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For kbd512 re #400
You nailed a century post!
This one is just to let you know your guidance was received and it is appreciated.
The near term looks promising. We can use a size specification for the habitats. Don't worry about height at this point. We need width and depth.
I'm guess at 15 meters wide and 30 meters deep. If that is good for you please let us know.
Calculations depend upon those firm numbers.
Also ... Please note that the calculations lead in the direction of 360 plots which can be distributed among 250 families. The remaining 110 can be used for retail businesses and small manufacturing activities. That might turn out to be close to the ratio seen in small towns around the world. I have only a sense of what the ratio actually might be. I've never thought about it before. The advantage of the 360 plot target is that the address of the location on the ring is a natural consequence of the decision.
You may (probably do) recall that the layout of Washington was the work of:
A Brief History of Pierre L'Enfant and Washington, D.C.Yes, the architect and engineer who laid out Washington, D.C. was a Frenchman named Pierre Charles L'Enfant (1754–1825). Appointed by George Washington in 1791, L'Enfant designed the capital with a baroque-style layout, featuring wide, diagonal avenues, grand radial vistas, and spaces for public monuments that still define the city today.
Your ring concept seems to me to have potential as a precedent setting concept. Your ideas about materials will secure a slightly different place in history, but no less significant.
Please spend a few minutes thinking about the 110 vacancies we've just opened up.
(th)
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kbd512 Items that we know with many blanks still yet to determine overall volume needed
Developing anything on Mars with incomplete information is a project doomed to fail.
KBD512's only spec is as follows.
The 4 crew sleeping quarters is a volume of 125 m cubic meters which with 2.5 m floor to ceiling means 5m by 10 m long but what is missing?
Simple math: 1000 crew / 4 only gives a volume that is incomplete at 250x 125 m^3 = 31,250 cubic meters of volume
Here is some of the missing that changes that numbers as doors are required to exit or enter through, Whether these are pressurized doors, Hallways on either side, how adjacent quarters are placed next to each other as a curve leaves the walls at angles to the center of the shape, Are there going to personal hygiene within each quarters or are they combined as a central galley/ kitchen, food stores for dries or canned, freezer refrigeration, Mess table area for crew to eat area.
Quarters need ventilation, heating humidity control, linen areas for doing laundry and drying, how about exercise area and equipment, ect...
Without numbers or lights, outlets for individual occupants are further not specified items which are required.
Then there is the totals for all life support items to which include volumes needed to build as well.
power requirements beyond 10kw for 2 crew on the surface is for 1,000 will be 5 Meg watt
waste management A 4-person crew can generate up to 2,500 kg of waste in a one-year mission. A 3-year, 8-person crew is projected to generate roughly 12,600 kg of inorganic waste alone.
air scrubbing and replenishment
medical care, surgery, recovery Area: 23-28 sq meters per crew patient bed for monitoring, leave space for all side of bed for a minimum to support 50 crew
galley/kitchen, refrigeration/ freezing, dry food storage
greenhouse which is volume for 1,000 need per single person is 2m x 4m x5m = 40 cubic meter x 1,000 = 40,000 cubic m volume
power still needs calculations for LED
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Well, here are some solid numbers to work with that come from actual testing aboard ISS and in NASA's labs:
Astronaut daily CO2 production is about 1kg per person and they consume 1 gallon of water per person.
Thermally-Regenerated 4-Bed Solid Amine CO2 Removal System with Air and Water Save Features (CAMRAS):
400W 120VAC constant power draw for 1 of 4 sequentially heated amine beds.
415W average / 526W peak 28VDC power draw for fans, pumps, and control electronics.
4.71kg of maximum demonstrated CO2 removal capacity per day aboard ISS over a 1,000 day test.
The system is therefore "sized" for 4 astronauts, or 1/250th of our colony's head count.
926W * 250 = 231,500W of constant power to support CO2 scrubbing for 1,000 colonists, with a 17.75% CO2 removal performance margin for degraded system operation.
Cumulative air mass vented to space over 1,000 days of operation: 16.1lbm, so 4,025lbm over 1,000 days for 1,000 colonists, which equates to 4.025lbm of required atmospheric replenishment per day 78% N2, 21% O2, and 1% Ar. I've no idea how to source the N2 yet, but the O2 can be provided by CO2 and the Martian atmosphere also contains 2.7% Nitrogen and 1.6% Argon by mass.
Cumulative water mass vented to space over 1,000 days of operation: 67.9lbm, so 16.9775lbm / 2.04 gallons per day for 1,000 people. The water save feature of CAMRAS is crucial to life support, otherwise 80.4lbm / 9.64 gallons per day would be lost for 1,000 colonists.
