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LinkedIn published a post by the President of Mars Society, Switzerland
Pierre Brisson
The post arrived in one of LinkedIn's periodic emails about members.
The text under the title reads:
Working conditions on Mars' Moons for Human Settlement.
Arguments for the Moons: (1) The moons are more ...If anyone is interested I expect LinkedIn would provide more text for someone who logs in.
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LinkedIn sent a link to the post below:
Pierre Brisson
Président Mars Society SwitzerlandFollow
The interplay of mass and gravity makes Deimos the necessary gateway to living around Mars.
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Gravity on Mars is 0.38g, on Phobos 0.0005g, and on Deimos 0.0003g. It is because of this low gravity that Deimos is the only place where the components of an anchored space station, "Deimos-II," can be assembled. This station will recreate, through rotation, a minimum gravity (approximately 0.7g) allowing humans of all ages and physical conditions to live in an environment acceptable for their health. It is also on Deimos that the next station, "Eagle One," can be built, using almost all of the same components as for Deimos-II. This station will then be sent to a chosen site in an the "areostationary" orbit (geostationary for Mars) to be placed in rotation under far superior environmental conditions (no dust and better controlled access to energy).
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Masses:Eagle-One, like Deimos-II, must have a radius of 80 meters and rotate at 2.80 rounds per minute to recreate a gravity of 0.7g within its torus. This size and rotation speed are required because we need not to rotate too fast (Coriolis number < 2.5%) and we need to get a minimum head-to-toe gradient (< 0.15).
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The resulting mass from these constraints will be significant:
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Approximately 6,000 tons for the station with equipment and shielding outside the torus (structure alone 218 t, see details in my blog post, shielding 2920 t). The mass of the equipment is estimated by analogy with the ISS;
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52,730 tons for the radiation shielding (regolith shielding) of the torus;
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3,520 tons for the carbon fiber shell containing this shielding.
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That makes a total of 62,250 tons (100,000 t for the largest American aircraft carrier).
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The mass of the torus's shielding is paramount. This is due to the fact that a 2-meter-thick layer of regolith is required to protect the main living space, i.e. the torus, and that this torus, with a diameter of 6.5 meters (to allow for acceptable living conditions), needs a circumference of 500 meters to meet the requirements (gravity, head-to-toe gradient, Coriolis force) mentioned above.
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The first advantage of Deimos is that it offers the possibility of extracting all the regolith needed (and this without any risk of destabilizing the moon). It will "only" be necessary to contain the dust dispersion.
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The other advantage is its proximity to the areostationary orbit. The projection onto this orbit will be achieved with minimal energy expenditure (Δv < 90 ms) despite the mass involved, because the gravity differential is very small. Positioning Eagle One in this orbit will then allow us to work on Mars "as if we were there," since the orbit-to-surface time latency will be very low (0.114 s, round trip). If Deimos didn't exist, we would have had to dream it up
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illustration shows Deimos in the night sky of Mars as seen by Perseverance (NASA).
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Read: https://lnkd.in/evfAbiEA
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An interesting idea. This is another rotating space habitat design using a rotation rate close to 3 RPM. I chose that rate because studies by NASA concluded that 2 RPM could be tolerated. 4 RPM could be acclimated to. My large ship started as an alternative to a post made by Elon Musk on Twitter (before it was named X), that the next rocket would be twice the height and twice the diameter of Starship. That's 8 times volume. I argue that a rocket that large is not safe, because an explosion on the launch pad would cause devastation. Starship launch site is positioned so debris from catastrophic failure will not reach the nearby city on South Padre Island. The town of Boca Chica had to be bought out. Remaining residents are aware of the danger. Starting with an acceleration equal to the surface gravity of Mars, and rotating ring volume equal to that "next" rocket which is 8 times the volume of Starship, result was the size of my ship. That was with a ring width of 14 metres. Convenient placement of cabins required increasing ring volume to 19 metres. But that's where it came from.
A permanent base would ideally have a rotation rate of 1 RPM. Because that would not cause nausea, passengers would not have to get used to it. But that's significantly larger. Due to physics, reducing rotation rate from 3 RPM to 1 RPM while maintaining constant acceleration requires radius to increase to 3² = 9 times. (That's supposed to be 2 superscript to represent "squared".)
One purpose of this station is to remotely operate rovers. I would argue that living on the surface of Mars is safer. Planetary surface has several advantages. No micrometeor impacts, because atmosphere of Mars causes them to burn up 30km above the surface. Full-size meteorites will get through, but they are much less numerous than micrometeoroids. Radiation shielding: with a planet under your feet, half of the galactic cosmic radiation is blocked. From above, a low altitude location such as the bottom of the dried up ocean basin in the northern hemisphere of Mars will block 90% of heavy ion GCR. And solar radiation is blocked at night. Mars has natural gravity, to reduce or eliminate zero-gravity health effects. And Mars has many resources that can be harvested.
If exploration by remotely operated rovers is a goal, then I would argue for communication satellites, with human operators living in habitats on Mars surface.
But there are reasons for a space station in Mars orbit. Harvesting resources than can be made into rocket propellant is a major reason. With traffic between Earth orbit and Mars orbit, having a fuel depot in Mars orbit would be very useful. There are other reasons.
