Typology of colonisation plans.

louis · 2008-04-01 19:26:10

Short hand category terms can be help us to see the wood for the trees.

I like to call my proposals for Mars colonisation "Minimalist". In all areas I am looking for the minimum that will get us there and established as I feel that will get us there earliest and ensure ISRU is pursued rigorously, thus creating the conditions for on Mars development.

Are there useful names for other categories already in existence?

I've read some people propose a fleet of space craft to establish human civilisation on Mars in one fell swoop - the opposite end of the scale from my approach. I'd call that "Rome in a Day". I don't think it's remotely feasible but one can see it might be attractive.

Anything involving as yet non-existent transport technology I think should be called "Star Trek Scenario".

NASA's approach? "Science First" perhaps?

Martian Republic · 2008-04-01 20:49:25

The problem with going with the minimalist kind of colonisation is that you won't develop the technology that it will take to have a successful Mars colony, which we don't currently have right now. You will go with the infrastructure that you need to take a large population to Mars and to support them while you setting up that Mars colony. If we go with our current technology and with the current infrastructure in place to Mars, we will have a high mortality rate of anybody that we send to Mars and a small colony on Mars with absolutely no of making it a big human colony at all. After a ten to twenty or possibly even a thirty year time frame they will give the whole project up as being too expensive and because we are losing too many people in this Mars project.

What I am saying is, it physically impossible to establish a Mars colony by the means that your thinking of establishing a Mars colony of any size.

Chemical rockets are useless to us for colonizing of Mars, because there too slow, don't carry enough mass or cargo for the Mars colony and/or carry enough people safely to Mars for the colony that we want to setup on Mars.

We may or may not be able to send a small number of people using chemical rocket to Mar, but there will be a high mortality rate if we choose to use chemical rocket to send our astronauts to Mars for that small base. You will need radiation shielding and artificial gravity etc, which will further complicate the problems of using chemical rockets for your colonization project. Then the fuel is high mass with low energy output to push our ship to Mars. Yes, I heard of Mars Direct. I heard of manufacturing fuels on Mars, etc, etc. Whenever you bet the farm like that and make it a habit of betting the farm like this, it only a matter of time when you will lose your bet and people will die.

There only one way and only one way out of this problem and that to go nuclear or some other type of new high energy density source that can push a large mass with the minimal amount fuel mass like nuclear fission or fusion powered rockets. Which means you will have to develop that technology because it currently doesn't exist and we have to have it if we want to do our colonization program. The energy output of fission powered rockets is like several times to maybe a thousand times the output of chemical rocket with fusion power having two to four times the power of fission power.

Larry,

RobertDyck · 2008-04-01 21:05:40

Define "minimalist". Just how small do you expect to get?

idiom · 2008-04-02 01:49:23

A group of people chilling in a group of old MD Habs while they make bricks to seal in a lava tube?

louis · 2008-04-02 01:54:18

Robert/Larry -

Well I think it's possible we could go with a forty tonne payload of which perhaps 24 tonnes would be "deployed" post landing (i.e. would be "in the hold" as it were). This would comprise four ten tonne missions - two robot (not mobile robot) pre-missions and two human missions (2x3 = 6 people) to the same landing site within a small time frame.

Once you start stripping out the NASA style mass - so you aren't looking to take along a huge Rover vehicle, you aren't trying to do 101 experiments on your first mission, you aren't taking along heavy habitat structures and you aren't taking along with you a mini hospital - these figures look perfectly achievable.

Chemical rockets are indeed inconveniently slow. But I think they are doable. And become even more so once we have established a moon base with rocket fuel manufacturing capability. I feel that will ease the problems associated with conventional rocketeering for Mars.

I'm favouring full retrorocket landing, suggesting an overall mass for the space craft of around 2,000 tonnes for a ten tonne payload (no one's contradicted me on that yet but it is a total guesstimate!).

I see no fundamental barriers to Mars development as long as we get enough energy generating equipment there and we can do that with the new generation of ultra thin PV film ( a few hundred KGs should provide energy abundance for a team of six). Alternatively, though I'm not a fan, we could use nuclear power. With the per capita abundance of energy that we will have, we can then begin creating the ISRU infrastructure, although clearly much will continue to need to be imported (e.g. inflatable habitats, computers etc) for many years. Entrenched and covered habitats will provide effective radiation protection.

By far the largest item in terms of mass that needs to be transferred to Mars is food/nutrient solution (for hydroponic farming). Everything else essential to life - energy for heat and light, oxygen, and water - are available on the planet and it will not be difficult to begin small scale materials-based production on the planet.