Ionomwer Water Processor (IWP) Assembly peak power draw: 195W
Urine Processor Assembly (UPA) active / standby power draw: 424W / 108W
Water Recovery System (WRS; UPA + IWP) time averaged power draw: 743Wh/hr
743W * 250 = 185,750W
ISS Waste Water Recovery Per Day: 34.34 gallons / 130L per day (98% recovery rate)
This implies that total water processing for 1,000 colonists will be 2,146.25 gallons per day.
Minimal Life Support Power Draw: 417,250W
That figure does not include fan-based air circulation / ventilation, waste heat removal, or more advanced life support functions such as hot showers and cooking / cleaning, merely the minimum CO2 scrubbing and waste water recovery to keep 1,000 people alive.
It would be reasonable to assume that 417,250W of power draw is ultimately dissipated as waste heat, which needs to be rejected to space via radiators. 1,000 colonists, all working about as hard as they could sustain for 1 hour, would generate just under 98,000W of waste heat.
The fan power to deliver 15 air changes per hour to a 144,000ft^3 / 4,078m^3 auditorium filled with 1,000 people is 36,000CFM, so 36,000CFM * 0.8W/CFM = 28,800W. This structure is approximately 31X larger, so we can probably get away with as few as 4 complete air changes per hour because it's so big. The smaller the interior volume of a structure relative to the number of people inside, the more air changes per hour are required to keep the air fresh. However, that still bumps our total wattage up to 59,520W. If we really want to be completely pedantic about this, then 892,800W is required to provide 15 air changes per hour for a 125,000m^3 internal volume structure. It'll be like living inside a wind tunnel, though, so perhaps that's a bit over-the-top.
3MW worth of power for 1,000 colonists is likely more than sufficient for basic life support functions, to include hot showers and interior lights, especially if we use some of that waste heat to warm up our frosty cold fresh water supply.
However...
After we include grow lights for crops, our power requirements increase considerably. Indoor food production requires 20-50W/ft^2, up to 60W/ft^2 for tomatoes / peppers / fruits. Indoor food farming as a general practice has an energy intensity of 850–1150 kWh/m^2/year.
Crop Yields, kcal Per Square Meter Per Year
Potatoes: 4,398
Corn: 3,039
Wheat: 1,581
Soybeans: 519
38.8kWh/kg is a rough industry average power consumption for indoor vertical farming.
A family of 4 supposedly needs 2.9 million calories per year.
1 acre = 4046.86m^2
Roughly speaking, 1 acre will feed 24 colonists by using a staple crop like potatoes, which means "the farm" needs to be 168,819m^2.
2,083,333kg of potatoes * 38,800Wh/kg implies 80,833,320,400Wh/year, or 9,227,548W of constant power input.
Roughly speaking, our 1,000 colonists require a constant power input of 12MWe for air / water / food at all times. The average American citizen apparently consumes 9,334W of constant input power, time-averaged over a year. Therefore, our Martian colonists are merely well-to-do Americans "living their best life" on another planet. There will undoubtedly be much higher total input power requirements for other economic activities, but I'm still shocked at how American-like this colony is, on the basis of total power consumption.
People living in Qatar, Iceland, Singapore, and the UAE apparently all consume significantly more energy per capita than Americans do. People living in Qatar require 25,907W of constant power input, while people living in Iceland require a constant power input of 19,121W. Perhaps what our Martian colonists are really going to demonstrate to people still living on Earth is how to live efficiently when every last bit of air, water, and food has to either be recycled or made from scratch.
Current data indicates that we need to drill wells approximately 10-14km deep to access 150C temperatures for supercritical CO2 turbo-electric generators to produce 3MWe per unit. A geothermal energy company apparently has been testing 3MWe supercritical CO2 gas turbines in Texas using 150C operating temperatures and the "thermosiphon" effect of SCO2's dramatic volume increase to eliminate the need for pumping power to bring the "hot" CO2 back to the surface to drive the turbine. Since we made that work here on Earth, over the same target depth, we can obviously make it work on Mars, albeit with greater difficulty. If we manage to hit a natural gas well, then we're definitely in business.
If someone has a 10-15MWe micro nuclear reactor that doesn't require any water for cooling and electric power generation, that would be very useful to have on Mars. While such systems do exist and are in testing, to my knowledge none are currently certified for commercial electric power generation. If / when such systems do become available, we would want to take several of those with us, provided that they only require limited site prep to deploy and use. Across all the various different kinds of power systems, nuclear heat is the most reliable form of thermal power generation. However, getting your hands on any nuclear reactor implies you have extensive and recurrent training and certification to use it. That said, we could probably stipulate that anyone going to Mars has an advanced education and could be trained to use the equipment safely. The US Navy has operated nuclear reactors over the past human lifetime without a single meltdown, so whatever they're doing is obviously working. Therefore, if we do choose to operate reactors, then we're sending our reactor operators to the Navy's schools for indoctrination, training, and testing.
