A SF book I read back in the 1950s, "Bubbles in the Sky" included living spaces that were enclosed by spherical "balloons" made of 5 or 6 layers of self-healing plastic film. Besides being self-healing, the layers were sealed together every few feet to form offset bubbles. So if a micrometoroid struck, each bubble that it passed thru would collapse, and the layers would cover the hole and seal against it. These bubbles started out as habitation space for construction workers building the first space station. Overtime they got "customized" by the people living in them, and gradually became mostly self-sustaining, using algae gardens to process the air and produce oxygen. Some workers became unable to work but could notvreturn to gravity due to health causes. So they became a rather anarchic second society next to the official space station. Over the decades since about 1980 I have tried to find any reference to this book, without success. I can picture the cover illustration in my mind. This might have been one of those "double feature" books, with two novellas back to back.
Hybrid approaches certainly make a lot of sense to me! Tons of habitat underground, and surface domes for parks, farms, and light exposure. Can't go wrong with light tubes and skylights too!
I don't think surface dwellings will be necessary or desired. Because we won't be sending humans, we will be sending transhumans. Like the humanoid cylons on Battlestar Galactica reboot. You can just use your BMI to imagine you are outside.
@@jtjames79Don't you think the transhumans have had enough with just trying to figure out what sex they are?? And now we're going to send them to a desolant planet where the green little creatures may not have a sex at all. I think we're setting us up for disaster
Na, land your ships and live in them. It's economical and doesn't promote the weakness of creature comfort. You could allow light in through non imaging collectors to supplement lamps. Space exploration is a weeding out course. Nothing romantic about it. It's a hard dangerous job.
I can't express enough how grateful I am for your channel. Your videos have helped me understand complex scientific concepts in an easily digestible way
@@isaacarthurSFIA thank you! The only access is through underground roads that lead out to the surface. However, once a civil war is taking place on the planet, these roads are taken by rebels. I utilise the problems of having a domed city (how burning fires are slowly turning the dome black, the rebels gassing the tunnels causing them to leak back out into the city, etc). Which are many! But the anti-radiation aspect of a domed, crater city make sense - when there isn't war.
Nice. You should have a small group of people who live in their own private domes outside the city and maybe even some people who build cubes instead of domes just to be contrary. Think of it like Flordia but on Mars.
The caldera of Pavonis Mons is right on the equator. The south rim is dead nuts 0 North. It makes an ideal space port. The west slope is a relatively straight grade ramp. Lines up as a mass driver. Extensive lava tubes radiate out from Pavonis. Downhill to the east leads to the Noctis Labyrinth and the Marinaris Valley. The caldera is above the altitude of dust storms.
I have 3 questions: 1. Is the air breathable under the dome? is it air tight? 2. Would this qualify as a "megastructure"? 3. Why the hell are they fighting a WAR? That is what I do not get about stories like this, if mankind would come together as a world and COOPERATE with each other to the extent of populating another planet then logic dictates that conflicts would have to end (like in Star Trek) and if we were not past silly war squabbles as a species then there is no way we would be able to advance that much. Its a stupid story idea. 4. Can I ask the name of the book? I am curious?
Love your videos ! Domes however are a big big challenge. If you go for roughly 15psi plus a 50% safety margin, and add 2psi for a relief valve setting you get an ultimate load case of 24.5 psi. The stresses from this on a large diameter structure are simply enormous even with large thicknesses of far off novel materials (nearly an order of magnitude improvement in mechanical properties, especially damage tolerance, is probably required)
Don't be so realistic about it they're not thinking of all the small details that you provided They are just thinking about how neat it would be... In other words they are just dreaming about foolishness!
You are quite right of course. Its just that it would be good to be more science and less fiction ! And here is a shocker for you .. there have been no materials breakthroughs in 50 years. Lots of incremental improvements and refinements but nothing fundamentally new that has got out of the lab !! We still cant make a glass screen for a cell phone that wont crack 😂😂
ISS gets by fine with 10-12 psi. Certain agricultural applications might require a 10 lb PARTIAL PRESSURE of N2, but plants don't need oxygen. You don't need a minimum of 15 to breathe. Apollo astronauts breathed 5 psi O2 all the way to the Moon and back. Sea level has 15 psi one third oxygen, but Denver and Nairobi have a lot less.
@@digitalnomad9985 true but the ISS occupants are in the top 1 percent of the population fitness wise. Cabin altitude in aircraft have been reducing over time because the incidence of thrombosis etc have been slowly rising amongst the general population that are flying. The lesson is the further you move away from a nominal sea level pressure the higher the medical risks.
@@digitalnomad9985 Plants require a lot less oxygen than we do and would actually be more productive if the partial pressure of oxygen was (100 millibars) about half of what is normal for us. Run the carbon dioxide level up to about what is now on Earth (0.04 millibars). Plus about 200 millibars nitrogen, for fire suppression and keep certain plants happy. That gives a dome pressure of 300 millibars or about 0ne third of normal sea level pressure on Earth. People live and work at altitudes where the partial pressure of oxygen is less than 100 millibars. Most people from Earth will have to get used to the lower oxygen partial pressure. People from the Peruvian or Tibetan plateaus would not need to acclimate to the lower oxygen levels. An added bonus, when suit up to work outside can drop the nitrogen level to 100 millibars, without having to send time prebreathing straight oxygen to prevent nitrogen bubbles forming in your blood. That means you will not have to work as much against the suit pressure.
Another case one might use a dome is for camping. Imagine for a moment, a Mars colony built on the surface or under ground. Depending on the set up, you could have either light pollution or a rock roof preventing you from seeing the full night sky and you can't just go outside lay down a tarp and look up at the sky... i mean you can but you got a space suit on so it won't be comfortable. On Earth along many hiking trails there are shelters. The Appalachian trail has about 260 shelters scattered along the entire length of the 2,190 mile. One shelter every 8.5 miles. There are also mountain refuge shelters giving hikers a roof and fire place to stay out of a blizzard and warm up from the cold. Some even have spice shelves to season up your food. So imagine building a shelter for space campers? You put on your space suit, grab an oxygen and battery pack designed for long walks, some food, extra water, and get marching. The shelter would be a dome with an airlock. A place to get warm, take off your suit, and get a good night sleep while looking up at the night sky of a martian night. It should feature that same breach sealing system, a battery, monitoring system, and radio leading back to home. Maybe some sound proofing to get that real lonely feel out on the martian surface looking up at the galaxy. That would be an experience. Now that i think about it, the Apollo moon landings were just very expensive camping trips with a failure to "leave no trace" and i don't think you have done a space camping episode, yet.
The repair panel that is a drone made me chuckle. Where is my hammer? *hammer drone zips into the scene.* Heck just make everything, every piece of it also a drone, nuts and bolts, all of it. Have everything zip around like the sorcerers apprentice cartoon.
What may be the most important is bringing industry as well as science. Even if the industry is a shovel, the mass issue is the sole most difficult part, and starting building with native materials as soon as possible is probably the single most important thing we can do as a species.
That's why I keep saying that Mars will be the Chicago of the inner solar system. As long as you're willing to wait, things like sending water and gases from Mars to the Moon is cheaper than sending it from Earth.
