New Mars Forums

Illness on the ISS is common due to microgravity affecting fluids, immune systems, and balance, leading to issues like motion sickness (Space Adaptation Syndrome), skin rashes, respiratory infections, and vision/bone changes, with a recent unprecedented medical evacuation of Crew-11 in January 2026 for an undisclosed serious condition highlighting the risks, though astronauts manage many ailments with Earth-based telemedicine and onboard kits.

Common Health Issues in Space
Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS): About 50% of astronauts experience nausea, headaches, and disorientation as the inner ear readjusts.
Fluid Shifts: Fluid moves to the upper body, causing sinus congestion, puffy faces, and potential vision problems (SANS - Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome).
Immune Dysfunction: Microgravity can weaken the immune system, making infections more likely.
Skin Rashes & Respiratory Issues: These are frequently reported, often due to changes in the immune system or close quarters.
Bone & Muscle Loss: Long-term exposure weakens bones and muscles, requiring strict exercise.
Radiation Exposure: Cosmic rays can affect DNA repair and energy use, with effects lingering after return.
Recent Medical Event (January 2026)

Crew-11 Evacuation: Four astronauts (Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui, Oleg Platonov) returned early from the ISS due to a serious, undisclosed medical event involving one crew member.
Unprecedented: This was NASA's first controlled medical evacuation from the ISS, though models predicted such events occur about every three years.

Management & Preparedness
Onboard Medical Kits: The station carries medicines and equipment like ultrasound scanners.
Telemedicine: Crews consult with doctors on Earth for diagnosis and treatment.
Limitations: The ISS lacks full hospital facilities like an MRI, necessitating evacuations for severe issues

For decades, the idea of people living on Mars has felt like a distant fantasy, limited by the brutal cost of hauling everything from Earth and the difficulty of building safe shelters on a hostile world. That picture is starting to shift as engineers quietly solve the hardest part of the problem: how to construct real infrastructure using Martian soil itself. A cluster of new techniques for making bricks, concrete and even self-assembling structures from local material is turning the dream of a permanent foothold on the Red Planet into a practical engineering challenge rather than a science fiction plot.

The new Martian brick that changes the equation
The most striking development is a method that lets future settlers turn raw Martian dust into solid building blocks without importing heavy equipment or binders from Earth. NASA scientists have announced a way to create robust bricks on Mars using only local dust, minerals and a small amount of human sweat, effectively turning the grit under an astronaut’s boots into structural material. In reports shared in Jul, the agency described how this process could produce dense, durable bricks that lock together into walls and radiation shields, cutting out the need to ship conventional construction materials across interplanetary space.

What makes this so disruptive is not just the chemistry, but the logistics. Launching one kilogram of cargo from Earth is already expensive, and a settlement would need thousands of tons of material for habitats, storage and shielding. By relying on Martian dust and minerals, the NASA approach slashes that mass requirement and lets crews scale up construction as they go, brick by brick, instead of waiting for resupply. The technique, detailed in a Facebook group post on NASA scientists, frames human presence not as a fragile outpost, but as a growing worksite where the planet itself becomes the raw stock for expansion.

From improvised shelters to full Martian communities
Once you can make a single brick, the next question is whether you can build entire neighborhoods. Follow up work has shown that scientists have successfully created bricks strong enough to support not just small test structures, but the foundations of full-scale habitats. Using similar principles that combine Martian dust with minimal additives, researchers have demonstrated blocks that could be stacked into domes, tunnels and multiroom shelters capable of housing crews for months at a time. The same Jul reporting on NASA’s work has been echoed in other technical communities, where engineers argue that these bricks could underpin entire communities on Mars rather than just emergency bunkers.

That shift in ambition matters because it changes how mission planners think about timelines. Instead of shipping prefabricated modules for every new crew, agencies could send a compact starter kit of tools and rely on local brick production to expand living space, storage and even agricultural enclosures. The idea that settlers might one day walk through streets lined with structures made from Martian dust is no longer a poetic metaphor, but a scenario grounded in lab-tested materials. One widely shared discussion of how scientists have successfully created bricks robust enough for entire communities captures how quickly the field has moved from proof of concept to city-scale thinking.