Personally, I'm in favor of geothermal, solar thermal, nuclear thermal, and a natural gas well. We can have our academic debate over which form of heat is "the best" at a later date.
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We need to be careful when using ISS numbers as they are based on a crew of typical 7 with short duration of more.
I did put your and my post through copilot and we have a long ways to go. for numbers as the fact that we are in a circular ring makes for much volume that due to a square layout is a problem.
You’re asking the right question—“what did we miss?”—because the big gap isn’t a single number, it’s a whole layer of overhead you haven’t turned into volume and power yet.
Let me pull it together and show you what’s still “un-costed” in your ring/Quonset concept.
1. Net vs gross volume
Sleeping volume vs habitat volume:
You sized 4‑person quarters at
125 m^3
2. For 1,000 crew, that’s 250 units →
31,250 m^3
3. That’s net bunk volume. What’s missing is the gross volume:
Walls, structure, insulation, MMOD/radiation shielding
Ducts, pipes, cable runs
Access corridors, stairways/ladders, airlocks, nodes
Once you add circulation and systems, net habitable volume is typically only a fraction of total pressurized volume.
2. Circulation, layout, and geometry penalties
Hallways and nodes:
Main spines, cross‑corridors, junction nodes, airlock lobbies, elevator/lift shafts (if any).
Egress routes sized for emergency evacuation of 1,000 people, not just “enough to walk through.”
Curved ring / Quonset geometry:
Rectangular modules in a curved ring waste edge volume.
You’ll have wedge-shaped gaps, unusable corners, and “dead” spaces that still need to be pressurized and serviced.
Doors and pressure breaks:
Every compartment boundary, fire zone, and pressure zone adds doors, vestibules, and clearances.
Those doors and vestibules have non‑trivial volume and lengthen the ring.
Right now, you’ve counted rooms but not the “streets” between them.
3. Support spaces you listed but haven’t volumized
You already named most of these—what’s missing is turning them into square meters and cubic meters:
Sanitation and hygiene:
Toilets, showers, sinks, grey/black water plumbing chases.
Central vs distributed bathrooms changes both volume and complexity.
Laundry and linen:
Washers, dryers, folding/clean storage, dirty storage, carts, and circulation space.
Galley and mess:
Kitchens, prep areas, dishwashing, food staging, serving lines, seating for some fraction of 1,000 at once.
Dry, refrigerated, and frozen storage sized for your resupply cadence.
Exercise and recreation:
Treadmills, resistance machines, free weights, VR/rec rooms, open space for group activities.
These are big volume hogs if you want them to be genuinely useful for 1,000 people.
Medical:
You quoted ~23–28 m² per monitored bed. For 50 beds, that’s ~1,150–1,400 m².
Add OR(s), imaging, pharmacy, lab, waiting, storage, staff areas, decontamination, and isolation rooms.
Greenhouse / food production:
You already estimated ~40,000 m³ for crops. That’s larger than the sleeping quarters volume.
You still need: nutrient mixing rooms, seed storage, tools, maintenance access, and buffer corridors.
All of these need to be explicitly sized and then placed in the ring geometry.
4. Systems volume (the “machine rooms” of the colony)
You’ve got good power and mass numbers for life support hardware—but not their physical footprint:
Life support equipment rooms:
CO₂ scrubbers, O₂ generation, water processors, tanks, pumps, compressors, filters, spare units.
Redundancy (N+1 or N+2) multiplies both mass and volume.
Power systems and distribution:
Switchgear, inverters, transformers, batteries, control rooms, cable trunks.
If you’re using nuclear, geothermal, or solar‑thermal, you also need heat‑to‑power conversion plant and interface spaces.
Thermal control:
Heat exchangers, coolant loops, pumps, manifolds, expansion tanks, radiator interface hardware.
Internal ducting and plenum spaces for air distribution.
Waste management:
Sorting, compacting, storage, recycling, and possibly incineration or feedstock processing.
1,000 people over years means industrial‑scale trash handling, not a closet with a bin.
These are often stacked in “utility decks” or dedicated rings that can easily rival or exceed the volume of living spaces.
5. Redundancy, spares, and logistics
Spares storage:
Filters, pumps, valves, electronics, suits, tools, structural repair materials, medical supplies, etc.
For a remote colony, spare parts inventory is huge—think warehouse, not cabinet.
Logistics and cargo:
Incoming cargo staging, unpacking, inspection, and distribution.
Outgoing waste or return cargo storage.
Emergency infrastructure:
Refuge rooms, extra air and water tanks, emergency rations, firefighting gear, emergency power and comms.
None of that is in the 125 m³/crew‑quarters math yet.
6. Human factors and “soft” space
This is the stuff that keeps 1,000 people sane over years:
Quiet zones and privacy:
Sound‑isolated areas, small meeting rooms, private work pods.