The key requirements are energy production/storage and food production. These are already being demonstrated in various challenging environments including on Mars itself (Mars Rover solar panels) and on earth (e.g. the Antarctic greenhouses).

If we can get the colonists there safely what is to stop us?

zhar2 · 2008-04-02 02:54:56

Well many people think of the "rome in a day" for a predominant reason, they want deep down to build their own nation (including me).

RobertDyck · 2008-04-02 09:25:40

This was the focus of the Mars Homestead Project, later called the Hillside Settlement. The idea was to send 12 settlers on a one way mission. They would land in tuna can habs, use them as construction shacks, then build a permanent base with insitu materials. Using Mars Direct as a model, they include 4 habitats, 3 for crew and one extra for backup. The upper story of each hab is living space, the lower story is storage for surface equipment during transit from Earth, and lab/workshop while on Mars. Include 2 inflated greenhouses, and each vehicle will come with a tent garage to protect it from sand storms.

The plan called for several much larger greenhouses, and it turned out the best insitu produced material for the greenhouse was glass. The permanent hab was burried in a hillside for radiation and thermal protection. Done by using excavation equipment to dig into a hill, build the modules, then push dirt down onto it from higher on the hill.

Power was key. You need power for life support, but materials production from insitu resources is power hungry. The design called for 3 small nuclear reactors. I forget the exact size, but Mars Direct called for use of the SP100 reactor, only the size of a truck engine. Settlement required larger reactors, but they aren't the monsters you see for power plants on Earth.

It'll take a few launches, but once all the equipment is there the settlement will become self-sufficient. The design included doubling size for another 12 settlers, and another. All construction would be done with insitu materials, so the additional settlers only need a vehicle to bring them. The enlarged Mars base would then have enough to construct a larger settlement for 100 people. They didn't even attempt to design the 100 person settlement. The idea was to get settlement started.

louis · 2008-04-02 11:36:18

Robert -

Yes, there are similarities. But I think my proposal would be a lot quicker in terms of establishing the habitat.

I did look a their proposals and they seemed to me quite complex and requiring a lot of construction effort. With my approach a small digger digs the sort of trench you see being dug in the road every day and an inflatable habitat is inserted inside.

I've done some calculations for how quickly the habitat and farm area could be laid down and it really is only a matter of several days.

I think boring into hillsides or trying to make lava tunnels safe and habitable is just too time consuming an enterprise - and one fraught with danger of course.

I agree with the Hillside folk though that once you are established with your settlement you will have the spare capacity to start preparing for others to follow on and augment the settlement. And, yes, I think this sort of process should continue until there is a settlement of perhaps 100. At that point the colony will probably be in a position to start building the first domes which is what most of us want to see I think, using glass and metal frames with maybe water infill on the outer skin for radiation protection.

RobertDyck · 2008-04-02 21:01:03

Hillside settlement didn't burrow very far. The idea was to use a Bobcat or equivalent to dig a shelf in the dirt, digging at the base of the hill. Erect the pressure modules on that shelf, then burry it by pushing dirt down from higher on the hill. You can build out away from the hill and burry it in dirt farther than the hill was before your dig.

This is similar to what you want to do, dig a ditch using the same road building equipment we see on Earth. However, rather than a ditch in a flat piece of ground, this digs in a hill side so we don't have to lift dirt up, just push it down. All done with a front-end loader.

Of course when it comes to the Mars Homestead effort, I have inside knowledge. I was part of the team.

RobertDyck · 2008-04-02 21:41:19

If you want to change stuff, the greenhouse was a compromise. Some guys wanted artificial light with radiation shielding, while I wanted ambient light. Growing things produce oxygen so I see this as another backup to life support. The greenhouse has the advantage it can generate oxygen even with complete power system failure; but if you use artificial light it will be just as dependant on power. Recent research by Guelph University found they can expose spinach to Mars ambient pressure for 1 hour without killing the plant. It completely wilts, but as soon as pressure is restored it perks up and continues to grow. That means a greenhouse pressure leak would only halt plant growth until you repressurize; it wouldn't kill the plants. Other university experiments showed plants are more resilient to radiation than humans. So I wouldn't bother with any fancy radiation shielding.