Self-building tech and shape-optimized structures
Material is only half the story. The other half is how to assemble it in a place where human labor is scarce, dangerous and expensive. In June, a study from Texas A&M University, working with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, introduced a self-building technology that could let habitats on Mars assemble themselves from modular components. The concept uses robotic systems and smart joints that lock together autonomously, guided by algorithms that account for Martian gravity and the properties of regolith, which consists of dust, sand and rocks. Instead of astronauts spending weeks in bulky suits stacking bricks, swarms of machines could raise walls and roofs while crews focus on science and survival.

At the same time, structural engineers are rethinking what Martian buildings should look like in the first place. Rather than copying Earth-style boxes, they are designing shape optimized structures that use arches, shells and curved forms to handle pressure differences and radiation with far less material. One detailed analysis shows that such structures can remarkably reduce the energy and material required for construction, while also eliminating the need for large imports from Earth. The study argues that these optimized geometries, when combined with in situ concrete and regolith-based bricks, can lead to sustainable colonization on Mars by aligning architecture with the physics of the environment. The case for these designs is laid out in research that notes how Such structures reduce both energy and imported mass, a crucial advantage when every kilogram counts.

When I put these threads together, the picture that emerges is of a construction ecosystem that is both automated and highly efficient. Self-building systems from Texas and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln can handle the assembly, while shape optimized shells minimize the amount of Martian material that needs to be processed in the first place. That combination does not just make habitats cheaper, it makes them faster to deploy, which is vital in the narrow windows when launch trajectories and Martian seasons line up in favor of new arrivals.

Concrete, 3D printing and the rise of in situ manufacturing
Bricks and shells are powerful tools, but long term settlements will also need heavy duty infrastructure: landing pads, radiation bunkers, pressure locks and industrial floors. Here, researchers are turning Martian soil into a kind of waterless cement known as AstroCrete. Studies of future Mars settlements, often described as the Red Planet’s first towns, point out that All the key ingredients for this material, including regolith, certain salts and even biological components, will be available in relative abundance in Martian environments. AstroCrete made from Martian regolith and human byproducts behaves like a tough concrete that can be cast into slabs and beams without relying on scarce water, which is too valuable to waste on construction. One technical overview notes that All of these components can be sourced locally, making AstroCrete a cornerstone of Martian civil engineering.

Alongside concrete, 3D printing is emerging as the workhorse for turning raw regolith into precise parts. Techniques originally developed for products as mundane as an airless basketball are being adapted to extraterrestrial construction. One analysis of advanced additive manufacturing notes that this approach not only reduces the need for carrying heavy payloads from Earth, but also offers the potential for rapid prototyping and adaptability to the unique Martian environment. The same logic that lets engineers print a complex lattice for a sports ball can be applied to printing pressure vessels, support trusses and custom connectors on Mars, all tuned to local gravity and temperature swings. The broader promise of this method is captured in work showing how 3D printing can cut launch mass from Earth while boosting flexibility on site, a point underscored in coverage of how printing directly from regolith reduces the need to ship bulky components from Earth.

A broader blueprint for sustainable colonization
Behind these individual breakthroughs sits a larger strategic shift in how space agencies and researchers think about Mars. Instead of treating each mission as a one-off expedition, planners are sketching a comprehensive blueprint for colonization that assumes permanent, growing infrastructure. A recent synthesis of this thinking argues that Technological evolution is central to making Mars habitable in a sustainable way. It highlights Key advancements in propulsion, in situ resource utilization, closed-loop life support systems and advanced robotics as the pillars of a long term presence. In that framework, construction technologies like regolith bricks, AstroCrete and self-building habitats are not side projects, but core enablers of a settlement that can expand without constant resupply. The same work on Technological evolution on Mars makes clear that construction, life support and robotics must advance together if colonization is to move beyond flags and footprints.

Self-building systems, shape optimized structures and in situ materials are already being woven into that broader roadmap. In June, the work from Texas and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln on self-assembling habitats was framed explicitly as a bridge from science fiction to operational reality, showing how regolith-based modules could be deployed in advance of human crews. Combined with NASA’s Jul breakthroughs on Martian bricks and the growing body of research on sustainable concrete, these developments suggest that the hardest part of colonizing Mars may no longer be the rockets, but the patience to test and refine the tools that will turn dust into cities. As I look across the emerging blueprint, the shocking part is not that colonization is possible, but that the practical pieces are arriving faster than the public conversation has caught up, quietly making a permanent human presence on Mars feel less like a fantasy and more like an engineering deadline.