Workspaces and labs:
Offices, mission control, science labs, engineering shops, fabrication/repair bays.
Social and cultural spaces:
Common rooms, lounges, “town square” or auditorium, art/music spaces, spiritual/meditation rooms.
If you don’t allocate this up front, it gets squeezed into leftover corners—which is exactly what you don’t want in a long‑duration, high‑stress environment.
7. Power: you’ve got a floor, not a ceiling
You already see the gap:
Life support baseline:
~0.4–0.5 MW for CO₂ and water processing is just “keep them alive.”
Ventilation and thermal:
Tens to hundreds of kW more, depending on air change rates and radiator design.
Food production:
LED grow lights and associated systems push you into multi‑MW territory by themselves.
Everything else:
IT, comms, robotics, mining/ISRU, manufacturing, vehicles, construction, science.
So 5 MW for 1,000 people is a minimum survival plus a bit. Once you include food and industry, 10–15 MWe for a thriving settlement is very plausible.
The short answer
What you “missed” in the ring Quonset hut sizing is:
Circulation and geometry overhead (hallways, nodes, airlocks, curvature losses).
All the support spaces you listed but haven’t turned into area/volume.
Systems and utility volume for life support, power, thermal, and waste.
Redundancy, spares, and logistics storage.
Work, social, and psychological spaces beyond bunks and a mess hall.
Growth and contingency margin—you’ve sized for exactly 1,000, not 1,000 + failures + expansion.
If you want, we can take a next step and build a rough “volume budget” table—sleeping, hygiene, food, medical, greenhouse, systems, circulation—and see what the total ring volume really looks like.
You’ve done a very thorough first‑pass accounting of the power, air, water, and food loops for a 1,000‑person Mars settlement. The numbers you’re using are grounded in real ISS hardware performance, which is exactly the right way to avoid sci‑fi hand‑waving. What you’ve built is essentially a “minimum viable colony” energy budget.
But you asked: what did we miss?
A few major categories haven’t been included yet, and they matter a lot—some even more than the life‑support loops themselves. I’ll walk through the big ones, explain why they matter, and give you a sense of how they change the overall power and mass picture.
?️ 1. Thermal Control: The Hidden Giant
You accounted for radiator load from life support, but you haven’t accounted for habitat heating.
Mars is cold. Really cold.
Typical equatorial night: −70°C
Mid‑latitudes: −100°C
Worst‑case: −120°C
Even with insulation, a large pressurized structure leaks heat. On Earth, a well‑insulated building loses 30–50 W/m² in winter. On Mars, with a 100°C temperature delta, you’re looking at 100–200 W/m² unless you bury the structure.
For a 125,000 m³ habitat, even assuming a modest 2,000 m² exposed surface area:
200 W/m² × 2,000 m² = 400 kW continuous heating
That’s before you add greenhouses, workshops, airlocks, or tunnels.
If the colony uses multiple pressurized modules, the heating load can easily reach 1–2 MW thermal.
This is one of the biggest missing items.
?️ 2. Manufacturing, Fabrication, and Maintenance
A real colony must repair and build things. That means:
CNC machines
Metal 3D printers
Kilns and smelters
Plastics extrusion
Electronics repair
Welding equipment
Machine shops
Rover maintenance bays
Industrial equipment is power‑hungry.
A modest terrestrial workshop consumes 200–500 kW.
A small industrial fab shop: 1–3 MW.
A Mars colony needs the latter, not the former.
This is another multi‑megawatt category missing from your tally.
? 3. Transportation (Rovers, Haulers, Drones)
Electric rovers on Mars will be the backbone of logistics.
A single large pressurized rover (think “Mars bus”) uses:
50–100 kWh per sol
Peak draw: 20–40 kW
A fleet of 20–30 vehicles adds:
0.5–1 MW continuous equivalent power
If you include mining trucks or regolith haulers, the number jumps.
? 4. ISRU for Construction Materials
If the colony builds anything locally—bricks, concrete, glass, metals—then you need:
Regolith heating
Sintering
Electrolysis
Chemical processing
High‑temperature furnaces (1,000–1,600°C)
These processes are extremely energy‑intensive.
A small regolith‑to‑brick plant alone can require:
1–5 MW thermal
0.5–1 MW electrical
If you want to produce metals (iron, aluminum, magnesium), multiply that by 5–10.
This is one of the largest missing power sinks.
? 5. Food Processing, Refrigeration, and Storage
You accounted for crop lighting, but not:
Refrigeration
Freezers
Drying and milling
Cooking
Packaging
Waste composting
Greenhouse climate control (fans, pumps, humidity control)
A 1,000‑person food system on Earth uses 1–2 MW of electrical power.
Even if you optimize heavily, you’re still looking at 0.5–1 MW.
