1000Planets, Inc Mars Settlement Proposal

Living on mars

Health Care On Mars

Habitat Goals: 50 to 70 degrees F. 1 bar atmosphere with earth like composition. CELSS type recycling system.

In addition to various emergency medical (first aid) kits here is some information about the Crew Health Care System. A rack called the CHeCS rack or Crew Health Care Systems rack. CHeCS is broken into 3 subsystems: Counter Measures System, Environmental Health System, and Health maintenance System.

The Counter Measures system consists primarily of exercise equipment used to maintain physical health-- we use TVIS (Treadmill with Vibration Isolation System), IRED (Interim Resistive Exercise Device), CEVIS (Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation System), and other equipment for monitoring heart rate, blood pressure/electrocardiogram, medical equipment computer etc. In other words, we have a treadmill, bike, and resistive equipment for maintaining upper and lower body strength.

The Environmental Health system monitors air quality, radiation, noise level, water, and other things related to the atmosphere. Hardware used to monitor those parameters include: a Total Organic Carbon Analyzer, Water Sampler and Archiver, Water Microbiology kit, Surface Sampler Kit, Microbial Air Sampler, Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (atmospheric radiation recorder), Personal Dosimeters (personal radiation monitors), Radiation Area Monitors, Compound Specific Analyzers (Combustion Products), Sound Level Meters,...etc.

The Health maintenance System provides preventative, diagnostic and therapeutic care (including patient transport capability). There is an Ambulatory Medical Pack with first aid type contents (Band-Aids, oral meds, injectables). There is a Contamination Protection Kit (CPK) for cleaning up chemical or toxic spills. The Advanced Life Support Pack provides cardiac life support and trauma life support capabilities. The CHeCS rack has a Crew Medical Restraint System used to hold down a patient, eye wash equipment, data interfaces, oxygen ports, etc.

The Great Outdoors

The complex that we will make with the habitat modules will be about 5 acres. There will be a small lake about .5 acre that will hold about .25 of the available water that we brought with us. The other acreage will be planted with grasses, crops, and some type of fruit trees. There will be outdoor recreation areas in different places as well as quite areas.

To be able to live a sufficiently good life we must have a variety of foodstuffs. What will these be? All animals will be kept in the outdoors but some of the foodstuffs will be grown within the habitats. A robust Settlement is successful at Agriculture and Aqua-culture. Success implies a high level of recycling. Recycling implies that you have an ecosystem in balance. So we need to establish an ecosystem, in fact we need it to have multiple nutrient paths to prevent overall failure due to isolated species failures.

The problem with the CELSS system is it covers a lot of area and needs a lot of energy. I am thinking that the food/O2 side of the process will be about 8 acres. The marsh/meadow are another 8 acres, and the pond area about 2 acres, other areas 7 acres. All organic waste will be processed by a bio-digestion system that produces methane gas and ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Liquid effluent and sludge will be added to the fields as fertilizer and water. Gray-water to food fields. We use solar energy for the plants.

There maybe too much radiation on the surface of Mars to grow plants. Finding solid information is difficult work. The bottom line is that we do not know squat about actual conditions on the Martian Surface in regards to damage to human flesh. I think we just pick a number that seems to provide very good protection for our long-term settlers and see if we can afford it. The canopy will be constructed of the most radiation protective, opaque material available.

Hydroponics Systems inside the dwelling habitats

While the types of plants have not been determined, it has been determined that the rate of growth determines the CO2 conversion rate. An average conversion rate of 8 micromoles per square meter of leaf area, per second was used. This means that to support 1 . 75Kg person, 11.6 square meters of leaf area are needed. The following assumptions are used: Plants are provided with 160 watts/meter of light 24/hrs/day. The plants are in one of four stages, seeds, seedlings, sprouts, or mature. One square meter of ground will provide 3 square meters of leaf. Temperature is optimum for the type of plants and is stable. 12 cm of water is needed per square meter per week. The water supplies nutrients as needed. Air flow is adequate to remove O2 but does not disturb/disrupt plant growth. Air exiting the greenhouse area will have to be dehumidified and excess O2 will have to be removed and stored.

This means that: 4 square meters of floor space are needed per person. 2400 watts of electricity are needed for lighting, if the lights are 80% efficient. The air needs to move at .5 cubic meters/sec. 1200 watts of electricity are needed for ventilation. (1 hp motor) 12 liters of water per sq meter of leaf, per week are needed.

1200 watts of electricity are needed to pump water at the rate of .1 lpm. (1 hp motor)

Water is pumped to tank at top of dome. Gravity pressurizes water system. 2400 watts of electricity are needed to dehumidify the air. 2400 watts of electricity are needed to remove excess O2 from the air. A tank is needed to store excess O2. 2400 watts of electricity are needed to compress the O2 into the tank.

Total electrical: 120 Kw/hrs for 100 people. Let us put that 5 MW Nuclear generator from Boeing down on the surface right away. How much does that thing mass? Maybe that is our HLLV payload size calculation right there.

Let us also have fuel cells. Let us make water LH2 and LOX with the excess electricity in the early days and store up a bunch of emergency energy. The fuel cells could be run just enough for proper maintenance in the early days (pre-settlers) then cranked up later as required, possibly for artificial lighting for flora and fauna production. Maybe the fuel cells are distributed amongst the various hardware that lands on Mars — everything has on-board power via emergency fuel cells, and you network them to provide highly reliable backup power. Maybe a sandstorm shuts down the nuke for some reason — you survive on stores and emergency generators. So I am thinking the early ISPP (CH4 / O2) equipment also has fuel cells, even if relatively small.

Lastly there will be climate control requirements. I am going to assume that most of the requirements will be heating requirements as the surface of Mars is very cold. But, lacking the ability to correctly calculate the heat produced by all the equipment in this 5 acre parcel, I am going to say that enough heat is produced to satisfy all heating requirements, to temperatures of 65 degrees Fahrenheit or close.

The first Mars space elevator.

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