Mars Mission - OLD DOCUMENT: PRELIMINARY NOTES  ONLY -
[There is a new, vastly more elegant design not presented at this time]

Over-all Operations Protocol
Over-all Operations Protocol will define all parameters including financing by member states and corporations.
       Robert Cole

NOTE: At this time, there are endless media fantasy images purporting large spacecraft. All do not accord the momenta of mass and would pull themselves apart. All designs linked with this site are viable.

 


Notes on Mars Development Project
Mars station, living, working; energy - and purpose/products project proposal, including mining and sciences.
Overall Mars Development Project purpose statement. The underlying reason to develop space is the conduct of Advanced Materials production, and Hazardous materials recycling and reclamation.
Contracts of ownership and licensing for lands, products and materials to the corporation and investors.

-Create Refueling and vehicle dump - /repair and retrofit station for general space activities support, midway between Earth and Mars. These could be multiple stations in wide Mars orbit. Pursue an expandable wide-orbit satellite station regime - where space observatories will be placed into the large linked array, for science, energy and communications transfer.
-Create plan on materials acquisition and materials cargo transport. Include exploring feasibility for locations tied to the over-head linked array and ground transport.

-Do paper on inter-planetary transport of dangerous materials and the stepped process of building a hazardous materials processing industry. Attached with mining operations, the materials will provide a cleanly managed industrial waste clean-up. A pitch will be made to clean the earth's nuclear dumps and waste sites while providing clean energy and advanced materials for both worlds.

One aspect for space development will be production of advanced materials. These will require mechanisms for creating very high energy environments. These should be protected facilities. Weightless conditions have certain advantages, and necessary for some purposes, but security dictates developing areas that are  remote. The other side of the moon and Mars.
    It may be that Mars should see re-processing activities for hazardous materials and the manufacture of advanced materials. Recycling industrial and nuclear wastes from Earth and the vast wealth promised in the coming advanced materials revolution should sustain future efforts in space.

Mission Structure:


Earth to orbit system of MAG-LEV Rail assist Launch vehicles or aircraft towed orbiter-vehicles, transverse shipping, stationary satellites and lander vehicles. These will include a schematic of public and private companies and endeavors.
Life support system includes self-sustaining septic, water and air to accommodate space vehicles and planetary installations.
There shall be countervail schemes and systems in space-craft with rotating domiciles. One scheme could have certain outside functions arranged on movable panels, where sensor-driven computer logs dictate to panel positioning, a continuing operations off-set. Weight displacement are addressed in "Work-platforms" link below.
Life support craft will be designed to accommodate and integrate with all uses including space vehicles, asteroid mining environments and planetary installations.


All work stations can become future science laboratories.
Plans will be constructed for science labs and multi-array observatories on Mars, or around the Mars orbiting descent and launch station, or around the mid travel-point fuels-dump space station.

It will be necessary to build a materials processing and purification center for mining of planets, planetoids, asteroids and comets. There also needs to be a fuels storage depot. This evokes the necessity of beginning the process of designing large mid-travel point fuels station. The make-up of such a craft should follow the modular designs model so that multiple crafts can be built and added upon over time. Of course, large crafts must account the fragility of structures as mass builds. Any structure has a "critical mass" threshold or limit, and a fuels station structure will see a grossly changing mass index. This should be ameliorated to an extent by careful mass off-set design principles.

The periodicity with which Earth passes closest to Mars allows us to think that numbers of large observatories attached to wide-orbit Mars fuels dumps can place such stations, sequentially, in time with a normalized Earth to Mars travel-times corridor. These science stations would be convenient resource points, destinations and also far orbit departure and arrival platforms.

Orbital Protocols
Design orbital regimes and create orbital protocols and integrate with Over-all Operations Protocol

Constant Operations Parameters
Requisites for sustained operations shall be integrated with Over-all Operations Protocol

       It is possible, in the future, to design a Satellite array which might supply focused energy for surface power generation.

Initial systems, Building and Growth
    Manufacturing is a prime focus for the first settlement. - Manufacturing, mining, machining and fabrication methods and systems are to be designed carefully.
Landing
Establish First Structures
    domiciles and workstations
    fuels
    Power and Utilities
        Design initial power station and utilities and integrate with Over-all Operations Protocol.
    Water
        Process for water supply. - Water treatment units that accompany spacecraft will be designed for use on the planet to integrate into a larger water-systems scheme to feed the various “life-domes”, structures and work-stations.
        There should be careful management of water colors, white, gray, black, etc. These would be treated in the garden corridors. [Check plant pistil/pollen reproductive systems and growth rate on low gravity.] This system needs to be dynamically integrated into the overall recycling regime and with the energy & power systems. Solar to Hydrogen and Oxygen are initial goals.

It may be possible to build an extraordinarily high, by earth standards, landing and platform on Olympia Mons on Mars.The mountain is high because gravity-defined weight is low. Therefore, a wide base but very high platform could be
erected. With elevators and trams.

Operations and Management
Define general operations and management systems and integrate with Over-all Operations Protocol
Mining
Manufacturing
Resource Development
Habitats
Utilities
______________________________________
Transport and Living Quarters -

Habitats
Controlled centrifugally integrated modular habitats will accommodate all variations of space vehicles and planetary installations.

1): Ring living environments are modular and can be any size, although humans will be comfortable in larger rotating stations.
These can be permanent, fully integrated space craft that land and remain as planetary housing. Modular, they can always be removed and returned to service.

There are hexagonal cell designs, and other geometries for modular units that can be disengaged and transported to the surface. Gondolas transport to and from living quarters to the center hub where people descend or ascend from tram tunnels under ground.

Work Stations
Multiple and heavy-use, gravity units are, of course, separate from normal living quarters and must be so designed. There are long draw distillation columns and long drop fiber production in the elevator shafts.
There will be trams that connect life-rings. These corridors will be modular and will also provide gardens and utilities runs for the modular and expandable re-circulation life support system.
Longer term: Examine the potential of Martian concrete with cure methodologies. Concrete and fiber matrix composites.