True. Industry infrastructure is needed foremost at building a working settlement and AI robots will be very useful to do a lot of maintenance and building it
The low gravity's and other worldly industrial goods is going to be huuge success, you guys need to see the super high end quality of fiber glass they can made in space!
An inflatable tetrahedron is particularly good at plugging triangular holes. They are quite off-the-shelf in boat racing. Like round manholes, the shape makes a difference when you're making dome segments and skylights that might become holes.
Domes aren't necessary. You could have one window with mirrors around it and then amongst several options you could have fiber optics transporting some of that light to different places or just a dispersion lens array inside an underground dome.
“Panzer Glass”, “Transparent Aluminum” & other materials can provide significant protection, and the reduced gravity means we could have an insulating layer of water (15 cm) between 2 layers of a dome. And, we could always have an extra outer layer of protective material on the dome.
Great video as always Isaac! It's extra topical for me too as I just got a new book in the mail on the topic lol, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's book: A City On Mars. The book takes a harsh view of space colonization in the near term, which I generally agree with (the most I imagine in the next century is our first permanent Moon Base which will slowly but surely be put to work building the components we need for proper colonization programs in the future), but I still think it's a great read for anyone interested in the future of humanity in outer space as it goes in depth on a lot of the challenges and concerns pertaining to our colonization goals. I am also glad you talked about multi-dome setups, I have always thought that having a sequence of domes within domes makes more sense as it would be an effective way for people to get away with cruder and lower cost construction techniques. It even makes sense from a historical colonization standpoint as odds are as the colonies get bigger you will probably have smaller earlier settlement domes get covered in larger domes as colonies increase their industrial and economic capacity.
Happy ArThursday! Carl Sagan's COSMOS played a significant role during uncertain times. People need something to believe in or the future stops getting managed.
Solution : triple layered dome, with the lower 2 layers holding 1 meter of water. Layer1 - vacuum -layer 2 - water + hydrogel - layer 3 If the outer layer is breached, nothing happens. If the middle layer is breached you are still protected by the hydrogel layer, which will be easily noticed. You only get a problem if the 3 layers are breached.
Domes are so vulnerable to damage, and attack, they would need to have an extreme ability to mitigate damage and self repair. Everyone will need their own personal P-Suit of the "Have Space Suit, Will Travel - R.A Heinlein" type
I'd say more like the P-suits in "the moon is a harsh mistress", and "the rolling stones" - as minimal as you can get away with, adding sensors, armor, and extra bottles as conditions and finances require.
Hey, thanks Isaac, another thought-provoking episode. Your ideas got me thinking along this line: okay, instead of hauling up the parts for the domes, haul up the factories to make the parts on site. No wait, haul up the diggers and so forth to deal with the site and make the factories. No, wait, haul up the tools we can use to make the diggers and so forth to allow us to deal with the site and make the factories. No, wait, haul up the minimum possible foundry parts and tools - use those to process local materials into the actual tools needed to make the diggers and... That's as far as I got...
Isaac, did you ever get the chance to go to the Four Seasons Golf Center before it closed in 2017? It was down south of you in Whitehall and had a massive inflatable dome, I presume to keep stray golf balls from getting off the property. I remember it holding up pretty well against the elements but they had to use industrial fans 24/7 to keep it inflated.
melt large amounts of ice with reflectors, spray sprung structures with water from the inside - ice as building material be self sealing and give vast structures in no time give everyone 9m diameter luxury apartments, make river-like lakes for indoor walks, seafood and o2 algae, waterlocks as airlocks make living easy (boiloff from icemelt be atmospheric pressure and rocket fuel works as batteries )
Here's an idea: An inner high pressure dome, outer low pressure (just above Martian) dome. Reclaim gasses that leak, by just pumping it back in. The outer dome won't leak much, as it hasn't got much pressure difference to force the air out of it. Also, this dome would be great as on outer wear layer, that is more easily replaceable.
@@michaelstreeter3125 They make a significant difference in heat loss and gain, though. We got a window broken in a storm and made the replacement double-glazed, and noticed a significant improvement in the heat retained overnight in winter and leaking in during summer. That's just from about 25% of the window area in the living room, by the way. If we ever get the rest done, it'll be even better.
To be the 1st to set up mars for the rest of us would be the biggest heroes ever. The chance to get up there, mess up and die is scary crap. Love your work Issac.
Having lived and worked in Toronto for 35 years I think the idea of domes, or some sort of surface structure, connected by tunnels is the most realistic expectation. Downtown Toronto has the PATH system which covers a fairly large area and expands every time a new building is added or renovated. There is something awesome about walking through an underground and then coming out into a space lit by sunlight. The idea of the spinning dome city was interesting too. It is quite conceivable with existing technology. We already have rotating restaurants, and I have worked with rotating stages. Project it a few years and technologies ahead and it is quite conceivable. I could also see a class structure developing around it, after a while, of those Martians who grew up in that environment, and those who, for any number of reasons besides economics, did not get to live in those places.
I just upload the transcript verbatim, and let youtube handle syncing with it, it usually matches me word for word except the occasional and accidental on-the-fly change of word like 'the' to 'a' while recording.
@@digitalnomad9985 as I understand a text transcript is uploaded and TH-cam does the rest. I have not asked how SFIA handles translation to many other languages
Honestly, I prefer closed underground habitats to these domes. In theory, lava caves on Mars are large and sturdy enough to accommodate a much larger population - the equivalent of a few dozen to a few hundred domes - while being much easier to build: simply sealing the cave mouths is enough to create a pressurized environment inside. The problem is that we don't know much about the caves yet, something that could be resolved through future missions.
I'm not a 'glass' dome fan... They have big temperature control issues, not just from surface temperature fluctuations. The dome will harvest solar energy and heat up during the day, then at night it will cool, and the air will contract - so a massive soft bladder is needed to store expanding air, otherwise constant 24/7 heating and cooling is required. These domes are also vulnerable to flying shrapnel, so you can't land or launch ships anywhere near it.... They are radiation exposed and dust cleaning would be energy intensive etc etc I think plants will need to be grown with reflected light, direct light would have too much radiation. So, greenhouses wouldn't be domes, they'd be linear, with a protective roof and reflectors on each side. Mars base rule of thumb: If it doesn't need to go outside, it doesn't....
You could also have screens designed to look like windows projecting a view from outside cameras, this would help people living underground instead of just having skylights.
Mars Local Time. The clock should have the usual 24 hour readout with a time called 'lost time' that comes between 24:00 and 24:01. Helps with clock adjustment for daily and yearly adjustments.
There's an easier shape to transport and offer protection on the surface of Mars than a dome. Regolith could be used to cover over it. Windows would be on the side. Mirrors close to, could help to reflect light inside such a structure.
Putting rotating habitats in Phobos makes more sense than colonizing Mars itself. You could make 1g without going down into a dusty toxic gravity well.
Depending on how humans and other vertebrates do with Martian gravity, and that is a big variable, children might be born and raised in space. Though let's be honest Phobos (literally something like "fright" or "fear") doesn't sound like a family friendly place to start your new life!