The Mars cast basalt manufacturing process involves melting Martian basalt/regolith in a furnace (around 1200-1500°C), pouring the liquid rock into molds to form shapes like bricks, pipes, or tiles, and then carefully cooling (annealing) the cast product in kilns to control crystallization, eliminating internal stress and creating durable, wear-resistant structures for planetary habitats.

Key Steps in Manufacturing Cast Basalt for Mars
Raw Material Preparation: Basalt rock or Martian regolith (soil) is collected and processed.
Melting: The material is heated in an electric furnace to a molten state, typically around 1200-1500°C, similar to terrestrial glassmaking.
Molding: The molten basalt is poured into molds to create desired shapes, such as bricks, tubes, or structural components.
Annealing (Controlled Cooling): This crucial step involves slow, controlled cooling in a kiln over many hours, often from high temperatures (e.g., 800°C) down to lower ranges (480-520°C) and then to room temperature, to prevent cracking and develop optimal strength.
Finishing: Products can be used as-is or further processed, like being lined with cement grout for enhanced durability.

Why It's Ideal for Mars
In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU): Uses readily available Martian basalt.
Durability: Creates hard, strong, abrasion-resistant, and chemically inert materials.
Versatility: Can form building blocks (bricks, beams, columns, domes) and structural reinforcements.
Energy Efficiency: Basalt melts at relatively lower temperatures compared to some metals, making it suitable for solar or nuclear-powered Martian systems

SpaceNut,

I was thinking of using a combination of 304L from the expended Starships and indigenous materials in a "space frame" design wherein the Starship steel provides external structural support so that locally-sourced cast basalt tiles interlock into the space frame and are pressed outwards and into the space frame by internal pressurization, with sealing accomplished using either a thin internal layer of stainless sheet steel welded into the space frame, over the top of the inner tile faces, or a Silicone-based adhesive sealant could also be used.  We can bring enough 304L and Silicone sealant from Earth to build this kind of structure by scrapping / recycling the Starships.  I don't think it's feasible to bring enough concrete or basalt tiles, hence why that material must be locally sourced.

Do you remember the structure of the "Biosphere 2" built in Arizona?

So, imagine that we create a giant ring-shaped habitat, rather than a Super Dome, so as to keep tensile stresses sane, so as to economize on recycled steel, so as to allow us to safely use cast basalt tiles without the thickness of said tiles needing to greatly resemble the stones used to build the pyramids.  This maximizes internal volume, minimizes material consumption.  We can still build a Super Dome from locally sourced meteorite Nickel-steel, but for sake of argument presume that we can only handle local production of indigenous liquid water, atmospheric gases, and one construction material that we only have to melt and cast into a limited number of molds.  More could always be done using more equipment and labor, but we have to bring those things with us.

If we provide 125m^3 of pressurized volume for each family of 4, then we need approximately 10 Super Domes worth of pressurized volume to house a million people.  Domes tend to have a lot of unusable space, though.  What about a ring?

The proposed project of creating a 9-meter stainless steel doughnut cross-section with a crewed starship in the center, utilizing materials from unused cargo ships, is not technically feasible using current industrial and engineering methods.
Here are the key reasons why this concept is impractical:
Material Limitations:
Steel Type: The steel used in standard cargo ships is not typically high-grade stainless steel suitable for precision aerospace or habitat construction. It is standard structural steel, which has different properties regarding corrosion resistance, strength-to-weight ratio, and material consistency.
Repurposing Difficulty: While steel can be recycled, melting down and reshaping massive cargo ship hulls into a precise, large-scale, high-quality "doughnut" cross-section requires specialized industrial remelting processes (like electroslag remelting for high-grade applications) that are complex and costly, making on-site or large-scale transformation unfeasible.
Material Integrity: The structural integrity of repurposing cut and welded sections of existing cargo ships for such a specific, high-stress application (especially if intended for space or extreme environments) would be difficult to guarantee without extensive and costly engineering.
Engineering and Design Challenges:
Structural Requirements: Designing a 9-meter "doughnut" structure to house a starship would have highly specific operational and stiffness requirements that repurposed, potentially compromised, cargo ship materials cannot easily meet.
Scale and Precision: The precision needed for a 9-meter cross-section that interacts seamlessly with a crewed starship is immense. Achieving this precision by modifying large, existing, non-uniform cargo ship sections is impractical.
Feasibility vs. New Construction: It would be significantly more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective to produce the necessary components using new, purpose-built stainless steel designed for the specific application rather than attempting to salvage and heavily modify existing ship parts.
In summary, the foundational materials and engineering processes required to create such a specific, high-specification structure from generic, used cargo ships make the project technologically unviable.

