This is the second post in the series on Building-out Mars (first installment here)- where I treat the very imminent deployment strategy for getting humans to Mars, settling the land, and setting up shop for future generations.
This strategy discussion is company and nation-agnostic. I have no preference for which organisation or actor gets there first. However you will see plenty of references along this series, pointing to SpaceX. From materials and reports: evidence in the public domain, they are the only company with a legitmate platform and long term (albeit the deep detail not shared to public) plan to get there.
Let us recall, in the first post, I treated the concept of pre-work that is being done now, with the landers and orbiters from UAE, China and the U.S. arriving to the Red Planet in February. This is an auspicious time for gathering more and higher resolution data on the planet, seasons and sub-surface make-up.
In this post, we immerse ourseles in a projection - we flash-forward together to 2026. Now we journey with a series of Startships stuffed with humans and resources bound for Mars. Around this time, they should be starting to arrive very close by to their target. They should be preparing to land right about now, after a 6 month inter-planetary voyage. This assumes they keep to a similar launch schedule to that of the 2021 landers Hope and Perseverance. The transit window betwen Earth and Mars is limited to 1/4 of a Mars year, equivalent to a window every 2 Earth years, and drives the launch schedule.
At this point, the flight crew, colonists, budding Martians can be confident in the ability and performance of their craft in the landing maneuvre. At this point 2 intervening launch windows have been and gone. These windows would have enabled SpaceX to test, prove and ready multiple starships for Mars.
I think it would make sense to try and send some cargo close by the proposed landing site for the crewed mission. In this cargo - could be flat-pack materials for a habitat, food, energy generation solar panels and storage batteries.
It could be prudent to also send some communication equipment on these earlier launches as well. They can serve as back ups for the live crew when they arrive.
Redundancy, multiple redundancy on simplifed systems would be the order of the day in all critical systems for the crew. The object is to get the crew there alive, let them thrive and build up the first steps of the Mars colony. This philosophy will doubtless be applied in the starships carrying crew, and also by sending uncrewed sister ships along with the crewed modules. This will equip the crew with multiple instances of the same equipment as back-up, spares to be cannibalised if required. It also gives the crew the flexibility to deploy all this equipment at once to speed up some development.
Consider - a number of ships are sent, some containing habitat materials, to protect against the very real possibility of some ship not successfully arriving. If all of the ships arrive, then there are multiple instance of the same modules which can be constructed and interconnected to give a larger living and working space for the crew. This space, unlike life on the space-station, is home for the next 2 years at a minimum. The longest standing record for continuous space-station inhabitant stands at 437 days - held by cosmonaut Valery Polyakov. The average stay on the space-station is 6 months, after which rehabilitation and retraining of a body which has stayed an extended period in microgravity ( see some typical rehab measures here). The more space and opportunity to live a more normal life will be critical for the crew to help underpin good living habits and support mental health while so far from home.
Looking out on the same barren landscape, foreign winds of red rust and dust particles, a weak color, strong UV sun would appear harsher to the New Martians, despite being approximately 0.5 Astronomical Units further from the Sun than Earth.
We also know that the surface of Mars is red because of a high proportion of iron oxide there, rust. The rusty surface masks buried water-ice and solid-CO2 deposits not far below all around the planet. These would need to be mined then processed to generate the CH4 (methane fuel) and O2 (oxidiser and for breathable atmoshpere in the crew modules). At the Southern Pole, there is a bounty of visible water and CO2 ice.
This is something that fore-runner missions can start to challenge, possibly by collaborating with Nasa and sending autonomous, nuclear-powered mining vehicles. Or it could be as simple as sending caches of materials and resources which can be utilised later.
In the former case, these machines could, as the existing Mars landers and rovers do, roam around and operate day-in-day-out digging to get at the ancient lakes and seas - looking for and gathering water-ice for the crew.
Water
On arrival, the early days and months will be focussed on setting a rhythm for martian life. Establishing secure inputs for life support will be critical. In this, gathering water ice and purifying to a degree that it can be used for human consumption, cleaning, washing, etc. The mission can opt between deploying inflatable water tanks inside the habitat. In this way, the crew can avoid problems that are often seen in cold winters on Earth, with water lines freezing, causing damage to piping and tank seams, giving a loss of water.