My estimation on mars colonization would be starting with inflatable domes. Those would be used as a capstone to an underground habitat, with excavated material used to make a concrete shell around the inflatable to replace it, with continuing excavations used for additional domes. Distant domes I'd expect to be connected by rail and/or highways made by excavating about half the requisite height of traffic and using that material to provide an arched tunnel to provide shelter from Martian weather. Domes on earth, whether enclosed suburban homes or vast city-in-a-dome arcologies, were a big hallmark of retrofuturism, and grace many a cover of classic Popular Science magazines and the like.
The first pair of glasses I got that was polycarbonate ended up as an experiment years, and several pairs of glasses, later. Knowing the stuff was super strong, and being a kid, I smashed the everloving hell out of them to try and break them. The lenses held nicely as expected, but scratched into total opacity. So that cleaning and polishing of polycarbonate is gonna be a pretty important chore.
@@samr.england613 Under the circumstances described, you WOULD NOT be spending 99% of your life "underground," though you will be in a sealed enviroment. And, as a "Boomer," I've already done it. So take your claustrophobia out on someone else.
@@anthonyhargis6855 Haha! Okay Anthony! FYI, I do not suffer from claustophobia, and in fact feel safe and secure in even tight, closed spaces. (Slept in a sub-basement bedroom once, and slept like a baby.)
@@anthonyhargis6855 But my point has nothing to do with any Mars colonists suffering from claustrophobia. It has to do with the reality of daily life were people to try to live and exist on Mars.
@@samr.england613 Claustrophobia IS the reality of "life on Mars," as a colonist. There will be no place "to go." "Help" will be nine months away and privacy will be nonexistant.
I would like more information on the passages for pollinators and birds to pass through the domes. How would this work? They would fly through mars itself or tunnels or what?
I grew up in a cool, mountanous and forrested area with lots of green around. I went to Idaho once and all it was was endless yellow hills everywhere. Drove me so crazy I'll never go back.
I have spin on the inflatable dome. Make it double hulled inflatable and then later fill in the gap with foamcrete or something similar to make it a perminate structure.
Hey... If you infused water with nitrogen under gass presure. And froze it down to liquid Nitrogen level... Would this be viable as to insulate current *warm* superconductors to the point it can cheap enough?
Rotating orbital habitats are still a better idea. Built by robots at a LaGrange Point near the moon, loaded up with all the remote operated heavy equipment needed, and a massive stockpile of supplies & spares, then launched towards Mars or where ever.
I don't know if it's been speculated, but why not build classic castles, but with an overlay of domes. That could have a lot of fun SF and fantasy applications IMO
The problem with allowing a 'leak' would be loss of humidity as well as any much less available nitrogen or argon buffer gas. But you could probably do a reasonably efficient heat/cold exchanger that freezes or liquifies CO2 and eject just that. A good use for the excess waste CO2 (a lot might be absorbed by plants grown for fresh food) would be inflation of a large work chamber to nearly 1 atmosphere, where people could work on large equipment with just warm clothing and an air supply. If kept just below the air pressure of the main hab, you'd only need a couple pressure-sealed doors and a "dust room" for changing out of work clothes in between, as the small amount of air lost wouldn't matter much, and the air pressure difference would keep most dust and CO2 out of the hab.
Fractional distillation is a highly effective method of generating nitrogen for industrial use. The process involves the supercooling of air to its liquefaction point and then distilling its component gases at their various boiling points, no need for taking comets in m8 :)
As for the domes themselves... They should be double paned, whatever the material, and filled with a liquid that becomes expanding foam when exposed to vacuum or air.
Has anyone read the “Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle” manga? That story has the entire planet Mars covered in enormous domes dozens of miles across held up by miles high sky-trees. It makes the planet look like it is covered in giant soap bubbles.
Antarctica will have a million inhabitants before the Moon will. The Moon will have a million before anywhere else. I see no reason that people will go live in an airless, resourceless space far beyond any help over anywhere else right here on this beautiful Earth. Who would want to be in cold dead space when you can walk a beach here with the sun and wind in your face. Fish in the sea and birds in the air. All of this is fun to talk about, but there are countless empty pockets of land, ocean, and underground to live in here before we go out colonizing space. Space is a death trap. I predict it will be many, many millenia before we have a million people anywhere, if ever.
@@bassmanjr100 then you haven't done the math on population growth. It costs too much to send people to the moon and Mars compared to just sending people up. If you can build in zero gravity, you will develop much faster and create an export economy to provide the resources to keep immigrating people
Said it befor will say it again.... pick a mountain range in a good spot, and build under and into the mountain.....Or even into the walls of the BIG canyon ,the view would be worth it,as cloud layer has been seen there at times.
How would you spin a dome centrifuge? Is there a big spindle in the middle? Does it swim? Rails? Id like to hear some of the pros and cons of different designs.
I really hope that .38g is good enough for terran land creatures. The mere thought of having to sleep in an underground centrifuge threatens to give me motion sickness. Domes, however, seem like a no-brainer. I've always been an avid fan of domes for para-terraforming. Mile-wide domes would make great parks. Imagine ecosystems especially designed for 540 acres each, like Biosphere II written large, possibly even connected like adjacent hexagons. Engineering the daily air pressure changes could support a whole side industry alongside dome building. I wonder which view will be of most interest, however, inside with the growing living things, or outside with the beckoning expanses begging to be explored. I can't wait! Of course, it only makes sense to have underground tunnels for sleeping, storage and distribution, and refuge in emergencies. I just wouldn't want to spend most of my time down there.
I don't understand the fixation with domes on Mars, except if you explicitly need sunlight. Domes are a temperature weakpoint, arguably a structural one, and vulnerable to radiation. You can replace sunlight with artificial, and use that above ground space for other things such as solar power generation, storage, parking etc.
Windows are a temp weakpoint. A dome shape minimizes the material needed to enclose a given volume on the surface of a planet, and also minimizes the surface area through which a given volume can lose heat to conduction. You are against surface building, not a shape.
With the low outside pressure couldnt an inflatable, flexible material be held up just by keeping earth pressure atmosphere inside? This would increase the impact resistence of the dome as it could flex to some degree like rock thrown into a hanging curtain.
I would really like a steam programming team to make an orbital colony city builder simulation, maybe where you can buy/build other colonies.... torus, cylinders etc.
The infrastructure to build a dome or inflatable on Mars away from a ship would be enormous. A different type of structure would be a lot easier for on Mars.
Two cons to domes that might not be obvious: 1) After being cooped up inside a dome for months, the wide-open spaces outside begin to look awfully inviting, and a part of your brain starts to question whether the outside is _really_ as dangerous as you have always been taught… 2) The kid who always _always_ loses at hide and seek has just spotted a hiding place no one will ever think to look…
The big problem with domes, in my opinion, is the force created by the air inside wanting to push it off the surface. You'll need a significant foundation and structure holding it down. More like a forest of steel like trees. No way would you want 15 psi with a large dome.