? 6. Medical Facilities
A real colony needs:
Imaging (X‑ray, ultrasound, maybe MRI)
Sterilization
Labs
Surgical suites
Pharmacy production
A small hospital consumes 300–800 kW.
?️ 7. Communications and Computing
You haven’t included:
High‑gain antennas
Data centers
Navigation beacons
Local servers
Robotics control systems
A modest data center for 1,000 people is 200–500 kW.
If you want AI‑assisted operations or simulation labs, add more.
? 8. Safety Systems and Redundancy
A Mars colony must have:
Backup life support
Backup power
Emergency shelters
Fire suppression
Airlock cycling
Pressure monitoring
Leak detection
Spare parts manufacturing
Redundancy typically adds 30–50% overhead to all life‑support power.
? 9. Waste Processing Beyond Water
You included wastewater, but not:
Solid waste
Plastics recycling
Composting
Hazardous waste
Medical waste
Sewage sludge drying
Methane capture (if used)
A small waste‑to‑energy plant is 200–400 kW.
? 10. Atmospheric Processing for N₂ and Ar
You noted the need for nitrogen but didn’t include the power cost.
To extract N₂ and Ar from Mars’ atmosphere:
You must compress the atmosphere from 0.6 kPa to ~100–200 kPa
Then cryogenically separate gases
This is extremely energy‑intensive.
A rough estimate: 1–2 MW continuous for a colony this size.
? 11. Mining and Raw Material Extraction
If the colony wants to be even partially self‑sufficient:
Water ice mining
Regolith excavation
Gypsum mining
Sulfur extraction
Iron ore mining
Basalt fiber production
Mining equipment is power‑hungry.
A small terrestrial mine uses 5–10 MW.
A Mars colony version might use 1–3 MW.
? So What’s the Real Total?
Your estimate for basic life support + food was ~12 MW.
Adding the missing categories:
Category Estimated Power
Heating 1–2 MW
Manufacturing 1–3 MW
Transportation 0.5–1 MW
Construction ISRU 1–5 MW
Food processing 0.5–1 MW
Medical 0.3–0.8 MW
Computing & comms 0.2–0.5 MW
Waste processing 0.2–0.4 MW
Atmospheric N₂/Ar 1–2 MW
Mining 1–3 MW
Redundancy overhead +30–50%
Realistic total: 20–30 MW electrical + 5–10 MW thermal
This is very close to the power consumption of a small town or industrial campus on Earth.
? The Big Picture
Your original conclusion—that a Mars colony ends up looking like a high‑tech American town in terms of per‑capita energy use—is absolutely correct.
But the full system is larger:
Life support is only ~30–40% of total power.
Industry, construction, and heating dominate the rest.
A 1,000‑person Mars settlement is basically:
A small city
A mining operation
A farm
A factory
A research base
A hospital
A power plant
A water treatment facility
All rolled into one.
If you want, I can help you:
Build a full power budget spreadsheet
Model different energy architectures (geothermal vs nuclear vs solar‑thermal)
Estimate radiator area, mass, and heat rejection
Size the nitrogen extraction plant
Model food production with mixed crops
Estimate habitat insulation requirements
Just tell me where you want to take this next.
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Here’s a first‑cut volume budget so you can see what’s missing, not just feel it.
Rough volume budget for 1,000‑person ring habitat
Category Basis / assumption Area (m²) Volume (m³)
Crew quarters 250 × 4‑person units @ 125 m³ each – 31,250
Hygiene & laundry 1.0–1.5 m²/person @ 2.5 m height 1,000–1,500 2,500–3,750
Galley + mess Seats for 1/3 crew at once (~0.8–1.0 m²/seat) + kitchen 600–800 1,500–2,000
Medical (incl. support) 50 monitored beds @ 23–28 m² + OR, imaging, support 2,000–2,500 5,000–6,250
Exercise & recreation ~1.5–2.0 m²/person shared 1,500–2,000 3,750–5,000
Workspaces & labs Offices, control, labs, shops (~1.0–1.5 m²/person) 1,000–1,500 2,500–3,750
Greenhouse / crops Your estimate – 40,000
Life support machinery CO₂, O₂, water, waste, tanks, thermal plant – 5,000–10,000
Power & distribution Switchgear, batteries, control rooms – 2,000–4,000
Logistics & spares Warehousing, cargo, spares, tools – 3,000–6,000
Waste management Sorting, storage, processing – 1,000–2,000
Social / “soft” spaces Lounges, small rooms, quiet areas 500–1,000 1,250–2,500
Circulation & nodes Corridors, nodes, airlocks (~30–40% of net spaces) – 25,000–35,000
Structural & service voids Walls, insulation, ducts, cable chases (~10–20%) – 10,000–20,000
Very roughly, that puts you in the ballpark of:
Net functional volume (rooms, greenhouses, etc.):
~95,000–110,000 m³
Plus circulation + structure overhead:
another ~35,000–55,000 m³
Total ring pressurized volume:
? On the order of 130,000–160,000 m³, not 31,250 m³.
