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Modular Hive Homes Win Mars Base Design Competition
In June, we discussed news that JPL and MakerBot were teaming up to host a competition for designing a futuristic Mars base. The competition is now over, and the top three designs have been chosen. First place went to Noah Hornberger, who designed a base with hexagonal rooms and shielding made of depleted uranium. Second place went to a martian pyramid with an aquaponics system on top, mirror-based solar collectors, central water storage, and compartmentalized living spaces. The third place award went to Chris Starr for his Mars Acropolis, which was styled upon the ancient Greek Acropolis. It has a water tower at the top of the structure, a series of greenhouses at the bottom, and living quarters in between. The full list of 227 entries is browse-able on Thingiverse.
These design competitions are great for inspiring the creativity, but we, as a species are not motivated enough to colonize another planet. Until that changes, nothing substantial will happen.
When will we have the capability to send humans to Mars?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Putting aside the logistics of getting a reactor to Mars (along with a myriad of other things that are currently "put aside") what size reactor/electrical powerplant/whatever would you need in order to provide the same protection from cosmic radiation as does the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Were we not just told a few months ago by NASA that colonizing Mars would be impossible due to moral issues? I'm too lazy at the moment to go dig this up, be my guest.
I'm all for this, but don't see anyone actually spending the money required to colonize anything. In a profit driven society where the greater good equates to "my phat wallet" it won't happen. At least not while the majority of money in the world is in the hands of about 2 dozen families.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
If shielding is such an issue, why not set up camp in a cave system?
The craft bringing us there!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Depleted Uranium is very heavy - where are the people going to get enough of it? Shipping it there would be extremely expensive
This is what the 3D printing fanbois waste their energy on. And they think they're going to Mars too!
The garden and kitchen are on opposite ends of the dining room?
Usability fail.
The design is, kinda nice.
But the layout is awful.
The bedrooms should be near each other, with a bathroom separating them. (preferably on the side away from the living area)
Using this image of it, switch the 3D print room and utility room around to the other side with the bedroom and bathroom. Literally just translate them over as-is.
That gives a nice working area on one side, bedrooms and bathroom in one area, entertainment in middle, then the eating space in another.
Equally, if we are going to go with a design that had a reasonable amount of oxygen available for it (so, not that anyway), you could go further and add 2 of those beds in a room. Quite easily. Not even stacked, you could add 4 if stacked. 8 beds to one of these constructions.
You'll need a tree farm somewhere for oxygen though. Or a greenhouse with efficient oxygen-generators.
Man can't even manage planet Earth. Let alone Mars. It has no business there until it shapes up over here.
Meanwhile, robots can do anything there, and elsewhere, and do it more effectively.
I would lose the Uranium shielding, and just bury the thing instead. We need to use as much local material for construction as possible. As someone else mentioned above, nobody wants to pay to keep a colony going, so once we're there, it's probably a good idea to live as though we're on our own for good. If we want to sustain and expand our colony past the initial setup, we need to do it without Earth sending us stuff regularly. So, houses we can make out of Mars. That being said, I would make a couple of exceptions. First, I would ship some kind of self contained power source, like maybe a modular Thorium reactor, or something like that. Doing big construction projects is power intensive, and solar might not cut it. The second thing I would take would be fabrication tools for any supplies that can't be 3D printed, I guess. I mean, eventually, stuff is going to wear out, and Mars doesn't seem to have much in the way of tradable resources, so we're going to have to make our own stuff. By "stuff we'll have to make ourselves", I'm thinking space suits and mining/refining equipment.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Well, it's good that they are preparing for possible alien contact. Thranx would likely feel right at home in a nice hive. Are they going to put them underground?
But what will they do if they find the AAnn first?
I'm not sure if that is a threat or a movie quote. If it's a threat, I am only frightened by your lack of grammatical skills. The "echelons you talked about" do and the rest of what you state is jibberish. Care to make another attempt in English?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The "slow boiled frog" meme has been utterly debunked and just makes you look foolish if you use it. Yes, it's a common morality allegory about slippery slopes, but THE GODDAMN BASIC PRINCIPLE IS FALSE, so what's an intelligent person to conclude about the entire allegory?
Well: that you proved nothing and wasted everyone's time by trying to support your argument but failing miserably, that's what.
All of these lovely fantasies have problems. The hex one adds complexity to the construction for no particular reason. The water tower on the roof becomes a single point of failure and will tend to want to freeze up. Caves would be nice, but what are the odds there'll be convenient caves located right where they want to set up camp? All of them would be complicated to build on Earth, never mind by a guy in a spacesuit
What they actually build will be an extension of our oldest and most mature design school - the square. They'll bring Titanium or Aluminum I-beams and bolt them together. For the sake of discussion lets assume a cube ten meters on each side, maybe an overhang all around the top. They'll bolt cross pieces and panels across the top and pile up regolith on the roof for the first layer of radiation protection.