Not if the dome is really a sphere, half underground with a false floor stretched across the equator. But good point, it wouldn't just be a hemisphere resting on the ground. Even a rigid airtight floor would be impractical against normal air pressure-- too much strength required to keep it flat.
don't forget mirrors. you avoid the radiation but get the direct light benefits. Something that just thought off as you mentioned the water bag. Just pressurize the outer/support frame of the dome with waterbased or glue like substance that will push out the broken panel and seal the whole or make it creep on the panel once the pressure drops due to the crack. "self healing system" 😊
I don’t think the diamond windows will work because they cost 4000 at the cheapest on earth. The price of one would be like 4mil a window. Even if the price was a magnitude smaller, it would be 400 thousand
Why can't we have multiple layers of domes with gradually decreasing pressure in successive domes? This would give multiple layers of protection and time to make repairs
The idea that the extra half hour on Mars would be used for sleep instead of squeezing the colonists for more "productivity" makes me want to live there already.
@isaacarthurSFIA Tunnels you say? Wouldn’t it be convenient if we had a space technology manufacturer that is developing a large scale tunnel boring technology, and was also working on the infrastructure to simultaneously build a fleet of heavy lift rockets that could bring hundreds of tons of previously mentioned tunnel manufacturing technology and supplies to mars… oh wait… Thanks Elon.
I've often wondered if we could offset/mitigate the negative affects of the lower gravity by rotating people between the surface and orbit. On the surface they have the diet and exercise regime that offsets the effects but it's merely allowing the long-term negative effects to occur more slowly but in orbit they could exercise and rehabilitate at 1g or potentially even higher and thus life on Mars would be a split between 0.4ish (lets round it and not be pedantic) and 1.0g+ in orbit.
Hybrid approach is the way. People like looking outdoors, We aren't going to mars to just hide in caves. But transparent domes are expensive also. Maybe you'd have dug up regolith covering up 95% of your facility, with 5% being windows. You might also have a few transparent domes as parks connecting to an underground cavern city for most of the residents.
Hey Isaac. You brought up in other videos relating to oxygen procurement through baking it out of the rock. What sort of machinery or general technological concept would be used for that and would that be able to be solar powered?
I’ve been interested in the new ideas floating around about cylindrical habitats instead. Domes suck from an engineering perspective, so you could build a skyscraper and reflect light onto it through the windows. Build up and down at the same time. Low gravity helps there too
Great episode, and you covered a lot of variables. You did put a lot of emphasis on this idea that humans have to have some tropical regularity diurnal intense lighting cycle. That's just not necessarily true. Sami, Innuit, Chukchi, Sandinavians, and northern Canadians etc come from a variety of hereditary lineages, and they do just fine in high latitudes on earth where there is little to no sun for months at a time, and almost continuous but low-level light for months more. Maybe people like that should be screened for as settlers in the first place. I've personally gone for months at a time with no sun nor meaningful day/night cycle, and all it did was feel a bit more relaxing, not having to squint through the glare. In fact, people who live in low light environments and work overnight shifts tend to be more relaxed and easygoing to get along with in general. They wear comfortable clothes, talk softer, and they are slower to take offense, complain less about necessary tasks, and don't go out of their way to make trouble. Gee, that sounds like exactly what you'd want in a space colonist. It's not just about making conditions habitable. It's about who inhabits them. In this case, you get to select for those traits and conditions beforehand.
Why build domes out of a thin shell, when use of clear water ice a meter thick effectively blocks out all forms of dangerous radiation? Use the materials, yeah, but use them to make cases to hold the blocks of clear ice that actually provide the shelter.
This is pre watching: Why would you not be underground? There's no useful amount of sunlight and the atmospheric pressure is too low for wind to be useful. Even if those things were useful, you can just have the utilities sit on the surface and hunker below feet of natural insulation.
I don't think you need to go full innovation with inflatable beachballs or such to replace a leak in a dome. Just have railings on the dome inside of the pannel intersections where you have a robot drive past that can not only clean but bring a spare diamond triangle when there is damage. Either just to seal or full on replacing dome sections. Doesn't even have to be a robot, just a plattform for maintenacne workers would be very low tech. Assuming one can survive that long in a dome with a leak or personale has personal protection gerar.
I'd like to know if any formal research has been done on the requirements and potential to produce a range of useful "plastics" - polyethylene, polycarbonate, or the vast range of other materials, that often incorporate other elements beside H, C, O, Cl, that are present on Mars. It's plausible to think that a wide variety of machines and tools can be fabricated from in situ ingredients. Can a kind of backhoe or caterpillar tractor be made of Martian plastic? Could a drilling rig be made that can penetrate rock? Related - can silicon carbide or tungsten carbide be made on Mars, which is essential for saw teeth, drilling bits, etc.?
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Hopefully someone opens a Dome Depot there so we can repair the domes easily and conveniently
Thank you for this laugh, kind human :)
Dome Depot and Crater-Mart! The best joke of the day. Thank you for this I almost fell out of my chair
Tunnels-R-Us
Dad wants his jokes back
Demented Dave's Dome Depot!
We give your Gashed glass a Perfect polish for bottom bucks!
A SF book I read back in the 1950s, "Bubbles in the Sky" included living spaces that were enclosed by spherical "balloons" made of 5 or 6 layers of self-healing plastic film. Besides being self-healing, the layers were sealed together every few feet to form offset bubbles. So if a micrometoroid struck, each bubble that it passed thru would collapse, and the layers would cover the hole and seal against it.
These bubbles started out as habitation space for construction workers building the first space station. Overtime they got "customized" by the people living in them, and gradually became mostly self-sustaining, using algae gardens to process the air and produce oxygen. Some workers became unable to work but could notvreturn to gravity due to health causes. So they became a rather anarchic second society next to the official space station.
Over the decades since about 1980 I have tried to find any reference to this book, without success. I can picture the cover illustration in my mind. This might have been one of those "double feature" books, with two novellas back to back.
Good luck 🤞
Wtf ru saying
You are correct books from 40s to 60s next to impossible to find. Earlier then that lost to the ages..
Hybrid approaches certainly make a lot of sense to me! Tons of habitat underground, and surface domes for parks, farms, and light exposure. Can't go wrong with light tubes and skylights too!
I don't think surface dwellings will be necessary or desired.
Because we won't be sending humans, we will be sending transhumans.
Like the humanoid cylons on Battlestar Galactica reboot. You can just use your BMI to imagine you are outside.
@@jtjames79 Might be more than a few of those by then, yep. ^^
@@jtjames79Don't you think the transhumans have had enough with just trying to figure out what sex they are?? And now we're going to send them to a desolant planet where the green little creatures may not have a sex at all. I think we're setting us up for disaster
Na, land your ships and live in them. It's economical and doesn't promote the weakness of creature comfort. You could allow light in through non imaging collectors to supplement lamps. Space exploration is a weeding out course. Nothing romantic about it. It's a hard dangerous job.
@@jtjames79 why? and how?
I can't express enough how grateful I am for your channel. Your videos have helped me understand complex scientific concepts in an easily digestible way
What would we do without this guy
@@iwuvu5940 We'd get real.
The capital of mars in my scifi book is within a large crater, with a transparant dome over the top. Miles and miles wide. Always loved the idea.
Nice approach :)
@@isaacarthurSFIA thank you! The only access is through underground roads that lead out to the surface. However, once a civil war is taking place on the planet, these roads are taken by rebels. I utilise the problems of having a domed city (how burning fires are slowly turning the dome black, the rebels gassing the tunnels causing them to leak back out into the city, etc). Which are many! But the anti-radiation aspect of a domed, crater city make sense - when there isn't war.