So the big things you were “missing” in the original 4‑crew‑quarters × 250 calculation are:
Circulation and geometry overhead
Corridors, nodes, airlocks, and the inefficiency of packing rectangles into a curved ring.
All the non‑bunk functions
Hygiene, galley/mess, medical, exercise, workspaces, social spaces.
Industrial‑scale systems volume
Life support machinery, power distribution, thermal control, waste management.
Logistics, spares, and growth margin
Warehousing and spare parts for a remote, 1,000‑person outpost.
Structural and service voids
The “hidden” volume in walls, floors, ducts, and cable runs.
If you’d like, next step could be: pick a ring radius and width, and see what cross‑section and length you actually need to enclose ~150,000 m³—then we can talk about how many decks, how wide the corridors are, and where those 4‑person units realistically fit in the curve.
“Volume tables” can mean a few different things depending on the context, and your earlier message was deeply technical—so I want to make sure we’re talking about the same concept.
In engineering, architecture, and life‑support design, volume tables usually refer to one of these:
? 1. A table listing the internal volumes of habitats or structures
Used to calculate:
Air mass
Required air changes per hour
CO₂ scrubbing load
Heating/cooling load
Pressurization requirements
For example:
Structure Internal Volume (m³) Notes
Habitat Module A 8,000 Crew quarters
Greenhouse 20,000 High humidity
Workshop 12,000 High ventilation load
Total 40,000 Used for life‑support sizing
This is the kind of table you’d use to size fans, radiators, and CO₂ scrubbers.
? 2. A table of volume conversions
Used when switching between ft³, m³, liters, gallons, etc.
Unit Equivalent
1 m³ 35.3147 ft³
1 ft³ 0.0283168 m³
1 gallon (US) 3.78541 L
1 L 0.001 m³
This is common when mixing NASA data (often in English units) with engineering calculations (usually SI).
? 3. A table of volume requirements per person
Used in habitat design to estimate:
Minimum breathable air volume
Comfortable living volume
Emergency shelter volume
Typical values:
Category Volume per Person
Absolute minimum (ISS‑like) 25–30 m³
Comfortable long‑term 100–150 m³
Spacious / Earth‑like 300–500 m³
Your earlier example used a 125,000 m³ structure for 1,000 colonists → 125 m³ per person, which fits the “comfortable long‑term” category.
? 4. A table of volume flows
Used for ventilation and air‑handling calculations.
For example:
Flow Rate Equivalent
1 CFM 0.0004719 m³/s
36,000 CFM 16.99 m³/s
15 ACH (air changes/hr) for 4,078 m³ 61,170 m³/hr
This is exactly the kind of table you’d use to compute the 36,000 CFM fan load you mentioned.
? 5. A table of volume for storage (water, gases, food)
For example:
Resource Daily Use (1,000 people) Required Storage Volume
Water ~2,146 gallons/day ~8.1 m³/day
O₂ ~210 kg/day ~150 m³ at 1 atm
N₂ ~780 kg/day ~600 m³ at 1 atm
This is essential for sizing tanks and ISRU plants.
If you tell me which type of “volume table” you meant, I can build the exact table you need.
You might be asking for:
the volume table for the 125,000 m³ habitat,
the volume table for air changes,
or the volume table for water/CO₂ processing.
Just point me toward the one you want to work with next.
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Here’s a clean power budget table for your 1,000‑person Mars colony, based on what you already calculated plus the big missing pieces.
