Those who stayed up late (or never went to sleep) also experienced a rare temporal event – the 2:00am time change for daylight savings time! Strange – one moment it’s 2:00am, and the next it’s 3:00am, raising thoughts of Kim Stanley Robinson’s 36-minutes of dead-time each evening on Mars (but in reverse). Fortunately, better Martian timekeeping systems will save future settlers from the hassle of dealing with frozen clocks.

Michael Rudis started the presentations by describing the recent decision to “move the settlement” from Chandor Chasma (Valles Marineris) to Terra Meridiani (near the site of the Opportunity rover). While generating a lot of discussion and questions, the decision to move the settlement illustrated two important lessons: 1) We need far more on-the-ground scouting of other locations on Mars before those locations can become viable settlement sites; 2) Sometimes, while staring deeply into the face of the unknown, you just have to make a command decision. All future base planning will assume a location of Terra Meridiani because it’s the best choice, given what we know about Mars at this point in time.

The various structures within a Mars settlement will require a range of construction techniques. In general, modular is better. Mobile garages with truss systems and very little locked-down foundation would provide “good to go anywhere” shelter, protecting vehicles and construction materials from dust contamination. Other useful base modules include cargo containers, manufacturing hangars, STNs (Six-way Transition Nodes), FTNs (Four-way Transition Nodes, and HALSIPHs (Horizontal Axis Linear Surface Inflatable Pop-out Habitat) – single-story structures with pop-out modules and airlocks on both ends. The cylindrical HALSIPH modules resemble an Airstream camper, with a small kitchen and restrooms.

Early rough sketch of four STNs (each with three skylights) linking four HALSIPHs to a mobile garage (bottom) and four construction hangars (left).

A “lifeboat” strategy might replace the internal “ladder structure” of the Gen-I settlement. If primary Transition Nodes connecting various modules fail (fire, depressurization, etc), settlers would use portable HALSIPHs or pressurized rovers as temporary survival shelters. Obviously this approach requires access to the surface. The ladder structure or a ring/loop design might still prove useful in the sections of the settlement that are buried under meters of regolith.

The Gen-II architecture requires more development and better visualization. Artistic drawings would help, but the critical issues of survivability and redundancy (above) might force a general redesign. We also need a clear delineation between buried modules and sections that are open to the surface. Other open questions include the orientation of the permanent habitats and power generation facilities. The goal for the overall habitable floor-plan area remains 5000 square-meters (with an appropriate cubic-meter volume equivalent).

However, in terms of data necessary for efficient mining operations, the Opportunity rover has barely begun to scratch the surface (literally). The rover has offered tantalizing hints about mineral compositions, but a full site survey is required before full-scale mining operations could begin. Orbiters and rovers cannot conduct an adequate survey; we need experienced human geologists on the ground with maximum mobility, in-situ analysis equipment, and the ability to gather precise core samples and react to serendipitous findings.

A.  A dedicated (several years) Meridiani Exploration Vehicle (MEV) – an exploration vehicle dedicated to exploring for “economic concentrations” of minerals such as: hematite spherules – hydrated minerals (jarosite – kieserite and hopefully gypsum) – plagioclase – clay – olivine, etc. at distances of hundreds of kilometers from the immediate community area.

 

B.  A dedicated crew of 2 exploration mining-geologists to discover and delineate “economic deposits” of our required resources.

 

C.  An MEV and two mining exploration geologists capable of traveling over minimally rough terrains for several hundred kilometers, many days away from the community site (rarely traveling in straight lines). We assume that we will be able to plot our vehicular courses (Mars-GPS?) and can communicate at all times with the community site. The vehicle must provide “isolated” living conditions for a few days at a time, and it must allow multiple human entries and exits from the vehicle to collect and store samples (up to several 100 kg of samples per commodity).

 

D. Vehicle equipment, including a microscope, cameras, scales, magnetometer (metal detector), equipment to hand-crush samples, screens for separation and sizing, magnets, rock hammers, sledge hammers, chisels, rakes, a small rock saw, a small metal saw, large cloth or plastic bags (several hundred) to collect enough weight of samples to test production methods at the base, etc.

 

E. Human-enabled “ground truth.” Unfortunately, finding the acceptable, economical mining sites and transportation routes from the mining area to the community processing plants cannot be done “in a timely manner” from space nor by robots (existing or planned).

 

F.  A small, mobile MEV. The MEV would not be “a home or office for the mining outpost.” That type of vehicle would be too big for exploration. Once there is enough work to establish a final mining site for one commodity, the MEV would be available for further exploration of other commodities.

 

G.  At least one rescue vehicle at the home base capable of driving long distances to retrieve or repair a stranded exploration vehicle.

 

H.  Crew living quarters at the home settlement that will be vacant for days at a time.

 

I.  A pressurized “garage” at the home settlement for maintaining vehicles that have been subjected to the harshest terrains and re-outfitting the vehicles for the next outing.

Michael Busch presented an in-depth (no pun intended) study of water sources near the Terra Meridiani base site. Ice, water aquifers, and hydrated minerals are the three main places for water to hide on Mars. Estimates of equatorial water and ice depth vary widely, but a conservative estimate places pure ice deposits at least 1 km below the surface, with water aquifers 10’s of km deep. A Gen-II mining team has no known, practical way of reaching these depths. The presence of near-surface deposits of ice, perhaps in cold-traps like lava tubes, cannot be assumed within this study until teams of ground explorers verify and survey them.