Probable Colony Sites

EarthWolf · 2004-07-21 20:26:06

Hello,

I was curious. What are the likely spots on which colonies would be located? I would assume that the northern lowlands would be the likelier region, though I'm not sure if some spots in the southern highlands, like the Hellas and Argyre basins could provide a good location. Also, does the northern hemisphere have a more favorable climate for a colony?

Cordially,

EarthWolf

Aetius · 2004-07-21 21:56:50

There appears to be a massive subsurface ice reservoir where Arcadia Planitia meets Vastitas Borealis, so I'd site the first outpost near the southern reaches of the buried ice. There's enough good science to be had to silence the critics, and enough potential drinking water to supply a city of millions.

An excellent spot for a mining outpost might be the bull's-eye shaped area where Mars Odyssey detected huge amounts of iron, hundreds of kilometers to the west in Utopia Planitia (?). I'd bet a nickel that it's a large, type-M (for metallic) asteroid impact crater buried beneath the regolith. A type-M asteroid is also chuck full of platinum group metals (PGMs), so the Utopia (?) site could yield a number of important strategic metals crucial to the colonists' survival. Needless to say, Mars abounds in iron...the planet itself looks like a rusty iron ball. PGMs are the only reason to mine the asteroid impact site.

I would also consider the southern flank of Pavonis Mons, in the Tharsis region. As Kim Stanley Robinson pointed out in the Mars Trilogy, 'Peacock Mountain' is actually the best place on Mars to construct a space elevator. Whoever controls a Martian space elevator controls the destiny of an entire planet. I'd seize the necessary real estate on the mountain as quickly as possible, by establishing a spaceport to take advantage of the equatorial location...or a fortified 'scientific' outpost if need be. The point is that the land will be extremely valuable SOMEDAY, and if your people can't bargain from a position of strength other nations and corporations will simply take advantage of you.

3700 miles above Mars, like a floating Rock Of Gibraltar, lies Phobos. It also has measurable quantities of water ice, and would undoubtedly make an excellent site for a large space station.

Rxke · 2004-07-21 22:46:35

I only hope the initial outpost will be located high enough to take into account possible future water-masses. Would be a pity to have it drowned during terraformation, historically speaking....

Trebuchet · 2004-07-22 04:07:43

This brings up an interesting point... any colonies are likely to be underground for a while, probably up until terraforming starts (minus a few surface domes). How deep underwater can an underground city be, assuming that the airlocks can hold out water?

Be funny to have underwater cities on Mars, but it might happen, if the 'old town' can take the pressure and some valuable resource is located in the area.

EarthWolf · 2004-07-22 08:47:08

Hello,

Considering that most settlements here on Earth were founded near valuable natural resources, water being the most common, it's likely that a Mars colony would follow a similar pattern. I remember reading in Robinson's Red Mars that Mars possessed substantial deposits of many strategic metals, like gold and platinum. What mineral deposits have been discovered on Mars so far? Are domed surface colonies in the Planitias a viable option before terraforming?

Palomar · 2004-07-22 11:01:05

*Not sure this is quite the response you're looking for, EarthWolf, but my 2 cents' worth: A place with increased dust devil activity, ice-water clouds, sun pillar phenomenon, etc. I prefer meterological stuff (what of it there is on Mars anyway -- besides wind and sand/dust storms). :;):

Definitely want to see some activity outside the hab windows -- besides suited-up crew members, that is.

--Cindy

BWhite · 2004-07-22 11:06:01

3700 miles above Mars, like a floating Rock Of Gibraltar, lies Phobos. It also has measurable quantities of water ice, and would undoubtedly make an excellent site for a large space station.

Can you link the data on Phobos ice?

Aetius · 2004-07-22 16:51:31

Ha! I looked for it and didn't find it, though many websites presume that Phobos' regolith has quantities of ice at some depth.

What I do remember, though, is the data from one of the Soviet-era Phobos spacecraft. Prior to its failure in Martian orbit, it detected hydrogen ions while in Phobos' shadow. It is unlikely that the solar wind could produce such readings from the equipment when the Sun was blocked by the mass of nearby Phobos, so water vapor from sublimating ice inside the moon seemed to be the culprit.

This has probably led to many of the assumptions about ice inside Phobos.

