Briscoe Mars Habitat by Briscoe

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

Concept:
This is a scale model of a possible two to four person habitat to be shipped to mars. The idea is to have a majority of the craft built on earth, with only a few modifications and additions needed once on Mars. This kind of structure will be one of the first structures ever deployed on Mars, and dozens of these landed close to each other will create the first Mars research stations.
Deploying the structure:
The round main body of the building is about 30 feet in diameter, about the maximum diameter of current rockets. The body will be build on earth and placed on a rocket to be blasted off and sent to Mars. Once there, it will re-enter the atmosphere and land itself anywhere on the planets surface where it will stay their permanently. Another payload will deliver the solar panels that will need to be installed manually on the building.
Large Solar Panel And Its Uses:
A large solar panel will be installed on the building to provide all the power needed to run the habitat and science experiments on board. The solar panel is very large for multiple reasons; since the sun is farther from Mars, less light will be received on the planet surface and larger solar panels will generate more electricity. Another feature of the building is it will rotate and tilt the panel, allowing the solar panel to track the sun and be as efficient as possible to store electricity in batteries for the long nights and winters. With the building rotating, the ladders were designed not to run into the support legs, and the main weight of the building is the counterweight to the large panel hanging off the side.
Another benefit to having a large solar panel that tracks the sun is it shades the entire building from the sun, and can double as a radiation shield for the building. The back of the panel can be lined with thick radiation shielding, and since it will track the sun you can protect the entire structure more efficiently with less shielding. You do not have to line the entire building with as much radiation shielding, meaning less weight to send to Mars.
Machinery and Maintenance:
The roof of the structure will have all the machinery, batteries, Water tanks, Oxygen Tanks, and Waste Tanks needed to survive on mars. These will all be installed on Earth and delivered with the rest of the building. A ladder on the side of the building will allow people to access the machinery and make any repairs or maintenance required in the buildings lifetime.
Inside of Building:
The building has two main doors, one on the outside of the building and another a few feet inside the front door. Having two doors allows the inner room to be pressurized, and a small entry room where all the Mars environment suits are kept, and a place to pressurize/depressurize people coming an going from the structure. The main room will house all the bunk beds, science equipment, and living space for its inhabitants. The people will spend most of their time living in one of these structures. Other versions of these structures can be designed and landed on the surface for specific uses. Special version can be made and used exclusively for food storage, water storage, or spare parts and survival gear.

3D Printing Info:

I have not printed these objects yet, but it should print fine without may problems, I designed the parts with printing in mind. To assemble, the parts should all friction fit together snugly, with maybe a little filing.

The roof and the doors are the only parts that needs to have supports to print properly, there is a lip around the bottom of them so it can fit tightly into the walls of the room. All the other parts do not require supports.

The .stl files will need to be scaled up before printing, I haven't gotten the scale set correctly yet in inventor so all the parts are imported in very tiny. I scaled the files up by 800% to make my .thing file posted in the file section, they fit the print bed well with that size.

Hope you guys like it, let me know if you have any questions, I would love to see peoples pictures of the prints!
B-)