computing & comms    0.2–0.5 MW
Waste processing    0.2–0.4 MW
Atmospheric N₂/Ar    1–2 MW
Mining    1–3 MW
Redundancy overhead    +30–50%
Realistic total: 20–30 MW electrical + 5–10 MW thermal

This is very close to the power consumption of a small town or industrial campus on Earth.

? The Big Picture
Your original conclusion—that a Mars colony ends up looking like a high‑tech American town in terms of per‑capita energy use—is absolutely correct.

But the full system is larger:

Life support is only ~30–40% of total power.

Industry, construction, and heating dominate the rest.

A 1,000‑person Mars settlement is basically:

A small city

A mining operation

A farm

A factory

A research base

A hospital

A power plant

A water treatment facility

All rolled into one.

If you want, I can help you:

Build a full power budget spreadsheet

Model different energy architectures (geothermal vs nuclear vs solar‑thermal)

Estimate radiator area, mass, and heat rejection

Size the nitrogen extraction plant

Model food production with mixed crops

Estimate habitat insulation requirements

Just tell me where you want to take this next.

We need to be careful when using ISS numbers as they are based on a crew of typical 7 with short duration of more.

I did put your and my post through copilot and we have a long ways to go. for numbers as the fact that we are  in a circular ring makes for much volume that due to a square layout is a problem.

You’re asking the right question—“what did we miss?”—because the big gap isn’t a single number, it’s a whole layer of overhead you haven’t turned into volume and power yet.

Let me pull it together and show you what’s still “un-costed” in your ring/Quonset concept.

1. Net vs gross volume
Sleeping volume vs habitat volume: 
You sized 4‑person quarters at
125 m^3

2. For 1,000 crew, that’s 250 units →
31,250 m^3

3. That’s net bunk volume. What’s missing is the gross volume:

Walls, structure, insulation, MMOD/radiation shielding

Ducts, pipes, cable runs

Access corridors, stairways/ladders, airlocks, nodes 
Once you add circulation and systems, net habitable volume is typically only a fraction of total pressurized volume.

2. Circulation, layout, and geometry penalties
Hallways and nodes:

Main spines, cross‑corridors, junction nodes, airlock lobbies, elevator/lift shafts (if any).

Egress routes sized for emergency evacuation of 1,000 people, not just “enough to walk through.”

Curved ring / Quonset geometry:

Rectangular modules in a curved ring waste edge volume.

You’ll have wedge-shaped gaps, unusable corners, and “dead” spaces that still need to be pressurized and serviced.

Doors and pressure breaks:

Every compartment boundary, fire zone, and pressure zone adds doors, vestibules, and clearances.

Those doors and vestibules have non‑trivial volume and lengthen the ring.

Right now, you’ve counted rooms but not the “streets” between them.

3. Support spaces you listed but haven’t volumized
You already named most of these—what’s missing is turning them into square meters and cubic meters:

Sanitation and hygiene:

Toilets, showers, sinks, grey/black water plumbing chases.

Central vs distributed bathrooms changes both volume and complexity.

Laundry and linen:

Washers, dryers, folding/clean storage, dirty storage, carts, and circulation space.

Galley and mess:

Kitchens, prep areas, dishwashing, food staging, serving lines, seating for some fraction of 1,000 at once.

Dry, refrigerated, and frozen storage sized for your resupply cadence.

Exercise and recreation:

Treadmills, resistance machines, free weights, VR/rec rooms, open space for group activities.

These are big volume hogs if you want them to be genuinely useful for 1,000 people.

Medical:

You quoted ~23–28 m² per monitored bed. For 50 beds, that’s ~1,150–1,400 m².

Add OR(s), imaging, pharmacy, lab, waiting, storage, staff areas, decontamination, and isolation rooms.

Greenhouse / food production:

You already estimated ~40,000 m³ for crops. That’s larger than the sleeping quarters volume.

You still need: nutrient mixing rooms, seed storage, tools, maintenance access, and buffer corridors.

All of these need to be explicitly sized and then placed in the ring geometry.

4. Systems volume (the “machine rooms” of the colony)
You’ve got good power and mass numbers for life support hardware—but not their physical footprint:

Life support equipment rooms:

CO₂ scrubbers, O₂ generation, water processors, tanks, pumps, compressors, filters, spare units.

Redundancy (N+1 or N+2) multiplies both mass and volume.

Power systems and distribution:

Switchgear, inverters, transformers, batteries, control rooms, cable trunks.

If you’re using nuclear, geothermal, or solar‑thermal, you also need heat‑to‑power conversion plant and interface spaces.

Thermal control:

Heat exchangers, coolant loops, pumps, manifolds, expansion tanks, radiator interface hardware.

Internal ducting and plenum spaces for air distribution.

Waste management:

Sorting, compacting, storage, recycling, and possibly incineration or feedstock processing.

