Nuclear Mars Base by Lepidopteranodon

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

This is a concept for a self sufficient Martian base. Due to the amount of energy required to sustain human life on mars (for pressurisation, water and air production and purification, heating, growing food) the base is powered by a small modular breeder reactor. The base consists of the reactor, generators (converting heat from the reactor into electricity), the ring shaped habitation facility, an ice processing facility, a few robots, and the "greenhouses" for food. The colony would be emplaced near a convenient source of ice. The robots are powered by hydrogen and oxygen, carried in onboard tanks, and refuel using the prongs on their rear. This allows them the power needed to "mine" the ice from the martian surface and return it to the processing facility. The robots also have modularly detachable tools, a drill is included here as an example. At the ice processing facility, some of the ice is melted and purified for use by the plants in the greenhouses or by the inhabitants. The remainder is electrolysed into hydrogen and oxygen for use as fuel. The oxygen is also used to supply the habitation ring. To save weight that needs to be landed on the planet, the structure of the greenhouses are constructed from local rock by the robots. The insides are then sealed to the environment and readied for farming using transported materials. The plants themselves are grown using growlights, also powered by electricity from the central reactor.