Power budget summary for 1,000 colonists
Subsystem Power (MW electric) Notes
Minimal life support (air + water) 0.42 CO₂ scrubbing + wastewater recovery (your 417 kW)
Ventilation & circulation 0.06–0.90 4–15 ACH, depending on how “wind‑tunnel” you go
Crop lighting (potato staple) ~9.2 Your 9.23 MW constant for 2,083,333 kg/year potatoes
Food processing & storage 0.5–1.0 Refrigeration, drying, milling, cooking
Habitat heating 1.0–2.0 Depends heavily on insulation, burial, and layout
Computing & communications 0.2–0.5 Local servers, comms, control systems
Medical facilities 0.3–0.8 Small hospital + labs
Manufacturing & fabrication 1.0–3.0 Machine shops, 3D printers, CNC, welding
Construction ISRU (bricks, glass, etc.) 1.0–5.0 Regolith processing, kilns, furnaces
Mining & raw materials 1.0–3.0 Regolith, ice, ores, hauling
Transportation (rovers, haulers) 0.5–1.0 Fleet of pressurized and utility vehicles
Waste processing (solid, chemical) 0.2–0.4 Beyond water: compost, plastics, hazardous waste
Atmospheric N₂/Ar extraction 1.0–2.0 Compression + separation from Martian air
Margin & redundancy +30–50% Backup systems, peak loads, failures
Roll‑up totals
Life support core (air + water + crops):
CO₂ + water: ~0.4 MW
Crop lighting: ~9.2 MW
Food processing: ~0.5–1.0 MW
→ ~10–11 MW
Habitat & people overhead:
Heating: 1–2 MW
Ventilation: 0.06–0.9 MW
Medical: 0.3–0.8 MW
Computing/comms: 0.2–0.5 MW
→ ~1.5–4 MW
Industrial & expansion capability:
Manufacturing: 1–3 MW
Construction ISRU: 1–5 MW
Mining: 1–3 MW
Transportation: 0.5–1 MW
Waste processing: 0.2–0.4 MW
N₂/Ar extraction: 1–2 MW
→ ~4.7–14.4 MW
Now add them:
Base continuous load (no margin):
Low end: ~10 + 1.5 + 4.7 ≈ 16 MW
High end: ~11 + 4 + 14.4 ≈ 29 MW
With 30–50% margin and redundancy:
Rough design target: 20–40 MWe continuous
How this compares to your original estimate
Your ~12 MWe for air/water/food is a solid core number.
Once you add industry, construction, heating, mining, and redundancy, the realistic colony looks like:
~20–30 MWe for a capable, growing settlement
Up to ~40 MWe if you want generous margin and aggressive ISRU/build‑out
So the “American‑style” energy footprint still holds—what changes is that life support is only a slice of the pie. The rest is everything that makes the colony more than a survival bunker.
If you’d like, next step could be: pick one architecture (e.g., “3×10 MWe reactors + geothermal + some solar‑thermal”) and we can see how many units, how much mass, and what failure modes look like.
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You’re thinking about the right thing—if 1,000 people are going to live on Mars, not just survive, a gym isn’t a luxury, it’s medical infrastructure.
Here’s a compact set of requirements for a gym designed to support the health of a 1,000‑person crew inside a ring‑shaped Quonset‑hut‑style structure.
1. Space and layout requirements
Item Rule of thumb For 1,000 people
Active users at once 10–15% of crew 100–150 people
Area per active user 4–6 m² (mixed cardio/strength) 400–900 m²
Total gym area ~1–1.5 m² per person 1,000–1,500 m²
Practical target:
1,200–1,500 m² of gym space distributed around the ring
Broken into zones: cardio, resistance, rehab/physio, flexibility, and small group classes
For a ring habitat, this works well as a continuous “fitness band” around part of the circumference, doubling as a circulation corridor.
2. Equipment mix (Mars‑appropriate)
Key principle: minimize mass, moving parts, and maintenance; maximize bone and muscle loading.
Cardio:
Treadmills: 10–20 units (with harness options if partial‑g is an issue)
Bikes/ergometers: 20–30 units
Rowers/ski‑ergs: 10–15 units
Strength & bone loading:
Resistance machines using bands/flywheels instead of heavy plates
Squat/deadlift platforms with adjustable resistance devices
Multi‑station cable/flywheel rigs (high utility per kg of mass)
Pull‑up/dip stations, suspension trainers
Rehab & mobility:
Mats, balance tools, light dumbbells/kettlebells, physio tables
Scheduling assumption:
Each crew member gets ~1 hour/day of structured exercise
Gym must support 100–150 concurrent users without bottlenecks
3. Power requirements for the gym
Most power goes to cardio machines, lighting, and ventilation.
Cardio equipment:
Treadmills: ~1–2 kW each × 15 → 15–30 kW
Bikes/rowers: 0.1–0.3 kW each × 40 → 4–12 kW
Total cardio peak: ~20–40 kW
Lighting:
10–15 W/m² × 1,500 m² → 15–22 kW
Ventilation & air handling:
Higher CO₂ and humidity from exercise
Plan for 6–10 air changes per hour in gym zone
Fans/blowers: 10–30 kW (depending on ducting and pressure drops)
Electronics & controls:
Displays, sensors, monitoring: 1–3 kW
Total gym power budget:
Peak: ~50–90 kW
Average (over a sol): ~20–40 kW (since not all equipment runs at once)
4. Structural and ring‑geometry considerations
In a ring‑shaped Quonset hut:
Location:
Place gym near the outer radius if the ring is spun for artificial gravity—this maximizes g‑level for exercise.
Use the gym as a buffer zone between noisy/industrial and quiet/sleep areas.
Floor loading:
Dynamic loads from running/jumping/lifting: design for 3–5 kN/m²
Add vibration isolation to avoid transmitting shocks through the ring.
Ceiling height:
Minimum 2.7–3.0 m for safe overhead movements and psychological comfort.