1,000 people over years means industrial‑scale trash handling, not a closet with a bin.

These are often stacked in “utility decks” or dedicated rings that can easily rival or exceed the volume of living spaces.

5. Redundancy, spares, and logistics
Spares storage:

Filters, pumps, valves, electronics, suits, tools, structural repair materials, medical supplies, etc.

For a remote colony, spare parts inventory is huge—think warehouse, not cabinet.

Logistics and cargo:

Incoming cargo staging, unpacking, inspection, and distribution.

Outgoing waste or return cargo storage.

Emergency infrastructure:

Refuge rooms, extra air and water tanks, emergency rations, firefighting gear, emergency power and comms.

None of that is in the 125 m³/crew‑quarters math yet.

6. Human factors and “soft” space
This is the stuff that keeps 1,000 people sane over years:

Quiet zones and privacy:

Sound‑isolated areas, small meeting rooms, private work pods.

Workspaces and labs:

Offices, mission control, science labs, engineering shops, fabrication/repair bays.

Social and cultural spaces:

Common rooms, lounges, “town square” or auditorium, art/music spaces, spiritual/meditation rooms.

If you don’t allocate this up front, it gets squeezed into leftover corners—which is exactly what you don’t want in a long‑duration, high‑stress environment.

7. Power: you’ve got a floor, not a ceiling
You already see the gap:

Life support baseline:

~0.4–0.5 MW for CO₂ and water processing is just “keep them alive.”

Ventilation and thermal:

Tens to hundreds of kW more, depending on air change rates and radiator design.

Food production:

LED grow lights and associated systems push you into multi‑MW territory by themselves.

Everything else:

IT, comms, robotics, mining/ISRU, manufacturing, vehicles, construction, science.

So 5 MW for 1,000 people is a minimum survival plus a bit. Once you include food and industry, 10–15 MWe for a thriving settlement is very plausible.

The short answer
What you “missed” in the ring Quonset hut sizing is:

Circulation and geometry overhead (hallways, nodes, airlocks, curvature losses).

All the support spaces you listed but haven’t turned into area/volume.

Systems and utility volume for life support, power, thermal, and waste.

Redundancy, spares, and logistics storage.

Work, social, and psychological spaces beyond bunks and a mess hall.

Growth and contingency margin—you’ve sized for exactly 1,000, not 1,000 + failures + expansion.

If you want, we can take a next step and build a rough “volume budget” table—sleeping, hygiene, food, medical, greenhouse, systems, circulation—and see what the total ring volume really looks like.

You’ve done a very thorough first‑pass accounting of the power, air, water, and food loops for a 1,000‑person Mars settlement. The numbers you’re using are grounded in real ISS hardware performance, which is exactly the right way to avoid sci‑fi hand‑waving. What you’ve built is essentially a “minimum viable colony” energy budget.

But you asked: what did we miss?

A few major categories haven’t been included yet, and they matter a lot—some even more than the life‑support loops themselves. I’ll walk through the big ones, explain why they matter, and give you a sense of how they change the overall power and mass picture.

?️ 1. Thermal Control: The Hidden Giant
You accounted for radiator load from life support, but you haven’t accounted for habitat heating.

Mars is cold. Really cold.

Typical equatorial night: −70°C

Mid‑latitudes: −100°C

Worst‑case: −120°C

Even with insulation, a large pressurized structure leaks heat. On Earth, a well‑insulated building loses 30–50 W/m² in winter. On Mars, with a 100°C temperature delta, you’re looking at 100–200 W/m² unless you bury the structure.

For a 125,000 m³ habitat, even assuming a modest 2,000 m² exposed surface area:

200 W/m² × 2,000 m² = 400 kW continuous heating

That’s before you add greenhouses, workshops, airlocks, or tunnels.

If the colony uses multiple pressurized modules, the heating load can easily reach 1–2 MW thermal.

This is one of the biggest missing items.

?️ 2. Manufacturing, Fabrication, and Maintenance
A real colony must repair and build things. That means:

CNC machines

Metal 3D printers

Kilns and smelters

Plastics extrusion

Electronics repair

Welding equipment

Machine shops

Rover maintenance bays

Industrial equipment is power‑hungry.

A modest terrestrial workshop consumes 200–500 kW.
A small industrial fab shop: 1–3 MW.

A Mars colony needs the latter, not the former.

This is another multi‑megawatt category missing from your tally.

? 3. Transportation (Rovers, Haulers, Drones)
Electric rovers on Mars will be the backbone of logistics.

A single large pressurized rover (think “Mars bus”) uses:

50–100 kWh per sol

Peak draw: 20–40 kW

A fleet of 20–30 vehicles adds:

0.5–1 MW continuous equivalent power

If you include mining trucks or regolith haulers, the number jumps.