Nice.
You should have a small group of people who live in their own private domes outside the city and maybe even some people who build cubes instead of domes just to be contrary.
Think of it like Flordia but on Mars.
The caldera of Pavonis Mons is right on the equator. The south rim is dead nuts 0 North. It makes an ideal space port. The west slope is a relatively straight grade ramp. Lines up as a mass driver. Extensive lava tubes radiate out from Pavonis. Downhill to the east leads to the Noctis Labyrinth and the Marinaris Valley. The caldera is above the altitude of dust storms.
I have 3 questions:
1. Is the air breathable under the dome? is it air tight?
2. Would this qualify as a "megastructure"?
3. Why the hell are they fighting a WAR? That is what I do not get about stories like this, if mankind would come together as a world and COOPERATE with each other to the extent of populating another planet then logic dictates that conflicts would have to end (like in Star Trek) and if we were not past silly war squabbles as a species then there is no way we would be able to advance that much. Its a stupid story idea.
4. Can I ask the name of the book? I am curious?
I feel so blessed every time a Issac Arthur video is dropped upon us. As always, keep doing the great work
Love your videos ! Domes however are a big big challenge. If you go for roughly 15psi plus a 50% safety margin, and add 2psi for a relief valve setting you get an ultimate load case of 24.5 psi. The stresses from this on a large diameter structure are simply enormous even with large thicknesses of far off novel materials (nearly an order of magnitude improvement in mechanical properties, especially damage tolerance, is probably required)
Don't be so realistic about it they're not thinking of all the small details that you provided They are just thinking about how neat it would be... In other words they are just dreaming about foolishness!
You are quite right of course. Its just that it would be good to be more science and less fiction ! And here is a shocker for you .. there have been no materials breakthroughs in 50 years. Lots of incremental improvements and refinements but nothing fundamentally new that has got out of the lab !! We still cant make a glass screen for a cell phone that wont crack 😂😂
ISS gets by fine with 10-12 psi. Certain agricultural applications might require a 10 lb PARTIAL PRESSURE of N2, but plants don't need oxygen. You don't need a minimum of 15 to breathe. Apollo astronauts breathed 5 psi O2 all the way to the Moon and back. Sea level has 15 psi one third oxygen, but Denver and Nairobi have a lot less.
@@digitalnomad9985 true but the ISS occupants are in the top 1 percent of the population fitness wise. Cabin altitude in aircraft have been reducing over time because the incidence of thrombosis etc have been slowly rising amongst the general population that are flying. The lesson is the further you move away from a nominal sea level pressure the higher the medical risks.
@@digitalnomad9985 Plants require a lot less oxygen than we do and would actually be more productive if the partial pressure of oxygen was (100 millibars) about half of what is normal for us. Run the carbon dioxide level up to about what is now on Earth (0.04 millibars). Plus about 200 millibars nitrogen, for fire suppression and keep certain plants happy. That gives a dome pressure of 300 millibars or about 0ne third of normal sea level pressure on Earth. People live and work at altitudes where the partial pressure of oxygen is less than 100 millibars. Most people from Earth will have to get used to the lower oxygen partial pressure. People from the Peruvian or Tibetan plateaus would not need to acclimate to the lower oxygen levels. An added bonus, when suit up to work outside can drop the nitrogen level to 100 millibars, without having to send time prebreathing straight oxygen to prevent nitrogen bubbles forming in your blood. That means you will not have to work as much against the suit pressure.
Another case one might use a dome is for camping.
Imagine for a moment, a Mars colony built on the surface or under ground. Depending on the set up, you could have either light pollution or a rock roof preventing you from seeing the full night sky and you can't just go outside lay down a tarp and look up at the sky... i mean you can but you got a space suit on so it won't be comfortable.
On Earth along many hiking trails there are shelters. The Appalachian trail has about 260 shelters scattered along the entire length of the 2,190 mile. One shelter every 8.5 miles. There are also mountain refuge shelters giving hikers a roof and fire place to stay out of a blizzard and warm up from the cold. Some even have spice shelves to season up your food.
So imagine building a shelter for space campers? You put on your space suit, grab an oxygen and battery pack designed for long walks, some food, extra water, and get marching. The shelter would be a dome with an airlock. A place to get warm, take off your suit, and get a good night sleep while looking up at the night sky of a martian night. It should feature that same breach sealing system, a battery, monitoring system, and radio leading back to home. Maybe some sound proofing to get that real lonely feel out on the martian surface looking up at the galaxy. That would be an experience.
Now that i think about it, the Apollo moon landings were just very expensive camping trips with a failure to "leave no trace" and i don't think you have done a space camping episode, yet.
They even took rocks home with them. Every park I've ever been to says you're not supposed to do that!
@@classarank7youtubeherokeyb63 They took rocks, left crap unburried, abandoned gear, and littered!
Yeah, the Apollo missions were largely demonstrate that the United States could camp on the Moon, but the Soviets couldn't.
The repair panel that is a drone made me chuckle. Where is my hammer? *hammer drone zips into the scene.* Heck just make everything, every piece of it also a drone, nuts and bolts, all of it. Have everything zip around like the sorcerers apprentice cartoon.
Kingdom under the Mountain for the win!
So, space Martian dwarves?
What may be the most important is bringing industry as well as science. Even if the industry is a shovel, the mass issue is the sole most difficult part, and starting building with native materials as soon as possible is probably the single most important thing we can do as a species.
it’s unavoidable
That's why I keep saying that Mars will be the Chicago of the inner solar system.
As long as you're willing to wait, things like sending water and gases from Mars to the Moon is cheaper than sending it from Earth.
True. Industry infrastructure is needed foremost at building a working settlement and AI robots will be very useful to do a lot of maintenance and building it
The low gravity's and other worldly industrial goods is going to be huuge success, you guys need to see the super high end quality of fiber glass they can made in space!
An inflatable tetrahedron is particularly good at plugging triangular holes. They are quite off-the-shelf in boat racing. Like round manholes, the shape makes a difference when you're making dome segments and skylights that might become holes.
Love the episode starting with this poem! I don’t know who made it but it really ignites the spirit in prep for the episode!
Domes aren't necessary. You could have one window with mirrors around it and then amongst several options you could have fiber optics transporting some of that light to different places or just a dispersion lens array inside an underground dome.
“Panzer Glass”, “Transparent Aluminum” & other materials can provide significant protection, and the reduced gravity means we could have an insulating layer of water (15 cm) between 2 layers of a dome. And, we could always have an extra outer layer of protective material on the dome.
Since im up stupid early every day, I always prep myself with an older episode before the new one drops. Happy Arthursday
Great video as always Isaac! It's extra topical for me too as I just got a new book in the mail on the topic lol, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's book: A City On Mars. The book takes a harsh view of space colonization in the near term, which I generally agree with (the most I imagine in the next century is our first permanent Moon Base which will slowly but surely be put to work building the components we need for proper colonization programs in the future), but I still think it's a great read for anyone interested in the future of humanity in outer space as it goes in depth on a lot of the challenges and concerns pertaining to our colonization goals. I am also glad you talked about multi-dome setups, I have always thought that having a sequence of domes within domes makes more sense as it would be an effective way for people to get away with cruder and lower cost construction techniques. It even makes sense from a historical colonization standpoint as odds are as the colonies get bigger you will probably have smaller earlier settlement domes get covered in larger domes as colonies increase their industrial and economic capacity.