I know what I read, but maybe you'll have more luck than I did finding it.

srmeaney · 2005-03-24 23:39:28

Crater of Olympus Mons

From the space port in the volcano crater, We mine downward into the mountain and build an underground city-state with massive mineral wealth.

bdm · 2005-03-25 01:42:54

[Platinum group metals] are the only reason to mine the asteroid impact site.

I assume you mean mining for export to Earth? If there's plenty of iron and nickel at the site, as is likely given the typical composition of metallic meteorites, it's reasonable to presume that such metals will also be mined as a byproduct. Martian colonists would find plenty of uses for iron and nickel.

srmeaney · 2005-03-25 05:37:36

No I don't mean for export to Earth. Mineral comodities can be owned by earth and kept off world for ease of use. Gold can be used locally for monetary exchange purposes, when we do export, it will be as a final product or of such refined purity that it is task-specific. There will be no export to Earth except as electronic data adding value to those who buy it as an off world resource.
Of course having said that, we will probably export to zero-g manufacturing plants so they can produce products that require perfect crystals, and so forth. Earth resources will be a little drained after a thousand years of heavy-lift anyway.

reddragon · 2005-03-26 15:47:04

The best living sites may not always be the most scientifically valuable ones, but I suspect the first colony's will be founded around sites of scientific interest rather than mining or industrial potential. The first missions to Mars will of course be scientific. They will probably go to different, widely separated sites. Eventually, however, research bases of several linked habs will build up some of the more interesting places. Something like this is suggested in The Case for Mars. These research bases will gradually grow into full-scale settlements inhabited by ordinary people.

The sites of scientific interest may not have the most PGMs and other valuable minerals, but they will likely be the sites with the most water. That will be an invaluable resource for any settlement.

Martian Republic · 2005-03-27 13:23:48

Down in that trench might be a good place to colony too. It four mile deep at it lowest point so you would have several layers to look at for science reason and you could dig into the side of the trench to build a habitat for human on Mars. It would also give you the most protection from radiation of any site except where there a natural magnetic field by the planet Mars. The natural magnetic field on Mars would be a natural place for a colony too in that it would give some protection from the harmful radiation that would build up over time by continual exposure to it. Of course we may try to generate a local magnetosphere for our colony on Mars to, but that would take some energy too. We would probably have to have a pretty good size Mars colony that could generate a lot of power to do that.

So we would be making choices over science, short term living quarters or long term living quarter or colonies, resources like water, metals etc. and even health concerns for our astronauts on Mars. Depending on which items are of more important to us when we make our decision, we could make different choices as to where we put our first colony or how big we make our first colony and so on.

Larry,

srmeaney · 2005-03-27 23:14:46

Considering the Kim Stanley Robinson Trilogy is a nightmare scenario, Mars will have a single government made up of all it's citizens. There will be no stowaways. Those who go will be citizens of a new Commonwealth governing over all of Space.

The Crater of Olympus Mons will be the first survey site. Core Samples will be taken of the mountain to justify a mining colony within it. Considering that those who go will be going to stay, it puts a spanner up the Zubrin plan being the way it will be done.

COnsidering the same will be done to other dead volcanos on Mars, there could be a Mars population limit of three million.

With a Mars Population of 3,000,000 Commonwealth Population Intakes will be in the area of 10,000 Australians, 150,000 Americans(USA), 500,000 Chinese, 2.3 million others.

Shaun Barrett · 2005-03-28 03:51:12

Srmeaney:-

COnsidering the same will be done to other dead volcanos on Mars ...

Mining colonies in Mars' 'dead' volcanoes, eh?
How confident are you that they're completely dead?
Confident enough to set up billions of dollars worth of equipment imported from Earth and to risk the lives of hundreds or thousands of people? Would you live in one of the Martian calderas, yourself?
???

srmeaney · 2005-03-28 05:19:10

No. We send a team of ten to set up a drill rig and Take core samples of the mountain to map the minable zone and test whether the mountain is safe to hollow out and colonize.

If it is safe we then commit to an initial stage of a thousand colonists and everything they need to over produce food, test refining of available minerals into usable products that we can produce locally instead of importing. An electric furnace for smelting, an electric Kiln for producing ceramics, a mill for producing fine alloy powders and so forth.

Once we know what can be produced from local ingredients, we increase population to one million and slowly build an underground city that has everything we need.

Olympus Mons becomes the city of Innovation for Mars colonization.

SpaceNut · 2005-03-28 09:27:59

The question I have is how many exploration mission of science are needed before we actually transition into colonization mode? I would hope not more than 2.