Another opportunity is to use well-insulated and heated tanks outside the living quarters. In this arrangement, the water storage tank is fitted with an internal heating element. The lines running to and from the tank are heat-traced (this means wrapping resistance cables around the pipe to ensure that the skin temperature of the pipe (and so the fluid within) are kept to a minimum of 5 degC. This will enable water to flow and - by running a circulating pump, can enable the water to be kept liquid without it starting to freeze from one point, or freezing within the piping. This kind of design is already in use around the Earth today, seen on large remote oil and gas processing facilities where temperatures can dip to below (-40) degC.
CO2
Deploying a CO2 gathering equipment will be an essential component of establishing the propellant plant. This is necessary to start generating fuel to be ready for the return journey home. The plus side will be that - by sending fore-runner starships, the crew will already have access to some little residual fuel. and can use this to help with energy needs, or using when commissioning the production equipment.The propellant itself is a product of the Sabatier reaction - one which forces hydrogen and CO2 together under high pressure and temperature, to reform and produce CH4 and water. This happens in the presence of a catalyst which has been the subject of a lot of recent, ongoing research as scientists seek to lower the input energy required to deliver the desired methane product.
A representation of a novel, light-activated route to Sabatier reaction. Credit: EurekAlert!
Food
Setting up food growing areas will be a critical first step - both in generating sustainable food supply, but also to give the mental support of a varied diet. We heard on the recent Joe Rogan podcast with Elon Musk, that the explorers will need to set up food growing tents to get the. To perhaps step too far, this concept was also treated in the film "The Martian" featuring Matt Damon with the lone survivor of the story setting up a farm to last until pick up later.
On earth, farming in constrained spaces has recently taken a steep uptick as residents in cities start to demand fresh vegetables, and the market for high value locally grown greens has developed.
Vertical farming, as it is also known, could be a key step for the martian crews to establish their growing beds for food production. In a vertical farm, the operator uses a marginal space, typically a shipping container on some unused concrete lot, or underground, in previously disused rail bridges. Here, using hydroponics and the strong UV light from the sun, or grow lamps to boost light energy to the plants, the crew can establish food production.
By adopting more or less of the vertical farming techniques, the crew can generate more food from the footprint that their station allows, without worrying about exposing the crew to excessive UV light, or releasing lots of thermal radiation through uninsulated window spaces. A significant variety of foods can be grown in this way. Citing the Urban Baron: "extensive crop suitability including lettuce, bok choy, kale, basil, oregano, fennel, mint, parsley, chives, thyme, lemongrass, tarragon".
After eating nothing but space food for 6 months, the crew would certainly look forward to a real meal made with herbs and real leaves, home-grown on Mars.
Materials for Construction
The crew will also engage with Martian geology and starting to analyse and understand the material available around 'home base'. The crew will likely not be equipped in the first instance with high grade smelting equipment to enable them to fabricate new materials from locally sourced raw material.
However in-situ-resource-utilisation (ISRU) is thought to be a key part of the philosophy of future space and inter-planetary missions. Where many of us hear stories of asteroids chock-full of rare and expensive metals, planets with diamond rain, alcohol clouds, etc, we mentally jump to bringing that stuff back home.
Images of NASA concept use cases for pre-preparation and In Situ Resource Utilisation. In these example, autonomous robots are mining and preparing habitats from raw moon materials. Credit: NASA
However, in most cases, any resources found will be used to further the mission locally.
This will certainly be the case on Mars. Sending material back, save for small rock samples, will not be feasible or high priority. Getting to do the work locally, importing equipment from Earth will be higher likelihood, purely because of the 2 year lag time to get the equipment back.
Focus on the Sustainability
Once these bases are established: food, water, habitat, power-plant (solar farm), propellant/ oxidiser plant, the chaos of establishing a new colony can start to be considered reined in.
At the point of the end of the first 2 year cycle on Mars, the crew can consider to come home, to be replaced by a relief crew of fresh scientists, engineers, etc. Leaving their equipment, and the new crew bringing their own equipment, the new crew now has another layer of redundancy because with their craft, they can bring new types of equipment, to build on the foundation established for them - regular and stable power supply, food and water, transport system possibly.
By virtue of having these bases established, the relief crew can also spend a higher proportion of their time developing the fledgeling colony, building-out the science, fabrication facilities, leveraging excess propellant and oxygen to start feeding fabrication/ smelting facilities to prepare structures.
This next middle-term priority will be covered more in the next article.
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