What will city and urban life be like on MARS ?
source Bloomberg
Colonizing the red planet has suddenly become more realistic.
In October, the Mars Society's virtual 2021 gathering was addressed by an international group of minds from around the world. In today's environment of low-cost space flights and William Shatner trips to Mars, it was a reminder that the prospect of colonizing the planet has suddenly become more realistic.
What would you do if you arrived on Mars and realized the majority of your skill set was useless? How would criminals be punished? What does safe sex imply in a low-gravity, low-oxygen environment? Should there be a Catholic diocese on Mars?
Humans to be sent on Mars within the next two decades.
Putting boots on the dusty Martian soil, or regolith, feels closer than ever to many people, if not as close as anything feasible that would take a six-month, 140 million-mile flight. NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX have stated their intentions of sending humans to Mars within the next two decades.
That's prompted a growing number of city planners, architects, designers, astrophysicists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers to start churning out images of what Martian cities and homes might look like.
Mars is a far better choice for sustainable city than Earth's moon
Yes, many scientists have suggested that whatever water it has is trapped in subterranean reservoirs.
The atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide, with a thickness of just one tenth of an inch. Solar radiation exposure is greater. However, the regolith is rich in nutrients and has a low level of toxicity. Iron, aluminum, and other metals are often found in ore deposits.
The gravitational pull of Mars is only 38% of that on Earth, making it easier to lift big items. “It’s kind of like an architect's dream,” says Bjarke Ingels, founding and creative director of the architecture firm BIG.
A lot that must happen before any martian first sustainable city
Even after a successful landing, there is still a lot that must happen before any martian first sustainable city may be established on the red planet, even beyond the enormous task of bringing a human safely to the ground. Lucy Berthoud, a space systems engineering professor at the University of Bristol, says it will most likely necessitate mankind establishing a base outside of ISS's orbit.
Scientists will also need to master the technology necessary to extract oxygen and water from Mars' CO2 using in situ resource utilization, which is part of an approach to commandeering available resources. “That's a big help with breathing, among other things,” Berthoud adds.
“I would say yes as long as they have the resources—human resources, but also money—available to do it.” “If someone asks if I can complete it the next day, I will reply yes,” Berthoud explains.
It's unethical at best and dishonorable at worst to spend millions to build a sustainable city on Mars
Skeptics, on the other hand, claim that this is precisely the problem: it's unethical at best and dishonorable at worst to spend millions of dollars to leave Earth when we have a duty to limit carbon emissions and maintain planet. The most ardent advocates for spread argue, nevertheless, that the red planet may serve as a proving ground for eco-friendly
In their view, Earth's cities would be even more sustainable and eco-friendly if they were designed there. They feel that Martian settlers will have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to build more just, equitable, and plentiful societies.
After all, they'll have centuries of experience to draw on. Guillem Anglada-Escudé, an astrophysicist who was one of the key scientific figures behind Nüwa, a Martian settlement to create the first sustainable city conceived by the think tank SONet and the architecture and design studio Abiboo, sees settlement as a collaborative effort.
We want to try to bring as much as we can for human settlement
“We hold it in our power to begin the world anew,” as Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society, put it. “We want to try to bring as much of the best as we can and leave as much of the worst behind.”
“There's a paradox at play: every 10 or 15 years, we hear about this new technology that will eliminate scarcity, lack, and inequality,” says Fred Scharmen, the book's author.
Modular system of inflatable enclosed domes
Some, on the other hand, have shown potential for improving things here on Earth. Interstellar Lab is developing a modular system of inflatable enclosed domes that may be used to grow flowers, vegetables, and invertebrates in hostile situations. They could one day assist feed Martian settlers; for now Interstellar is taking reservations from companies interested in using them on
The requirements of Martian settlement for the first sustainable city —mass-producing modular housing, developing infrastructure without depending on fossil fuels, and creating self-sustaining systems that use local resources—are all terrestrial necessities. There's no sense going to Mars if we don't look after ourselves. We'll have nowhere to return to if we don't look after ourselves now.
Nüwa project
This first sustainable city , built on the ruins of a mythical city named for a goddess who in Chinese mythology cast humans out of yellow clay and protected the world, is located in Tempe Mensa, which is a wide area of Martian cliffs and canyons. It is seen as a growing capital that is shielded from radiation by the rocky surroundings.
Tempe Mensa's Nüwa, a popular branch of modern astrology. Alfredo Munoz, the creator of Abiboo, believes that between 2035 and 2065, when Earth's and Mars' orbits are closer together than they have been in hundreds of years, is an excellent moment for settlement missions.
A “Green Dome,” a truly enormous man-made park that imitates natural settings on Earth.
“A city isn't built by the urban planner,” Munoz explains. “It's created by people who live in it. First and foremost, you need some foundations, don't you think? You'll need some homes with a river and resources. And then it spreads from there.”
Mars Dune Alpha
The 'Iconic and BIG' habitat project is being funded by NASA. A 3D printer built the prototype at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, using Lavacrete, a cementitious mixture with the appearance and color of Martian regolith. A maze of tiny rooms for eating, leisure, and sleeping lies beneath the ribbed dome above. Starting
The project's primary aims are twofold: learning how to build a home in the first sustainable city on another world and how to live in one. The long-term goal is to deploy a 3D printer to Mars so that it can produce infrastructure automatically. “It's like the black diamond of building projects,” Icon's Ballard says about the Deep End challenge
A 3D-printed Martian habitat is shown here. Because they allow builders to alter dimensions on the fly and build sturdier protections from radiation, temperature swings, and micro-meteorites, 3D-printed habitats are preferable to metal or inflatable ones. According to Ballard,
BioPods
Interstellar Lab's inflatable domes are meant to be pathogen-free ecospheres—self-contained greenhouses sealed off from the air and fitted with sensors to control temperature, pressure, and humidity.
Inspiration Mars, a private company based in Culver City, California, has received NASA's Deep Space Food Challenge and plans to send a tiny pod into low-Earth orbit within the next year. The goal is to transport pods to a lunar station and eventually to Mars after that.
In a Martian EBIOS (Experimental Bioregenerative Station), two pods for plant cultivation, one for water and waste treatment, and one for habitat, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be processed by the domes. “When it comes to which plants can grow, technically no one knows for sure because there are no plants on Mars"
A BioPod station in rural France, with the climates of each pod tailored to different plants. Vanilla and flower cultivation has proved successful, according to Belvisi. Customers in the cosmetics and agricultural industries have been preselling them for $200,000 before they go on sale to the general public.