I've been hearing good things about that book
@@isaacarthurSFIA Yeah, it really is a fun read!
Happy ArThursday!
Carl Sagan's COSMOS played a significant role during uncertain times.
People need something to believe in or the future stops getting managed.
Solution : triple layered dome, with the lower 2 layers holding 1 meter of water.
Layer1
- vacuum
-layer 2
- water + hydrogel
- layer 3
If the outer layer is breached, nothing happens.
If the middle layer is breached you are still protected by the hydrogel layer, which will be easily noticed.
You only get a problem if the 3 layers are breached.
Another wonderful video to listen to on the way to work.
Good and informative as always Isaac.
Domes are so vulnerable to damage, and attack, they would need to have an extreme ability to mitigate damage and self repair. Everyone will need their own personal P-Suit of the "Have Space Suit, Will Travel - R.A Heinlein" type
I'd say more like the P-suits in "the moon is a harsh mistress", and "the rolling stones" - as minimal as you can get away with, adding sensors, armor, and extra bottles as conditions and finances require.
Hey, thanks Isaac, another thought-provoking episode. Your ideas got me thinking along this line: okay, instead of hauling up the parts for the domes, haul up the factories to make the parts on site. No wait, haul up the diggers and so forth to deal with the site and make the factories. No, wait, haul up the tools we can use to make the diggers and so forth to allow us to deal with the site and make the factories. No, wait, haul up the minimum possible foundry parts and tools - use those to process local materials into the actual tools needed to make the diggers and... That's as far as I got...
Great video, thanks! Domes are fine so long as they use expensive domes. You know what can happen if they use cheap ones. See you at the party. 🙂
Totally recall issues with cheap materials in a Mars colony
@@BoycottChinaa Yes. There were some remarkable mutations which I will not be describing here.
Isaac, did you ever get the chance to go to the Four Seasons Golf Center before it closed in 2017? It was down south of you in Whitehall and had a massive inflatable dome, I presume to keep stray golf balls from getting off the property. I remember it holding up pretty well against the elements but they had to use industrial fans 24/7 to keep it inflated.
melt large amounts of ice with reflectors, spray sprung structures with water from the inside - ice as building material be self sealing and give vast structures in no time
give everyone 9m diameter luxury apartments, make river-like lakes for indoor walks, seafood and o2 algae, waterlocks as airlocks make living easy
(boiloff from icemelt be atmospheric pressure and rocket fuel works as batteries )
Here's an idea: An inner high pressure dome, outer low pressure (just above Martian) dome. Reclaim gasses that leak, by just pumping it back in. The outer dome won't leak much, as it hasn't got much pressure difference to force the air out of it. Also, this dome would be great as on outer wear layer, that is more easily replaceable.
Good idea, but it doubles the initial cost of construction unless you use cheaper material on the outside.
@@lukasmakarios4998 That's what they said about double-glazed windows - twice as much glass = expensive!
@@lukasmakarios4998 Just use a thin layer of plastic.
@@michaelstreeter3125 They make a significant difference in heat loss and gain, though. We got a window broken in a storm and made the replacement double-glazed, and noticed a significant improvement in the heat retained overnight in winter and leaking in during summer. That's just from about 25% of the window area in the living room, by the way. If we ever get the rest done, it'll be even better.
To be the 1st to set up mars for the rest of us would be the biggest heroes ever. The chance to get up there, mess up and die is scary crap. Love your work Issac.
Having lived and worked in Toronto for 35 years I think the idea of domes, or some sort of surface structure, connected by tunnels is the most realistic expectation. Downtown Toronto has the PATH system which covers a fairly large area and expands every time a new building is added or renovated. There is something awesome about walking through an underground and then coming out into a space lit by sunlight.
The idea of the spinning dome city was interesting too. It is quite conceivable with existing technology. We already have rotating restaurants, and I have worked with rotating stages.
Project it a few years and technologies ahead and it is quite conceivable.
I could also see a class structure developing around it, after a while, of those Martians who grew up in that environment, and those who, for any number of reasons besides economics, did not get to live in those places.
Cant listen now. But I very much appreciate the subtitles. Whoever is doing them is doing a better job than every other content creator on youtube.
I just upload the transcript verbatim, and let youtube handle syncing with it, it usually matches me word for word except the occasional and accidental on-the-fly change of word like 'the' to 'a' while recording.
I guess youtube understands how you say Orth and Maws! ❤
I have grown so used to your speech that I can also not even hear your speech impediment. I enjoy it. It distinctifies you
@@djschultz1970 I don't think IA's subtitles are auto-generated.
@@digitalnomad9985 as I understand a text transcript is uploaded and TH-cam does the rest. I have not asked how SFIA handles translation to many other languages
You the man, Isaac!
Honestly, I prefer closed underground habitats to these domes. In theory, lava caves on Mars are large and sturdy enough to accommodate a much larger population - the equivalent of a few dozen to a few hundred domes - while being much easier to build: simply sealing the cave mouths is enough to create a pressurized environment inside.
The problem is that we don't know much about the caves yet, something that could be resolved through future missions.
I think the first colonies will be on the surface but mass colonization will happen underground.
No.The real problem is we not doin anything yet😄
the current inhabitants of the caves might have thoughts on this
@@david7384 "the current inhabitants of the caves might have thoughts on this"
Not a problem, I'm sure we can manufacture beads from ISRU.
I'm not a 'glass' dome fan...
They have big temperature control issues, not just from surface temperature fluctuations.
The dome will harvest solar energy and heat up during the day, then at night it will cool, and the air will contract - so a massive soft bladder is needed to store expanding air, otherwise constant 24/7 heating and cooling is required.
These domes are also vulnerable to flying shrapnel, so you can't land or launch ships anywhere near it....
They are radiation exposed and dust cleaning would be energy intensive etc etc
I think plants will need to be grown with reflected light, direct light would have too much radiation.
So, greenhouses wouldn't be domes, they'd be linear, with a protective roof and reflectors on each side.
Mars base rule of thumb: If it doesn't need to go outside, it doesn't....
You could also have screens designed to look like windows projecting a view from outside cameras, this would help people living underground instead of just having skylights.
Mars Local Time. The clock should have the usual 24 hour readout with a time called 'lost time' that comes between 24:00 and 24:01. Helps with clock adjustment for daily and yearly adjustments.
Yeah, a new SFIA video, this makes my day
There's an easier shape to transport and offer protection on the surface of Mars than a dome. Regolith could be used to cover over it. Windows would be on the side. Mirrors close to, could help to reflect light inside such a structure.
Use the inflatable as a mold then coat it with locally made “concrete”.
Putting rotating habitats in Phobos makes more sense than colonizing Mars itself. You could make 1g without going down into a dusty toxic gravity well.
Good news! We have an episode on colonizing Phobos coming up early next year :)
@@Minecraft_at_Nightwhat children? we are not reproducing
Depending on how humans and other vertebrates do with Martian gravity, and that is a big variable, children might be born and raised in space. Though let's be honest Phobos (literally something like "fright" or "fear") doesn't sound like a family friendly place to start your new life!