What challenges are

You will need 4 sections of the 60 m tube to achieve a total length of 240 m. The final circle will have an approximate diameter of \(76.4\) m. 

Step 1: Calculate material needs First, determine the total length of tubing required. The user's desired circumference is 240 meters. The calculation confirms that exactly 4 of the 60-meter tubes are needed to reach this length. The 9 m diameter of the individual tubes is the cross-sectional diameter, not the circle's final diameter. 

Step 2: Join the tubes Join the four 60-meter stainless steel tubes end-to-end to create one continuous 240-meter length. This is typically done by welding the joints, which requires specific techniques for stainless steel. 

Step 3: Form the circle The 240-meter length of tube must be mechanically bent or rolled into a circular shape. Given the large scale, specialized industrial equipment for bending large diameter, thick-walled (implied by 9m diameter) steel is necessary. 

Step 4: Cut and finish A final, precise cut will be needed to join the two ends of the 240-meter length after it is formed into the circle. For cutting stainless steel tubes, common methods include using a portable band saw or an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel, applying slow speed and cutting oil to manage the material's hardness and heat. 

Answer: You will need to use 4 of the 60 m tubes to achieve a total length of 240 m. The final circle made from this length will have a diameter of approximately \(76.4\) m (\(240/\pi \)). The tubes must be joined end-to-end and then formed into the circular shape, requiring precise cuts and welding to secure the final joint

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this study:

While scientists have a pretty good handle on how protons and neutrons form stable nuclei, there are exceptions to those well-established rules.
Known as “Islands of Inversion,” these areas are regions where spherical shapes collapse and deformed objects reign, and typically, they’re found in neutron-rich isotopes.
A new study found what it calls an “Isospin-Symmetric Island of Inversion” in a stable region on the proton-rich side of the atomic stability line, offering new understanding regarding how atoms form.
In 1911, New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford theorized that atoms contained a nucleus, and in the ensuing century, scientists have learned a lot about the ins and outs of that nucleus while filling out the periodic table with 118 atomic elements.

It turns out atomic nuclei follow some simple rules. For example, when it comes to light nuclei (a.k.a. elements with smaller numbers on the periodic table), having the same number of neutrons and protons increases stability and forms what is known as the N=Z line (“N” being neutrons and “Z” being protons). However, as those numbers grow, the repulsive electromagnetic forces in protons require the presence of an increasing number of neutrons for stability (if there aren’t enough neutrons, the protons will repel each other and push the nucleus apart), resulting in a deviation from this line.

That said, over the years, scientists have also noticed a few behavioral quirks known as “islands of inversion,” where the usual rules of nuclear structure stop working. In other words, “magic numbers”—the counts of protons and neutrons that form stable nuclei—disappear, giving way to unusually strong deformations (how much the shape of the nucleus varies from spherical).

Most of these “islands” occur in exotic isotopes like beryllium-12, magnesium-32, and chromium-64, which are all pretty distant from ‘normal’ nuclei found in nature and are on the neutron-rich side of the stability line. For instance, the most common isotope of chromium is chromium-52, which contains 24 protons and 28 neutrons. Chromium-64, on the other hand, contains 24 protons and a whopping 40 neutrons.

But in a new international study, scientists discovered a remarkably proton-rich island of inversion (with symmetrical proton and neutron excitations) by examining two isotopes of molybdenum: Mo-84 (Z=N=42) and Mo-86 (Z=42, Z=44). They found that the difference of just two neutrons caused Mo-84 to experience what’s called “particle-hole excitation,” where nucleons jump to higher-energy orbitals and leave vacancies in their wake.

Because this behavior occurs in a stable region, where the number of protons approximately equals the number of neutrons, this discovery challenges where certain “islands of inversion” may appear while providing a new look into how nuclei bind together. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications.

“While this phenomenon has been so far studied in very neutron-rich nuclei, its manifestation in nuclei residing on the proton-rich side remains to be explored in detail due to the experimental difficulty of producing medium-heavy-mass N ~ Z nuclei,” the authors wrote. “The two isotopes [reveal] a profound change in their structure and affords deeper insight into the evolution of the nuclear structure at the proton-rich side of the stability line.”

