I was beginning to
think we had run out of ideas, but it turns out I was wrong. So, how about an ‘ice
home’? They’ve been used in the Arctic Circle for centuries, haven’t they? But,
the ones proposed for Mars are a bit more complicated than igloos. They are,
once again, inflatable, but... in the shape of a doughnut. The body of the
doughnut would be where people would live and work.
The ‘skin’ of the
doughnut would be a double-wall, flexible, of course. The interior wall would
hold in the air and provide the space for people to occupy. The space between
the 2 flexible skins would be filled with water and allowed to freeze. That outer
wall and the ice under it would keep the radiation out, and protect the inner
sections from any nasty weather Mars can produce.
Despite recent
findings of water of Mars, it is not nearly as omnipresent as it is on Earth,
so where does that water come from? No, it won’t be shipped from Earth. What
they would ship from Earth is robots with the equipment to find, mine, and
transport the water to the shelter area so it could be melted, pumped inside
the walls and allowed to re-freeze.
Presumably, this store
of water could serve a second purpose; that of being turned into fuel when it
was time to leave. To me, this seems counter-productive. It assumes the people
will be leaving, abandoning their colony to return to Earth. Even if they were ‘only’
there for a shift of a couple years, wouldn’t more people be expected to arrive
to take over, like is done with the space station? On the other hand, keeping
options open can be a very good idea.
Of course, with proper
timing, those robots could be sent out to mine more water to replace what’s
been turned into rocket fuel. You’d just need to make sure the equipment doesn’t
get clogged with sand in the meantime.
The biggest drawback I
see to this design is that it could take 400 days to fill and freeze the shell.
So those robots had better know what they are doing in order to get it ready
before humans start arriving.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/a-new-home-on-mars-nasa-langley-s-icy-concept-for-living-on-the-red-planet
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