? 4. ISRU for Construction Materials
If the colony builds anything locally—bricks, concrete, glass, metals—then you need:

Regolith heating

Sintering

Electrolysis

Chemical processing

High‑temperature furnaces (1,000–1,600°C)

These processes are extremely energy‑intensive.

A small regolith‑to‑brick plant alone can require:

1–5 MW thermal

0.5–1 MW electrical

If you want to produce metals (iron, aluminum, magnesium), multiply that by 5–10.

This is one of the largest missing power sinks.

? 5. Food Processing, Refrigeration, and Storage
You accounted for crop lighting, but not:

Refrigeration

Freezers

Drying and milling

Cooking

Packaging

Waste composting

Greenhouse climate control (fans, pumps, humidity control)

A 1,000‑person food system on Earth uses 1–2 MW of electrical power.

Even if you optimize heavily, you’re still looking at 0.5–1 MW.

? 6. Medical Facilities
A real colony needs:

Imaging (X‑ray, ultrasound, maybe MRI)

Sterilization

Labs

Surgical suites

Pharmacy production

A small hospital consumes 300–800 kW.

?️ 7. Communications and Computing
You haven’t included:

High‑gain antennas

Data centers

Navigation beacons

Local servers

Robotics control systems

A modest data center for 1,000 people is 200–500 kW.

If you want AI‑assisted operations or simulation labs, add more.

? 8. Safety Systems and Redundancy
A Mars colony must have:

Backup life support

Backup power

Emergency shelters

Fire suppression

Airlock cycling

Pressure monitoring

Leak detection

Spare parts manufacturing

Redundancy typically adds 30–50% overhead to all life‑support power.

? 9. Waste Processing Beyond Water
You included wastewater, but not:

Solid waste

Plastics recycling

Composting

Hazardous waste

Medical waste

Sewage sludge drying

Methane capture (if used)

A small waste‑to‑energy plant is 200–400 kW.

? 10. Atmospheric Processing for N₂ and Ar
You noted the need for nitrogen but didn’t include the power cost.

To extract N₂ and Ar from Mars’ atmosphere:

You must compress the atmosphere from 0.6 kPa to ~100–200 kPa

Then cryogenically separate gases

This is extremely energy‑intensive.

A rough estimate: 1–2 MW continuous for a colony this size.

? 11. Mining and Raw Material Extraction
If the colony wants to be even partially self‑sufficient:

Water ice mining

Regolith excavation

Gypsum mining

Sulfur extraction

Iron ore mining

Basalt fiber production

Mining equipment is power‑hungry.

A small terrestrial mine uses 5–10 MW.

A Mars colony version might use 1–3 MW.

? So What’s the Real Total?
Your estimate for basic life support + food was ~12 MW.

Adding the missing categories:

Category    Estimated Power
Heating    1–2 MW
Manufacturing    1–3 MW
Transportation    0.5–1 MW
Construction ISRU    1–5 MW
Food processing    0.5–1 MW
Medical    0.3–0.8 MW
Computing & comms    0.2–0.5 MW
Waste processing    0.2–0.4 MW
Atmospheric N₂/Ar    1–2 MW
Mining    1–3 MW
Redundancy overhead    +30–50%
Realistic total: 20–30 MW electrical + 5–10 MW thermal

This is very close to the power consumption of a small town or industrial campus on Earth.

? The Big Picture
Your original conclusion—that a Mars colony ends up looking like a high‑tech American town in terms of per‑capita energy use—is absolutely correct.

But the full system is larger:

Life support is only ~30–40% of total power.

Industry, construction, and heating dominate the rest.

A 1,000‑person Mars settlement is basically:

A small city

A mining operation

A farm

A factory

A research base

A hospital

A power plant

A water treatment facility

All rolled into one.

If you want, I can help you:

Build a full power budget spreadsheet

Model different energy architectures (geothermal vs nuclear vs solar‑thermal)

Estimate radiator area, mass, and heat rejection

Size the nitrogen extraction plant

Model food production with mixed crops

Estimate habitat insulation requirements

Just tell me where you want to take this next.

In discussions you will need to put the opinions with in the topics and then do the branch for what you feel is off topic. It allows for those reading to understand the topics fishbone discussions that are being found and created. This happened to some degree with the large ship.
So its expected to have many related topics that are the branches in which some support the original while others are separate projects to be under taken that may or may not support the actions to which is the goal.

Take for instance power requirement for crew life support and then what power that is required for the green house for food plus recycling of co2 to oxygen which each are branches in the ring structure we are trying to come up with.
These are both power but its the sum of each which must be achieved.

So right now we are trying to get to the volumes as required in total for each portion of the ring Quonset shaped simple from making the first section unit until finished and internal work can be done for how each portion is used.

Please continue in discussion what you think are off topics but make the efforts to bring those fishbone out include your thought so that the project lead can read them as much as possible in one location root topic to the branches.