@@acadiano10 Phobos prime will be the next frontier!
The writing on this episode is crisp and nicely paced.
My estimation on mars colonization would be starting with inflatable domes. Those would be used as a capstone to an underground habitat, with excavated material used to make a concrete shell around the inflatable to replace it, with continuing excavations used for additional domes. Distant domes I'd expect to be connected by rail and/or highways made by excavating about half the requisite height of traffic and using that material to provide an arched tunnel to provide shelter from Martian weather.
Domes on earth, whether enclosed suburban homes or vast city-in-a-dome arcologies, were a big hallmark of retrofuturism, and grace many a cover of classic Popular Science magazines and the like.
Tunesian Style underground houses (as depicted in Star Wars) with a glass roof on top, might become the Marsian equivalent of Terestrian suburbs.
The first pair of glasses I got that was polycarbonate ended up as an experiment years, and several pairs of glasses, later. Knowing the stuff was super strong, and being a kid, I smashed the everloving hell out of them to try and break them. The lenses held nicely as expected, but scratched into total opacity. So that cleaning and polishing of polycarbonate is gonna be a pretty important chore.
I like a combination of both: Underground for living, domes for working and gardens.
Try living 99% of your life on Earth underground first, then see how you like it, before you ever do such a dumb thing on Mars.
@@samr.england613 Under the circumstances described, you WOULD NOT be spending 99% of your life "underground," though you will be in a sealed enviroment.
And, as a "Boomer," I've already done it. So take your claustrophobia out on someone else.
@@anthonyhargis6855 Haha! Okay Anthony! FYI, I do not suffer from claustophobia, and in fact feel safe and secure in even tight, closed spaces. (Slept in a sub-basement bedroom once, and slept like a baby.)
@@anthonyhargis6855 But my point has nothing to do with any Mars colonists suffering from claustrophobia. It has to do with the reality of daily life were people to try to live and exist on Mars.
@@samr.england613 Claustrophobia IS the reality of "life on Mars," as a colonist. There will be no place "to go." "Help" will be nine months away and privacy will be nonexistant.
I would like more information on the passages for pollinators and birds to pass through the domes. How would this work? They would fly through mars itself or tunnels or what?
I grew up in a cool, mountanous and forrested area with lots of green around. I went to Idaho once and all it was was endless yellow hills everywhere. Drove me so crazy I'll never go back.
Any recommendations for a novel with focus on space politics, economics and demographics?
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress - R.A.Heinlein
@@djschultz1970 On it!
I have spin on the inflatable dome. Make it double hulled inflatable and then later fill in the gap with foamcrete or something similar to make it a perminate structure.
Hey...
If you infused water with nitrogen under gass presure.
And froze it down to liquid Nitrogen level...
Would this be viable as to insulate current *warm* superconductors to the point it can cheap enough?
Windows made from "diamond sheets reinforced with thin sheets of...graphene" - how I love Isaac's future technology!
Not gonna lie, I’ve been waiting for an episode like this. You should consider doing lunar domes also.
Rotating orbital habitats are still a better idea. Built by robots at a LaGrange Point near the moon, loaded up with all the remote operated heavy equipment needed, and a massive stockpile of supplies & spares, then launched towards Mars or where ever.
I don't know if it's been speculated, but why not build classic castles, but with an overlay of domes. That could have a lot of fun SF and fantasy applications IMO
The problem with allowing a 'leak' would be loss of humidity as well as any much less available nitrogen or argon buffer gas.
But you could probably do a reasonably efficient heat/cold exchanger that freezes or liquifies CO2 and eject just that.
A good use for the excess waste CO2 (a lot might be absorbed by plants grown for fresh food) would be inflation of a large work chamber to nearly 1 atmosphere, where people could work on large equipment with just warm clothing and an air supply. If kept just below the air pressure of the main hab, you'd only need a couple pressure-sealed doors and a "dust room" for changing out of work clothes in between, as the small amount of air lost wouldn't matter much, and the air pressure difference would keep most dust and CO2 out of the hab.
Earth bag homes are a thing here on earth. You could bring only the bags and fill with the dirt there.
Then cover with a slurry mix once built.
NICE GRAPHICS :)
Thanks, and thanks :)
I knew there was a reason I left "ditch digger" on my permanent resume...anyone have some contact info for NASA's hiring department?
Fractional distillation is a highly effective method of generating nitrogen for industrial use. The process involves the supercooling of air to its liquefaction point and then distilling its component gases at their various boiling points, no need for taking comets in m8 :)
As for the domes themselves... They should be double paned, whatever the material, and filled with a liquid that becomes expanding foam when exposed to vacuum or air.
Has anyone read the “Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle” manga? That story has the entire planet Mars covered in enormous domes dozens of miles across held up by miles high sky-trees. It makes the planet look like it is covered in giant soap bubbles.
We can use ALON to make transparent aluminum.
The asteroid belt will have one million inhabitants before Mars has one million inhabitants. That's my prediction.
Antarctica will have a million inhabitants before the Moon will. The Moon will have a million before anywhere else. I see no reason that people will go live in an airless, resourceless space far beyond any help over anywhere else right here on this beautiful Earth. Who would want to be in cold dead space when you can walk a beach here with the sun and wind in your face. Fish in the sea and birds in the air. All of this is fun to talk about, but there are countless empty pockets of land, ocean, and underground to live in here before we go out colonizing space. Space is a death trap. I predict it will be many, many millenia before we have a million people anywhere, if ever.
@@bassmanjr100 then you haven't done the math on population growth. It costs too much to send people to the moon and Mars compared to just sending people up. If you can build in zero gravity, you will develop much faster and create an export economy to provide the resources to keep immigrating people
Said it befor will say it again.... pick a mountain range in a good spot, and build under and into the mountain.....Or even into the walls of the BIG canyon ,the view would be worth it,as cloud layer has been seen there at times.
Thank you for the dreams Mr Issac.
How would you spin a dome centrifuge? Is there a big spindle in the middle? Does it swim? Rails? Id like to hear some of the pros and cons of different designs.
Maglev possible when its chilly outside
I tihnk I'd defer that to an engineer as for best method, I'm guessing there'd be a lot of practical considerations I haven't even considered.
Growing up, we used to drive past the Goodyear Blimp hanger!
I really hope that .38g is good enough for terran land creatures. The mere thought of having to sleep in an underground centrifuge threatens to give me motion sickness. Domes, however, seem like a no-brainer.
I've always been an avid fan of domes for para-terraforming. Mile-wide domes would make great parks. Imagine ecosystems especially designed for 540 acres each, like Biosphere II written large, possibly even connected like adjacent hexagons. Engineering the daily air pressure changes could support a whole side industry alongside dome building.
I wonder which view will be of most interest, however, inside with the growing living things, or outside with the beckoning expanses begging to be explored. I can't wait!
Of course, it only makes sense to have underground tunnels for sleeping, storage and distribution, and refuge in emergencies. I just wouldn't want to spend most of my time down there.
