New New York

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-01-10 13:05:13

Terraformer wrote:

Or you could just store your cars on the edge of the city...

That is quite a long walk with an 8-mile radius, also you would need two vehicles one for travel inside the dome and another for travel outside of it. Seems like a Mars vehicle could also be mde to function within a breathable atmosphere.

Terraformer · 2016-01-10 14:44:35

Yes, but what kind of person would use an RV as a city car?

SpaceNut · 2016-01-10 18:51:12

Its just a big car for mars since you must bring the food, power, water, oxygen, toilet plus all the gear to go outside of it with you and more dependant on how long the trip is....Its not like all trips will be in a mini cooper sized hourly jaunt vehicle unpresurized and in the full space suit with only an 8 hour capability....

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-01-11 09:48:56

I think the vehicular airlock will have a traffic light, it will be red while the cars wait for the cars ahead of them to go through the airlock cycle. Air will probably be pumped out of the airlock and into the dome rather than just released outside to conserve gases. It will probably take longer to depressurize the airlock that to pressurize it, as in the later case, you simply release air from the dome into the airlock. The Martian atmosphere is called a laboratory vacuum, because that is the sort of vacuum that can be achieved with air pumps, as the air gets thinner, the air pumps become less efficient at removing the remaining gases.

Probably at full depressurization, the air inside the airlock will be at the same pressure as the Martian atmosphere outside, the only difference is that the composition of that remaining atmosphere in the airlock would by nitrogen and oxygen, when the outer door opens, those remaining gases will mix with the Martian atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide, some gases will be lost with each airlock cycle, so they will have to be replaced eventually. I'm not sure the Martian colonists would want to invest in a second smaller vehicle just for traveling inside the dome, so we just make the roads wider to accommodate the larger outdoor Mars vehicles when they are inside the dome, otherwise there is mass transit.

SpaceNut · 2016-01-11 19:46:47

Once the dome is built there can also be a subway contruction and other such tunnelings to provide materials for use inside the dome without going out...as well as to connect other domes together....

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-01-13 11:13:00

SpaceNut wrote:

Once the dome is built there can also be a subway contruction and other such tunnelings to provide materials for use inside the dome without going out...as well as to connect other domes together....

I think there might be a tunneled highway system, assuming the traffic is high enough to justify the cost of excavating the tunnel. There is a certain convenience to getting out of your car without having to put on a spacesuit first! You can have rest stops and "gas stations" as well. Though I suppose a fully automated "gas station" can fill you car without anyone having to exit the vehicle. If Zubrin is right, then the "gas" will consist of liquefied methane and liquid oxygen.

RobertDyck · 2016-01-13 12:04:11

That depends on the layout. If a number of buildings or domes are connected, then a transit system can be run inside. But if they're separated by any distance, then why dig a tunnel? Yes, getting in without a spacesuit is convenient, but you don't need a tunnel. You can run tracks on the ground. Raised just enough that sand/dirt won't blow onto the tracks, but that's the same as railroad tracks on the ground here on Earth. Pressurized cars can drive up to a door at the station, so the car remains outside but you can still enter without a spacesuit. That requires a door on both the car, and the station.

It would look similar to the system at the Denver airport. Denver International Airport (DIA) Automated Guideway Transit System. They have one terminal building close to the parkade (multi-level parking structure), but a second terminal building a mile away. The Denver people mover runs through a tunnel under the taxiway, but you could do the same at grade level.

I've been through on my way to a Mars Society convention. Flew into Denver, took a bus to Boulder.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-01-13 12:05:38)

SpaceNut · 2016-01-13 18:20:25

I have a feeling that early in Mars city developement that tunneling will be used for lots of reasons and that it will evolve under the dome as you have suggested.

We know that such a tunneling device would be quite heavy to deliver from earth but once we can make metal parts the unit could eventually be made from insitu resources for the most part aside from the electrical controls I would imagine.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-01-14 14:08:14

The road trip would be quite different on Mars. Imagine a Martian family driving down the highway in the pressurized Mars Rover. The Rover is the size of a small truck or RV, has a bathroom, bunks for the children, and a master bedroom in the back, and probably a small kitchen for preparing food. There are a number of similar boxy vehicles on the highway.

Now one question is, would the highway be made of asphalt, or do you think asphalt would be hard to come by on Mars?

Lets say at some point in their family trip across Mars, the traffic slows down to a crawl, as there is a road crew ahead. I'm not sure they would be filling in potholes, as liquid water doesn't exist on Mars. Perhaps frost could get into the cracks in the asphalt and gradually wear away and pit the road surface so it requires repair. I figure since water hardly exists on Mars, the roads will be fairly smooth and level most of the time, so traffic can get up to 65 miles an hour without too much trouble even in low Mars gravity. If the vehicle hits a bump however, I think the car will stay in the air a bit longer. Another thing that might come up is dust storms, they can darken the sky and maybe pit the windshield, the main purpose of the windshield is to be transparent and maintain pressurization within the vehicle, wind is not much of a problem.

Antius · 2017-07-14 04:53:00

Cities on Earth have almost exclusively grown organically. They start as small settlements on rivers, roads or coasts and infrastructure is gradually added, often on top of old infrastructure as population grows. Utopian visions of planned cities make good pictures to hang on walls, but tend not to get built in real life. Think of all the utopian futurism of the first half of the 20th century. How much of it ever got built? Much of it looks bizarre and quaint now.

The reality of a future Mars city will be lots of small pressurised structures and domes, lots of small and individually financed projects coming together to form a city scape.

RobertDyck · 2017-07-14 07:42:14

Brazil built a city in 1963 in their interior. They had a heavily populated coast but underpopulated interior. This new city built in the middle of nowhere was built to be their new national capital. It was planned, they carefully designed it so they didn't need traffic lights. They very quickly found the city grew so they had nasty traffic jams. And although they had planned the city with certain number of individuals living in certain parts of the city to do certain jobs, changing technology completely messed-up that up.

louis · 2017-07-14 09:59:59

Note that Musk is also promoting new tunnelling technology on Earth! He's a very joined up guy. You can probably see that he has Mars as much as Earth in mind.

SpaceNut wrote:

I have a feeling that early in Mars city developement that tunneling will be used for lots of reasons and that it will evolve under the dome as you have suggested.
We know that such a tunneling device would be quite heavy to deliver from earth but once we can make metal parts the unit could eventually be made from insitu resources for the most part aside from the electrical controls I would imagine.

louis · 2017-07-14 10:03:54

Many, probably most cities, have started out as planned settlements: the vast majority of Roman settlements, Greek and Carthaginian colonies, European imperial colonies, many Russian and Soviet cities and so on. I don't know about Asia so much, but I suspect that there was a strong planning element there.

The planning element on Mars may be stronger and longer lasting because there won't be a system of free land exchange, and life support systems will tend to be organised centrally.

Antius wrote:

Cities on Earth have almost exclusively grown organically. They start as small settlements on rivers, roads or coasts and infrastructure is gradually added, often on top of old infrastructure as population grows. Utopian visions of planned cities make good pictures to hang on walls, but tend not to get built in real life. Think of all the utopian futurism of the first half of the 20th century. How much of it ever got built? Much of it looks bizarre and quaint now.
The reality of a future Mars city will be lots of small pressurised structures and domes, lots of small and individually financed projects coming together to form a city scape.

SpaceNut · 2017-07-14 16:10:47

Part of what causes the chaos of a city is the lack of sticking to the master plan, being bullied into land uses not intended, buying up of larger plots from small areas just to consolidate which changes the land use and what goes on them which further keeps the plan on a path out the window.....

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Re: New New York

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