Just apply the spectrally selective coating that NASA developed for spacecraft and space station windows. That coating blocks UV and IR while transmitting visible light. Most of the UV is reflected, but there are some UV absorbers on the inside. IR is reflected to control heat loss and heat gain. Some buildings in the southern US are using a version of this, they reflect short wavelength IR (from extremely hot objects like the sun) while transmitting long wavelength IR (from warm objects like floors and walls). Well, actually it reflects a little of both, but it reflects more short wave than long wave so there is a net cooling effect. Adjusting the concentration of metals coated on the glass can reverse this, helping heat buildings in the north. The coating is thin layers of gold, nickel, and silver oxide; deposited via vapour deposition in a vacuum chamber. Only silver is oxide. That means we need to mine those metals on Mars.

You can keep heat in the greenhouse with an aluminized mylar curtain. Just close the curtain at night, open it during the day. Reflection will keep radiant heat in. Not originally my idea, it was from a "Case for Mars" paper written before the Mars Society was founded.

What was my idea was long, narrow greenhouse oriented perfectly east-west. Place flat mirrors on either side of the greenhouse, angled at 45°. The top of each mirror should be the same height as the greenhouse, and the same length. If the base is constructed close to the equator, and greenhouses are not deep in a valley but have plenty of sun, then morning sun will reflect slightly toward the west side of the greenhouse, but if the greenhouse is significantly longer than it is wide most of the light will still shine into the greenhouse itself. Noon light will perfectly illuminate the greenhouse. Evening light will shine slightly to the east, opposite the sun. This illuminates the greenhouse without any motors to track the sun. The angle would be perfectly 45° at the spring and autumnal equinox, but would be adjusted north/south with changing seasons. Mars axis is tilted 24.19° so the mirrors would have to be adjusted half that much at the summer and winter solstice. One mirror would be 45+24.19/2= 57.095° while the other is 45-24.19/2= 32.905°. Length of Martian year is 686.98 Earth days, or 669.6 Mars days, so mirror angle would only change 0.5° each Mars week. A settler could go out once every two weeks and adjust mirror angle by 1°. No motor necessary, that's easy enough to do by hand. If the base isn't perfectly on the equator, equinox angle is adjusted by half the latitude. That is, if the base is built at 8° north latitude the equinox angle is 49° for the north side mirror, 41° for the south side mirror. You still adjust by 1° every 14 sols (Mars days). The exact angle would be 1.01153° but that is so close to 1° that you might as well make it exactly 1°.

If the greenhouse is built twice as wide as it is high, the mirrors will exactly double the illumination. Since Mars is 1.5237 times as far from the sun as Earth, illumination will be 43.0726% as intense. Doubling illumination will bring it to 86.145% that of Earth at similar latitude. That means a base constructed at 8° latitude would receive as much illumination as Earth at 31.45° latitude. Again that's with the mirrors. That is equal to the border between Florida and Alabama; plenty of illumination. If you want the formula for that, it is:
P = percent illumination = 0.86145
Lm = latitude Mars = 8°
Le = latitude Earth
Le = arc cos( P * cos( Lm ) )
"arc cos" means inverse cos, trigonometry functions on your calculator

Illumination for Mars is computed by the inverse square rule:
d = distance from the sun
i = illumination intensity
i = 1/d^2

RobertDyck · 2008-04-02 21:55:07

Mars Homestead aerial picture, composed by the professional architect who was also part of the team:

Construction phases:

Phase 2, with base doubled to accomodate 24 people:

Another view of phase 1, with insets other angles:

louis · 2008-04-03 02:17:27

I'm not going to dis the design in any major way- it seems very attractive in many ways. But as already indicate I do have some safety concerns even if you are not doing much burrowing (bringing stuff down off a hillside by mechanical means is obviosuly fraught with danger, especially in the difficult circumstances of working on the Mars surface.

As regards crop growing. I certainly do favour artificial light, for the following reasons:

1. Together with control of atmosphere, water release, nutritional feed and humidity this will provide complete control of growing conditions and dependable outcomes.

2. Dust storms. With natural light you are at the mercy of prolonged dust storms which will block the light and kill your crops. If you go to the trouble then of providing for artificial light (a) you are having to put in place exactly the same resources (but not using them most of them) and (b) it is difficult to see how such an artificial light system would be incorporated since they would normally block the incoming natural light.

3. We will have plenty of energy available. It makes sense to take full advantage of that.

idiom · 2008-04-03 04:46:37

Well I submit that we should classify the grouping above the 'homesteaders' as the 'Virgle's'. This is still a step or two below the kitset empire people which is itself a step below Dyson people.

Combined with public/private and national classifications we can start to group things. Maybe it all needs to go in the Wiki...

For example KSR's Underhill approach is Virgle in scale, but publiclly funded and international.

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#1 2008-04-01 19:26:10

Re: Typology of colonisation plans.

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