Martian Republic · 2005-03-28 18:01:41

The question I have is how many exploration mission of science are needed before we actually transition into colonization mode? I would hope not more than 2.

It would depend on whether we had a National Mission like that of John F. Kennedy going to the Moon before this decade is out. Without a National Mission stating that we are going to build a permanent colony on Mars, then it would be an open question how many trips we make to Mars before we setup a permanent colony. With real commitment to such a project, it could be a very long time, before we have a permanent colony on Mars.

Larry,

srmeaney · 2005-03-29 00:44:38

Not realy,
A space Commonwealth could send survey teams in five years, a colony team of a thousand within ten years, and final site colonists within fifteen.

only if it existed today, was recognised as the single government and had the right to borrow and spend fifty million billion a year for production and infrastructure contracts.

bdm · 2005-04-01 21:21:45

Srmeaney:-
COnsidering the same will be done to other dead volcanos on Mars ...
Mining colonies in Mars' 'dead' volcanoes, eh?
How confident are you that they're completely dead?

It's not just the risk of volcanic eruptions that must be considered. There is also the real possibility of marsquakes. Those volcanic craters are not quiescent bowls; a lot of their shape comes from the collapse of underground magma chambers. Suppose that process is not complete? Suppose the very act of exploring those caldera triggered another collapse? If that happens, few would survive.

srmeaney · 2005-04-02 04:47:18

Colonization Protocol

1. Send unmanned lander to do ground penetrating Radar tests and drive over the surface of the Caldera.

2. if stable, send a team of ten to test the Geological Stability of the Mountain through deep core sampling with a drilling rig. Crew returns to Phobos Station to deploy to next Colony Test Site.

3. If the Stability of the Mountain is good and the Volcano is dead, Send one thousand Technicians, Miners, Geologists, Biologists, Aquaculturalists, Doctors, Nurses, Cooks, Engineers, to begin building a Space port (in the caldera) and initial mining stages.

4. Continue sending people until the Population of the Colony is a sustainable Ten Million humans.

Olympus Mons creeps to the top of the List, not on location, but stability and resources. That mountain alone will have the ability to support a colony of ten million for a very long time.

Rakial · 2005-04-02 22:00:11

That mountain alone will have the ability to support a colony of ten million for a very long time.

I think you are talking fiction. Right now we can not send even one person to Mars let alone ten.
What do you think Spirit and Opportunity are doing there right now? -- Surveying...
And how much did that cost?
We are living in the society that is defined by money through and through.
And Flooding?????? You are talking hundreds of years from now if ever there is enough water on Mars.
The best site for the Colony is actually at the very bottom of some equatorial creator. I say equatorial for milder temperature and more daily sunlight as it will be your only sours of energy.
I think RobS explained it very well just recently here in this forum.