Once they have this they'll go underneath and set up pressurized tents (if we can find suitable material for local conditions.) If tents work, they keep them. If tents are problematical they'll start building room sized cubes. The cubes will be essentially the same as the outer shell, but smaller and with caulked joints. As time goes by they'll start linking them. For safety reasons, internal air locks will be common. Water will be stored in flat compartments in the ceiling of each cube or tent as secondary radiation protection. Each room will have its own ceiling tanks so the loss of any one unit won't cripple them.
I assume they'll have a number of tanks of liquids and gasses - Nitrogen, Oxygen, Water, whatever else they need. Up on top of the regolith layer would be the place to store them. They'll be close to hand but out of the way, and if a tank fails there'll probably be no shrapnel issues. They will also lend a little bit more radiation shielding. If they have excess sewage it will be frozen in blocks and left on the roof for the same reasons.
The above feature will combine to something that has all the style and grace of a junkyard shack, but hey, it'll be easy to build, can be grown in stages as time allows, and it'll work. My apologies to those fancy design guys...
Geodesic domes. Most area covered with the least material and most strength. You would need something to keep in an atmosphere and geodesic domes are the clear solution.
But seriously, it has to be underground-- Mars is way too cold and has little atmosphere. How can people forget how crazy cold it gets on Mars? Do people not know that our air freezes in their winter? You'd have to insulate that water in the roof and heat it. We have troubles in Antarctica we should work out 1st.
You are better off waiting until we can figure out how to jump start it's core or devise a sun shield. Robots can do everything better and cheaper-- there is no good reason to go. People just need to admit they want it because it's cool; it has little practical benefit. NASA used to do a lot of planetary science; why not work on that and try to make that cool instead?
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I'd like to see a different competition. For the contest, I'll need some acres of cheap desert land. Nevada, I'm looking at you. The site should be selected based on similarity to Mars, as much as practical (e.g., sandy soil, rocks, etc.). It could even be in the dry valleys of Antarctica, although that might be a problem because people might see this as exploiting the pristine environment there.
Now here's the contest.
Based on a preliminary judgement process, participants each get temporary use of an acre. They are allowed to visit it exactly ONCE for an hour, and leave behind... a robot.
The robot's task is prepare the surface as much as possible for human habitation. There will be a mandatory delay in communicating with the robot, to simulate the actual delay communicating with Mars. To prevent cheating, all communications will be routed through the contest organizer's central server.
The winners will be judged based on how close they came to preparing something that could be quickly converted into a habitation by arriving people.
A few extra details need to be worked out, such as weight and size limits on the robot. Otherwise somebody might park an old 747 there and claim victory. It also needs to be something that could survive launch and entry. Contest organizers might subject each robot to predetermined G-force and temperature excursions at the start.
Maybe the contest should be allowed to run for a year or so. I think it'd be interesting.
Even without the contest, it would be interesting. It's a bit of an expensive hobby and perhaps more practical as a game; but there's nothing like the real thing. It could lead to actual techniques for surface prep.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Its a bit difficult to say because of the complex nature of the car business, but European sourced cars are generally better than US models due to the realisation that corners are something to be enjoyed.
In Jaguar (yes I know its owned by Tata), Rolls Royce, BMW and Mercedes we have cars that everyone aspires to own, and that's before I get into mentioning Porsche, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Bugatti etc.
On the US side, you have one car manufacturer that is widely admired - Tesla.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
They need to go Minecraft on Mars. In other words go underground.
Lots of shielding and protection from dust storms etc. Plus they could tap right into the permafrost for water and have direct entrances to mineral and material mines.
You're on Mars. You need to keep it simple, and keep resource requirements down. So why six walls instead of four? Why complicated join angles? Does the fact that all but the most artsy furniture is _square_, and hence fits best in a square/rectangular space, lost on the designers/judges? Does the fact that Mars dwellers might come from Earth, and hence long for something familiar, not suggest that a square/rectangular design might be better for the mental health of the colony?
We are not bees. We are human. Mars dwellers will not be 'artists', but people struggling to survive in an alien and hostile environment. Hexagon houses don't make any sense here on Earth, where they are easy to build and maintain. Why in heaven's name would they make sense on Mars?
You know what would make sense? Frickin' trailer parks of 'portables' like we use in hostile environments here on Earth! Worried about radiation? Put them underground dumbass!
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.