Not sure why this chapter chose an acceleration of 0.7 G. I would like to hear more about that. I am assuming appreciable gravity would cause convection within cells of the human body, so an acceleration much lower than Earth gravity but enough to cause said convection should be sufficient. There would still be muscle atrophy and bone declassification due to reduced use, and body fluid redistribution due to change in acceleration. But the worst of the zero-G health effects should be alleviated. But I'm making an assumption; we don't have data to back that up. That was supposed to be one of the experiments to be conducted on ISS, but it never got a centrifuge of sufficient size to test this.
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A quick question response by AI.
Transitioning from 1 G to 0.7 G in manned flight—such as during transit in an artificial gravity spacecraft or on a hypothetical 0.7 G world—creates noticeable but highly manageable physiological and operational changes. The human body handles 0.7 G with far greater ease than microgravity, though it still requires minor adaptations.
Physiological Effects Musculoskeletal System: Because loading is reduced to 70 % of Earth's baseline, bones and muscles do not experience the same mechanical stress as on Earth. This often results in a slight decrease in bone mineral density and anti-gravity muscle mass over long durations, meaning astronauts would likely still need dedicated exercise regimens.
Cardiovascular & Fluid Shift: The body's blood pressure regulatory systems are designed for 1 G. At 0.7 G, the classic headward fluid shifts seen in pure microgravity are mostly mitigated, preventing severe facial edema and cranial pressure changes. Heart workload decreases slightly, which could lead to minor cardiovascular deconditioning over time without activity.
Vestibular & Balance: Alterations in gravity levels can occasionally cause motion sickness or spatial disorientation during the initial transition period. However, the presence of a distinct "downward" vector at 0.7 G drastically improves sensorimotor integration compared to zero G.
Operational & Engineering Impacts
Propulsion & Energy Costs: Generating artificial gravity of 0.7 G often requires a continuously accelerating spacecraft or a massive rotating habitat. Maintaining these forces demands immense fuel and highly efficient engines (e.g., advanced fusion or antimatter drives) over long distances.Maneuvering & Workload: Everyday tasks, walking, and operating controls become slightly easier and demand less physical energy. This benefits crew endurance during long-term missions, as less fatigue is generated during daily operations.
Sounds like a topic for Human Health in Space Travel
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Yea, but what about 0.38 G (Mars)? What about 0.1654 G (Moon)? I strongly suspect the same rule follows as 0.7 G. But we have no data to prove that.
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This morning I received a response.
Hi Robert!
I am Pierre Brisson, president of the Mars Society Switzerland branch.
I am glad to know that you are interested in the concept I am developing. I do it by myself with the use of claude.ai for the computations.
I have had a relationship with Robert Zubrin since 1995 (I was posted by my bank in Singapore for leading the corporate risk analysis team in Asia). I have been the main translator of “The Case for Mars” in French. I have also always been interested in Gerard O'Neill’s project (and had exchanges with him in the 1970's). After leaving my bank, since I was a passionate planetologist, I have been collaborating with the Swiss media (mainly newspaper) “Le Temps”. I had a blog "exploration spatiale" for which I contributed one article a week for 8 years. After this period, on June 23, Le Temps decided to put an end to its blog platform and I kept writing on my own. You can read all the 600 articles published since 2015 here: https://www.explorationspatiale-leblog.com/
I read the posts on your forum regarding my “Mars through Deimos” concept.
Since last December, most of my articles (in French and in English) are dedicated to it.
The idea is indeed that we don't know whether the 0.38g gravity is acceptable by the human body over the long run (including having children and raising them). My solution would be building havens where we could restitute a gravitational and radiative environment as close to Earth as possible. I put aside terraforming as that would request too much time and too much money. Having rotating stations is a second best but realistic solution. I chose 0.7g because (1) going up to 1g would imply having a larger and more massive station if we want to keep rotation round per minute (rpm) under 3 to get an acceptable head to toe gradient and an acceptable Coriolis force; (2) going to the surface of Mars and coming back would be less stressful if the difference is from 0.38g than to 0.7g, than if we had to go from 0.38g to 1g. We would go to Mars quite often as the areostationary space station would be our living quarters and offices while the ground of Mars would be where our mines and industries would be located.
We have no experience of 0.38g and we can get it when we can stay on the surface of Mars, and we will do right from the first inhabited flight (stopping at Deimos, would be a stopover to download the equipment and the robots).
Meanwhile we have to be careful in our projections since we know the effect of 0g on the corporal fluids (notably the SANS syndrome scientifically described in 2017). If we cannot stand 0.38g and have no alternative plan such as mine, living on Mars would be impossible and we would just have lost time.
Also stopping at Deimos makes approaching Mars easier as we don't need to go down the gravity pit of the planet to teleoperate any robots we want on the ground (especially if we stay on an areostationnary orbit).
I do not put aside the radiation problem and this is why I propose to wrap the torus within a hull filled with 2 meters thick regolith dust. This is why an 80 meters radius is a maximum considering the mass of regolith this implies and this is why we can only make it on Deimos since its gravity (0.0003g) is very low.
I keep working on the subject.
On to Mars,
Pierre Brisson
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Nice to see Pierre Brisson on the website link, and we have talked about the mars moons being used as a stepping stone to mars. To which the end goal is not the moons but a means to mars.
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