We still don't know about the water situation, but the fact that a frozen sea appears to exist 5 degrees from the equator and was formed only five million years ago suggests that the Martian regolith has LOTS of water. I suspect (for what its worth) that the Martian ground has a "water table" not too far below the surface (in some cases, meters; other cases, hundreds of meters below the surface), meaning all the pore space between particles is full of water, but that right now that water is frozen solid. If that is correct, then one could land almost anywhere, and if one had a really good drill, one could drill down into the regolith and inject heated Martian air, which will come up the hole humidified. You'd then cool and condense out the distilled water. A typical sedmentary rock or sediment deposit on Earth is ten to forty percent pore space, which means the material has several hundred kilograms of water per cubic meter. Most of the water is not free water; it is a film clinging to particles. It won't flow. But it will evaporate.
Let us assume the water table is 100 meters down and you drill down 200 meters. You'd have to case the top of the shaft with plastic to keep it from collapsing unless you've drilled through bedrock. If you then injected heated Martian air into the hole (you'd want either two shafts side by side or two plastic tubes, one for inputting air and the other for withdrawing it) the Martian bedrock would heat and release water into the shaft, opening the pore spaces. Air can penetrate into the empty pore spaces, so you could then raise the pressure in the shaft mildly to drive warmed air into the rock; then you'd lower the pressure slowly and the air would flow out of the pores into the shaft with water vapor. Gradually over time the warmed zone would expand outward, and each pressurization cycle would push it farther.
If one were drilling through 100 meters of water-saturated bedrock, assuming it has 100 kg of water per cubic meter, if the heated zone reached out one meter from the shaft, you would have heated pi x r squared x height = 3.14 x (1x1) x 100 = 300 cubic meters of rock, containing 30 tonnes of water.
A system like this would require a sophisticated drill, a good power source, a good heat source, casings to line the shaft above the water table, and a two plastic tubes (the outer one to send heated air down, the inner one to pull moist air up; that way you avoid frost buildup in the shaft). But it would yield a lot of distilled water over time, and I suspect it would yield it just about everywhere on Mars. We will see.
If such a system is possible, we could land almost anywhere from the point of view of water. We probably would want to avoid volcanic areas, since this system might not yield much water in fresh (or even old) basalt, but if there were an old crater with sedimentary buildup in the middle of a volcanic field, this system probably would extract water from the sediments in the crater floor.
We probably would not want to land at high altitudes because atmospheric braking would be restricted. If we want to set up a "Martian McMurdo" (a single home base for exploring the planet, as opposed to a series of regional bases as advocated by Zubrin) then we would want a spot near the equator where surface vehicles suffer few mobility restrictions (i.e., few escarpments or fissures or cliff edged valleys blocking the way).
Right now Meridiani and Elysium are at the top of anyone's list, but we still know too little about Mars to finalize the landing spots.
-- RobS
P.S.: The evidence of pervasive subsurface water appears to be growing. If it is true that the axis tilts and the polar icecaps completely disappear and migrate to the equator every few million years--where some of the snow inevitably gets buried under dust--then almost every crater floor should have buried snow somewhere. The gully networks (and some of these "gullies" are tens of kilometers long and hundreds of meters wide and deep!) appear to be reasonably fresh, suggesting periodically available water sources throughout Martian history. Some appear to arise from subsurface discharges of water, while others appear to come from snowmelt on crater rims.

srmeaney · 2005-04-02 22:15:17

If as others have pushed, a Mars Civilization is to be powered by nuclear reactors, then why should sunlight ever be needed? Even hydroponic systems can be built in caves and lit with electrical lighting.

The need for sunlight is just a human psychological need.

I think you are talking fiction. Right now we can not send even one person to Mars let alone ten.

Of course I'm talking fiction. I'm talking about the establishment of a single government who would have an exclusive mandate to control all of space beyond Earth. A government that would fund an expansion into space. Funded by a continuous loan of fifty million billion a year for a thousand years written against the minerals that would be found there and the development of technology that would come over time. A loan spent back into the earth economy every year for heavy lift contracts, food production contracts, and the housing, feeding, training and education of people who have effectivly surrendered citizenship in their own Nations to go into space and become the citizens of a new civilization. That is the only way forward and it sets Olympus Mons as the only viable location for a self sustaining colony on Mars. The Mountain will have the ability to be mined out for the singular purpose of building an underground city supported by mining.

The Location, from the Space port in the Caldera to the mining tunnels that would reach to surface level, restricts human exposure to solar radiation more efficiently than anything else we could make. It removes the need for domes because the atmospheric gasses build in pressure the deeper the tunnels go to the point where we could effectivly work without space suits. If you want a big church cathedral on Mars, dig out a big cave. If you want a storage tank for a million megalitres of water, dig out a cave or a hundred caves and use some of them as swiming pools, fish ponds and water tanks. If you want to store nitrogen and Carbon dioxide, dig a storage well with an external access valve at the bottom so it can be vented outside by the megalitre.

Most importantly, it would support upward of ten million colonists who would be dependent on earth for very little compared to a surface colony.

Colonizing and terraforming is serious business. There is no way in hell that a couple of tin can habitats landed on the equatorial permafrost are going to be sufficient for what must be done. Frankly they are going to be an unjustifiable waste of resources. The only way to justify their existance would be for scientific purposes. We are not colonizing Mars for soley scientific purposes, we are doing it because we must.

Martian Republic · 2005-04-06 10:33:17

srmeaney, you can't just generate $50,000,000,000,000,000.00 dollar worth of credit per year for a thousand years by some foreign government. It purely not going to work. We currently have between $300,000,000,000,000.00 to $400,000,000,000,000.00 worth of debt in the world that is currently strangling the worlds economy and now you want to generate over a hundred times as much of the same kind of credit that strangling the world economy as has been created over the last forty years or so.

Now the Gross Product of the world is only like about $30,000,000,000,000.00 dollars and there only like about $6,000,000,000,000.00 worth of assets on the entire planet like land, houses, building, etc.