This graph shows the N=Z line as well as the stability link below. The green areas represent other islands on inversion on the neutron-rich side of the stability line where as the purple ellipsoid represents the isospin-symetric island of inversion featured in this study

Almost as complicated as the discovery itself are the methods that the scientists used to make it. First, the team bombarded a beryllium target with accelerated Mo-92 ions, and separated the desired fragments out after the collisions. When resulting Mo-86 atoms struck a second target, some were excited into Mo-84, emitting gamma rays in the process. Those gamma rays were then measured by the GRETINA gamma-ray spectrometer and the TRIPLEX (Triple Plunger for Exotic beams) instrument, both of which can record extremely short atomic lifetimes. The resulting data allowed scientists to discern nuclear deformation.

This new “Isospin-Symmetric Island of Inversion” shows that while we’ve made a lot of progress since Rutherford’s experiments in the early 20th century, there are still many nuclear mysteries out there waiting to be solved.

If we provide 125m^3 of pressurized volume for each family of 4, then we need approximately 10 Super Domes worth of pressurized volume to house a million people.  Domes tend to have a lot of unusable space, though.  What about a ring?

The proposed project of creating a 9-meter stainless steel doughnut cross-section with a crewed starship in the center, utilizing materials from unused cargo ships, is not technically feasible using current industrial and engineering methods.
Here are the key reasons why this concept is impractical:
Material Limitations:
Steel Type: The steel used in standard cargo ships is not typically high-grade stainless steel suitable for precision aerospace or habitat construction. It is standard structural steel, which has different properties regarding corrosion resistance, strength-to-weight ratio, and material consistency.
Repurposing Difficulty: While steel can be recycled, melting down and reshaping massive cargo ship hulls into a precise, large-scale, high-quality "doughnut" cross-section requires specialized industrial remelting processes (like electroslag remelting for high-grade applications) that are complex and costly, making on-site or large-scale transformation unfeasible.
Material Integrity: The structural integrity of repurposing cut and welded sections of existing cargo ships for such a specific, high-stress application (especially if intended for space or extreme environments) would be difficult to guarantee without extensive and costly engineering.
Engineering and Design Challenges:
Structural Requirements: Designing a 9-meter "doughnut" structure to house a starship would have highly specific operational and stiffness requirements that repurposed, potentially compromised, cargo ship materials cannot easily meet.
Scale and Precision: The precision needed for a 9-meter cross-section that interacts seamlessly with a crewed starship is immense. Achieving this precision by modifying large, existing, non-uniform cargo ship sections is impractical.
Feasibility vs. New Construction: It would be significantly more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective to produce the necessary components using new, purpose-built stainless steel designed for the specific application rather than attempting to salvage and heavily modify existing ship parts.
In summary, the foundational materials and engineering processes required to create such a specific, high-specification structure from generic, used cargo ships make the project technologically unviable.

What challenges are

You will need 4 sections of the 60 m tube to achieve a total length of 240 m. The final circle will have an approximate diameter of \(76.4\) m. 

Step 1: Calculate material needs First, determine the total length of tubing required. The user's desired circumference is 240 meters. The calculation confirms that exactly 4 of the 60-meter tubes are needed to reach this length. The 9 m diameter of the individual tubes is the cross-sectional diameter, not the circle's final diameter. 

Step 2: Join the tubes Join the four 60-meter stainless steel tubes end-to-end to create one continuous 240-meter length. This is typically done by welding the joints, which requires specific techniques for stainless steel. 

Step 3: Form the circle The 240-meter length of tube must be mechanically bent or rolled into a circular shape. Given the large scale, specialized industrial equipment for bending large diameter, thick-walled (implied by 9m diameter) steel is necessary. 

Step 4: Cut and finish A final, precise cut will be needed to join the two ends of the 240-meter length after it is formed into the circle. For cutting stainless steel tubes, common methods include using a portable band saw or an angle grinder with a cut-off wheel, applying slow speed and cutting oil to manage the material's hardness and heat. 

Answer: You will need to use 4 of the 60 m tubes to achieve a total length of 240 m. The final circle made from this length will have a diameter of approximately \(76.4\) m (\(240/\pi \)). The tubes must be joined end-to-end and then formed into the circular shape, requiring precise cuts and welding to secure the final joint