5. Environmental and life‑support coupling
The gym is a CO₂ and heat hotspot:
CO₂:
Exercising humans can produce 2–3× resting CO₂
Local CO₂ scrubbing or high‑flow ventilation from main loop is needed.
Heat:
100–150 people exercising → 10–20 kW of metabolic heat
This is useful in cold climates but must be removed to keep comfort.
Humidity:
Sweat drives local humidity up; dehumidification or dedicated air handling is important.
6. Health and operational goals
Design the gym to support:
Bone density maintenance: heavy‑load resistance, impact or pseudo‑impact training
Cardiovascular fitness: daily moderate‑to‑vigorous cardio
Injury prevention: mobility, physio, and rehab space
Mental health: open, bright, visually varied space—this is a pressure valve for stress
If you want, next step could be:
tie this gym into your overall power budget and ring geometry (radius, spin rate, g‑level),
or sketch a ring cross‑section showing how the gym, living quarters, and utilities stack together.
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Here is the above posts consolidated and boiled down
Absolutely — here’s a clean, simplified version of the huge block of content you provided. I’ve boiled it down to the core ideas, removing repetition while keeping the engineering logic intact.
⭐ Simplified Summary of Your Habitat + Power + Volume Analysis
You’re designing a 1,000 person Mars ring habitat, and your original calculation (250 sleeping units × 125 m³ = 31,250 m³) only captured bunk volume, not the full colony. The missing pieces fall into four big categories:
? 1. Missing Habitat Volume (the big oversight)
Your original math only counted sleeping quarters. A real colony needs many more spaces, each with significant volume:
Essential living spaces
• Bathrooms, showers, sinks
• Laundry and linen storage
• Galley/kitchen
• Mess hall seating
• Exercise and recreation
• Medical center (50 monitored beds + OR + imaging)
• Workspaces, labs, offices
• Social/quiet rooms
• Greenhouse (≈40,000 m³ by your estimate)
Infrastructure spaces
• Hallways, nodes, airlocks
• Doors and pressure vestibules
• Curved ring geometry losses
• Structural voids (walls, insulation, ducts, cables)
Systems rooms
• CO₂ scrubbers
• O₂ generation
• Water processors
• Waste management
• Power distribution
• Thermal control
• Spare parts storage
• Logistics/cargo areas
Result
A realistic 1,000 person ring habitat is 130,000–160,000 m³, not 31,250 m³.
⚡ 2. Missing Power Loads (life support is only the beginning)
Your ISS based numbers give a solid baseline:
Life support minimum
• CO₂ scrubbing + water recovery: ~0.42 MW
• Ventilation: 0.06–0.9 MW
• Crop lighting (potatoes): ~9.2 MW
Subtotal: ~10–11 MW
But a real colony needs much more:
Habitat overhead
• Heating (Mars is −70 to −120°C): 1–2 MW
• Medical facilities: 0.3–0.8 MW
• Computing/comms: 0.2–0.5 MW
Industrial & operational loads
• Manufacturing & fabrication: 1–3 MW
• Construction ISRU (bricks, glass, metals): 1–5 MW
• Mining & hauling: 1–3 MW
• Rover fleet: 0.5–1 MW
• Solid waste processing: 0.2–0.4 MW
• Nitrogen/argon extraction: 1–2 MW
Total realistic power
16–29 MW base 20–40 MW with redundancy and peak load margin
This is the power consumption of a small Earth town.
?️ 3. Missing Thermal Loads
Mars is extremely cold. Even insulated habitats leak heat.
Estimated heating requirement:
• ~400 kW to 2 MW depending on burial and insulation.
This is a major missing category.
? 4. Missing Industrial & Logistics Volume
A real colony must:
• Build things
• Repair things
• Store spares
• Process waste
• Handle cargo
• Maintain vehicles
These require warehouse scale spaces, not closets.
? The Big Picture (fully simplified)
Your original estimate captured sleeping space and basic life support, but a real 1,000 person Mars colony also needs:
Much more volume
• Sleeping quarters are only ~20–25% of total habitat volume.
• Full colony volume is 130k–160k m³.
Much more power
• Life support + food: ~10–11 MW
• Industry + heating + mining + redundancy: ~10–25 MW
• Total: 20–40 MW continuous
Much more infrastructure
• Circulation space
• Systems rooms
• Industrial shops
• Medical
• Social spaces
• Storage
• Thermal control
• Power conversion
• Airlocks and nodes
A Mars colony is not just “ISS × 150 people.” It’s a small city, a factory, a farm, and a mine all in one.
If you want, I can now produce a super clean table of:
• Total volumes
• Total power
• Per person requirements
• Ring geometry sizing
Just tell me which direction you want to go next.
Will print this out to be able to update as we go making changes as we fill in the blanks for volume and power for each item still blank.
Somethings once the shape as drawn with the basic concepts will solve some stuff.
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