Now I have proposed that the US government should nationalize The Federal Reserve System and eliminate that debt of 300 to 400 hundred trillion dollars of worth paper and generate one to two trillion dollars of new credit and generate 500 hundred million to one trillion worth of credit from here on out. The reason for limiting that generating of credit, is that you can't just keep generating credit and accomplish what you want to do. You have to have a physical economy that generating physical goods and services and you use your credit generating capability to promote business actives and provide government services. You generate too much credit and you get runaway inflation. If you don't generate enough credit, you will have an imploding collapsing economy or it will fall in on itself. As a general rule if there no population increase, the money supply needs to increase by about 3% per year and if you had a 3% population increase then you would need to increase your money supply by about 6% per year. Once the US Economy has been reorganized, the mount of new money or credit that will need to be generated per year will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 hundred billion to one trillion dollars to hit our equilibrium in the United States. Now since the United States should be the one dictating what happens to that credit because they were the ones that generated it and they don't want to create inflation either. So there going to have to direct where that new money or credit to.

Also I might add, currently Alan Greenspan is creating between three to six trillion dollars to keep our portion of the world debt from collapsing. Currently there about forty trillion dollars of derivatives on Wall Street and the three biggest banks in the United States. The US Gross Nation Product is about six trillion dollars per year too.

Here what that looks like:

Thousand years of generating
credit without interest $50,000,000,000,000,000,000.00
On year of credit ............ $50,000,000,000,000,000.00
|The current |............. $300,000,000,000,000.00
|debt worldwide |............ $400,000,000,000,000.00
Gross Product ...................... $40,000,000,000,000.00
Wall Street & Banks Derivitives .$40,000,000,000,000.00
World Assets.......................... $6,000,000,000,000.00
US Gross Nationa Product .........$6,000,000,000,000.00
Alan Greenspan generated credit $3,000,000,000,000.00
$6,000,000,000,000.00
US Generated credit to restart $1,000,000,000,000.00
the US Economy. .................. $2,000,000,000,000.00
To maintain the US Economy ...... $500,000,000,000.00
$1,000,000,000,000.00

Larry,

Grypd · 2005-04-06 16:36:57

Martian Republic

Now I have proposed that the US goverment should nationalize The Federal Reserve system and eliminate the debt of 300 to 400 hundred trillion dollars of worth paper and generate one to two trillion dollars of new credit.

What you are asking to do is all the bonds that are held will be defaulted. It is hardly in the trillions of dollars but it is Billions. And a very good percentage of this is held by various international banks of which the US goverment has borrowed money from and has given these bonds to as collateral. With a lot of Dollars being held as foreign currency reserves in various countries as well. Let me tell you what will happen if some idiot ever decided that they could do it.

1) Defaulting these bonds and loans would instantly make the banks holding these loans to loose all the money they have lended in good faith. Many may well collapse and it would certainly result in a monetary crisis the world has never seen. Many goverments would have to bail these banks out and it would hurt when the world went into a recession that has never been seen not even in the likes of the wall street crash.

2) The various countries holding Dollars would dump them as they would be weakened it would only take some itchy financial advisor to start it or even a computer currency market. Some countries would love to do this China would, it would basically make the dollar worthless.

3) America would find itself incapable of buying anything outside the USA unless it pays in money other than the now hyperinflationing Dollar. Electricity, Oil, Materials would all stop as they could not be purchased.

4) With this a lot of people will become unemployed the goverment will be unable to pay its employees (this happened to the USSR) Hyperinflation would basically mean that barter was the real means of purchase for the averadge citizen. There would be no water or lights, Heating would be provided by burning what you can.

5) American property would be seized outside the USA as compensation by those goverments at the actions of the USA, it would be done to alleviate the problems these goverments have after the reckless action of the USA. Worst would be that as the United States goverment has really little property outside the USA it would be American firms that would be in effect all nationalised. These corporations in the USA would recieve no compensation and even the biggest would likely collapse or have to "downsize drastically"

6) Since it is friendly goverments to the USA that really have the banks that would be defaulted against and that it is friendly goverments that have large American owned buisnesses in it the USA would quickly find itself with few friends even the staunchest ally would not forgive the USA for its actions.

This is just a taste of what it means to default on those loans and bonds. It would be inexcusable for this to happen and for the American people it would be a disaster if not for the world. Certainly it would knock the western world out of its premier spot on this planet.

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