I don't understand the fixation with domes on Mars, except if you explicitly need sunlight. Domes are a temperature weakpoint, arguably a structural one, and vulnerable to radiation. You can replace sunlight with artificial, and use that above ground space for other things such as solar power generation, storage, parking etc.
Windows are a temp weakpoint. A dome shape minimizes the material needed to enclose a given volume on the surface of a planet, and also minimizes the surface area through which a given volume can lose heat to conduction. You are against surface building, not a shape.
Question: Wouldn't Mars-quakes (earthquakes on Mars) be a big threat/concern to underground bases/structures?
I liked the foam idea to temporary close holes that appear
With the low outside pressure couldnt an inflatable, flexible material be held up just by keeping earth pressure atmosphere inside? This would increase the impact resistence of the dome as it could flex to some degree like rock thrown into a hanging curtain.
I would really like a steam programming team to make an orbital colony city builder simulation, maybe where you can buy/build other colonies.... torus, cylinders etc.
The infrastructure to build a dome or inflatable on Mars away from a ship would be enormous. A different type of structure would be a lot easier for on Mars.
Don't know about diamond however synthetic sapphire 'glass' looks like a good contender with current technology.
Thank you from Saskatchewan Canada!
Two cons to domes that might not be obvious:
1) After being cooped up inside a dome for months, the wide-open spaces outside begin to look awfully inviting, and a part of your brain starts to question whether the outside is _really_ as dangerous as you have always been taught…
2) The kid who always _always_ loses at hide and seek has just spotted a hiding place no one will ever think to look…
Darwinism at work isn’t a con… 😅
@@justicebrewing9449it is for the kid!
My favorite mars mission in sci fi is found in Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.
The big problem with domes, in my opinion, is the force created by the air inside wanting to push it off the surface. You'll need a significant foundation and structure holding it down. More like a forest of steel like trees. No way would you want 15 psi with a large dome.
Not if the dome is really a sphere, half underground with a false floor stretched across the equator. But good point, it wouldn't just be a hemisphere resting on the ground. Even a rigid airtight floor would be impractical against normal air pressure-- too much strength required to keep it flat.
Should we isn't the question it's can we and will it work ?
don't forget mirrors. you avoid the radiation but get the direct light benefits. Something that just thought off as you mentioned the water bag. Just pressurize the outer/support frame of the dome with waterbased or glue like substance that will push out the broken panel and seal the whole or make it creep on the panel once the pressure drops due to the crack. "self healing system" 😊
I don’t think the diamond windows will work because they cost 4000 at the cheapest on earth. The price of one would be like 4mil a window. Even if the price was a magnitude smaller, it would be 400 thousand
Diamond, sapphire, glass, you forgot transparent aluminium!
True :) I think we spent several minutes discussing it in episode 320 Upcoming Advances in Material Science on December 9 2021
Why can't we have multiple layers of domes with gradually decreasing pressure in successive domes? This would give multiple layers of protection and time to make repairs
The idea that the extra half hour on Mars would be used for sleep instead of squeezing the colonists for more "productivity" makes me want to live there already.
@isaacarthurSFIA Tunnels you say? Wouldn’t it be convenient if we had a space technology manufacturer that is developing a large scale tunnel boring technology, and was also working on the infrastructure to simultaneously build a fleet of heavy lift rockets that could bring hundreds of tons of previously mentioned tunnel manufacturing technology and supplies to mars… oh wait… Thanks Elon.
I've often wondered if we could offset/mitigate the negative affects of the lower gravity by rotating people between the surface and orbit. On the surface they have the diet and exercise regime that offsets the effects but it's merely allowing the long-term negative effects to occur more slowly but in orbit they could exercise and rehabilitate at 1g or potentially even higher and thus life on Mars would be a split between 0.4ish (lets round it and not be pedantic) and 1.0g+ in orbit.
OH ALGORITHM GODS! SPREAD THIS VIDEO!
Hybrid approach is the way. People like looking outdoors, We aren't going to mars to just hide in caves. But transparent domes are expensive also. Maybe you'd have dug up regolith covering up 95% of your facility, with 5% being windows. You might also have a few transparent domes as parks connecting to an underground cavern city for most of the residents.
Hey Isaac. You brought up in other videos relating to oxygen procurement through baking it out of the rock. What sort of machinery or general technological concept would be used for that and would that be able to be solar powered?
Happy Arthursday everyone. Will be listening once I get into my work flow 💪🏾
I’ve been interested in the new ideas floating around about cylindrical habitats instead. Domes suck from an engineering perspective, so you could build a skyscraper and reflect light onto it through the windows. Build up and down at the same time. Low gravity helps there too
Also you could just add levels as you go allowing for expansion
Great episode, and you covered a lot of variables. You did put a lot of emphasis on this idea that humans have to have some tropical regularity diurnal intense lighting cycle. That's just not necessarily true. Sami, Innuit, Chukchi, Sandinavians, and northern Canadians etc come from a variety of hereditary lineages, and they do just fine in high latitudes on earth where there is little to no sun for months at a time, and almost continuous but low-level light for months more. Maybe people like that should be screened for as settlers in the first place.
I've personally gone for months at a time with no sun nor meaningful day/night cycle, and all it did was feel a bit more relaxing, not having to squint through the glare. In fact, people who live in low light environments and work overnight shifts tend to be more relaxed and easygoing to get along with in general. They wear comfortable clothes, talk softer, and they are slower to take offense, complain less about necessary tasks, and don't go out of their way to make trouble. Gee, that sounds like exactly what you'd want in a space colonist.
It's not just about making conditions habitable. It's about who inhabits them. In this case, you get to select for those traits and conditions beforehand.
One if hit on the surface, two if on an edge, three or more if it's the junction between them that's hit.
Is the music at the end from or a reprisal of the music from Civilization: Beyond Earth OST?
You didn't mention transparent metal panels for your domes?
Thanks, Isaac! 🟠
Thank you.
Why build domes out of a thin shell, when use of clear water ice a meter thick effectively blocks out all forms of dangerous radiation?
Use the materials, yeah, but use them to make cases to hold the blocks of clear ice that actually provide the shelter.
This is pre watching: Why would you not be underground? There's no useful amount of sunlight and the atmospheric pressure is too low for wind to be useful. Even if those things were useful, you can just have the utilities sit on the surface and hunker below feet of natural insulation.
I don't think you need to go full innovation with inflatable beachballs or such to replace a leak in a dome. Just have railings on the dome inside of the pannel intersections where you have a robot drive past that can not only clean but bring a spare diamond triangle when there is damage. Either just to seal or full on replacing dome sections. Doesn't even have to be a robot, just a plattform for maintenacne workers would be very low tech. Assuming one can survive that long in a dome with a leak or personale has personal protection gerar.
I'd like to know if any formal research has been done on the requirements and potential to produce a range of useful "plastics" - polyethylene, polycarbonate, or the vast range of other materials, that often incorporate other elements beside H, C, O, Cl, that are present on Mars. It's plausible to think that a wide variety of machines and tools can be fabricated from in situ ingredients.
Can a kind of backhoe or caterpillar tractor be made of Martian plastic? Could a drilling rig be made that can penetrate rock? Related - can silicon carbide or tungsten carbide be made on Mars, which is essential for saw teeth, drilling bits, etc.?