A few comments I would like to make:
RobS wrote:
Architecture on Mars will be shaped by several key factors: materials, manpower, and conditions.
1. Wood will not be available, but plastic, steel (stainless, made from meteorites), sheet rock (made from sulphate deposits), concrete, glass, and bricks will be. Aluminum will be rare and expensive until a major plant to extract it can be made. Copper should be readily available; it's often associated with basalt, and basalr is common on Mars.
2. Manpower will be scarce and expensive. As much work as possible will be done in a shirtsleeve environment, NOT outside in spacesuits. Enclosed and pressurized construction areas also avoid extreme temperature conditions and other environmental hazards (peroxide-covered dust, for example). As much work as possible will be done in an automated assembly line fashion (the bigger the base, the more an assembly line can be adopted). Modular home construction on Earth may be a model for much construction on Mars, with entire airtight, wheeled housing and work modules ("trailers") completed in a factory and hauled outside through an airlock. Tunneling will be kept to an absolute minimum unless large, robotic tunnel machines are developed and imported (we don't have these machines on Earth now!). Tunnels are inherently hazardous and can't be pressurized until they're finished. They're also inherently explosive under certsin conditions; imagine a tunnel leaking air into the surrounding rock for months and months that suddenly depressurizes as a result of an accident. The air pressure in the surrounding rock will suddenly rush back in, blasting rocks and debris into the tunnel and possibly precipitating collapses.
Isn't the point of having a Mars Colony so that people can go outside and explore. If people stay inside their offices and shuffle papers, what is the point of having them on Mars? If I wanted to be a Janitor, so I could sweep the halls of the Mars Base, Should NASA pay to sent me to Mars? If I wanted to be a computer programmer, or an Administrative assistant, Should NASA pay to send me to Mars?
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3. The Martian atmosphere provides adequate protection against solar radiation and micrometeorites, but not against cosmic rays. Thus buildings will need a meter of rock or loose dirt over them to provide radiation shielding. They should be airtight and in turn be inside airtight enclosures, providing double protection against depressurization. If designed in this fashion, they can be surrounded by greenspaces, which is good for the human spirit.
Water or Ice might work very well for this, it is also transparent and it lets sunshine through
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4. Building design can be anything the inhabitants want, within the constraints of radiation protection and pressurization. I'd build them with large overhangs to reduce exposure to oblique radiation. I'd use flat roofs with gardens on top IF the buildings are within pressurized enclosures; there's no reason to waste the enclosed space with unused roofs. Pyramids are the worst shape, where space use and radiation protection are concerned. Greek-style pillars are unnecessary; if they're needed for decoration, they may be made of plastic! If one were to build with pillars, the pillars in lower Martian gravity would be thinner than on Earth, so the proportions would be different. It is likely, as Zubrin suggests, that much of Marsian architecture will have a mall-like feel, with large windowless spaces opening onto corridors with skylights. The exception will be construction inside domes/bubbles, which will open sideways to open spaces with windows.
One idea would be to lay down mats of astroturf on the Martian surface outside, then you could have a garden or artificial bushes, flowers and other things to make the outside Martian surface look nice and pleasant, then inside the dome you could continue the illusion by growing real plants under a dome covered with transparent ice. Make sure the Ice is as transparent as possible. I think if the water you made Ice out of was really clean, you could see right through it just like it was glass, and ice makes an effecive radiation shield. Perhaps the ice dome should be wrapped in plastic so that parts of it that melt won't sublime away.
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5. Very large enclosures can be made "open floor." A very large bubble,with embedded cables, would be manufactured in a factory. Meanwhile, pile drivers will drive long nickel-steel stakes into the ground; pile drivers can be automated and require very little human supervision. The piles can be hollow; once they are in place the enclosure's embedded cables are dropped down into the hollow piles, then the hollow is filled with concrete to anchor the enclosure in place. The enclosure is initially pressurized with Martian air, which will rapidly leak downward into the ground, heating the regolith if the Martian air is heated. Once the ground has been warmed down several meters, water can be added to the enclosure. It will freeze up intersticies in the regolith deep down, allowing the enclosure to hold pressure more effectively. This system will require very large quantities of water; perhaps half a tonne per square meter. But if a Mars base is extracting large quantities of ground ice using spare reactor heat and extracting deuterium from the water, it'll have the water. Enclosures 50 to 100 meters wide--or more--and a kilometer long would be possible.
-- RobS
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