John - Space Architecture

Good evening 🌒 this weekend saw some completed targets of said design concept: Ridgeline Six, Arcadia Plantitia. Runs on 4 small fission reactors, 160kWe, 1k from crew. The render also shows the design of the hab radiators. They shed roughly ~75kW of waste heat, after first using it to melt ice for fuel. The site also includes 2,400 m² of Solar. The site used in the renders is from a HiRISE image, chosen for likely shallow ground ice 👍🏻

Congrats to @RocketLab with their Mars expedition. They will play an integral role in future Mars missions. Titan next.

The lunar surface or “moon base” will inevitably utilise proven existing hardware with a TRL of 5/9. There are three stages of exploration: Survivability, sustainability & autonomous. The lunar surface is the staging ground & preliminary steps for Mars.

Best places to build on Mars Arcadia Planitia. Ice is less than 1M beneath surface, flat & low; thicker air helps with landings. SpaceX has looked at sites there. (Colder than the equator & weaker sun in the winter…) Deuteronilus Mensae: Glaciers buried under rubble. Huge amounts of clean ice. Utopia Planitia: Thick buried ice, scalloped ground shows it. Hellas Basin floor: Air about twice as thick; a bit more shielding. (Dust storms start here, slightly harsher winters.) Arsia Mons skylights: Opening into Lava tubes, a natural roof against radiation! (high up, thin air, near equator, little ice) Jezero or Gale Crater: Already well mapped out. Polar Caps: Endless ice. (Months of darkness, frost, extreme cold)

2 minutes served. Every year. We will always remember.

Mars base! 😅

Another view of my design concept, a 3D print model 1:200 of site, Ridgeline Six: Arcadia Planitia. CAIRN-7 in view (inflatable vessel under regolith shell) with a catenary arch sheltering its airlock’s surface door & two suitports. The pressurised rover docks on its own hatch at the same airlock. Adjacent are the rigid modules, connected to a support module housing the autonomous robots (hatch visible on lower level). It’s airlock on the far side (not in view) takes the pressurised rover and houses two suitports. Support module also has a small sample hatch for samples which feeds to the sealed glovebox.

Build on Mars.

My render depicts the helium-3 tanker; carries it from Saturn orbit out to a depot at Titan. Some facts to add to the illustration: Climbing out of Saturn's atmosphere to orbit takes about 25–27 km/s of velocity change. Leaving Saturn's gravity is far cheaper from Titan's distance, and Titan's methane and nitrogen can be made into propellant. Supply chain: Cruiser -> Tanker. (Other methods also considered) Tug (Titan) -> Deimos (Mars gateway) as a reference or/& Mars. Saturn (inner) then Uranus (deep space) 😀

Red on! 😀

Went to Disney, bought a lightsaber. I’m ready for Space Force

Bought & converted a Van two years ago. Fully off grid, 560ah. Diesel heater for the Winter. 150L water. Combi Cooker. Induction. Gas BBQ. Starlink. I even have an osmosis machine. Not a huge amount of Volume but utilised very, very well. My point? SHEE! 😀

Genetics: Sapiens adapted, evolved, committed genocide. They ventured & discovered new land. “Survival of the fittest” one would call it - History repeats itself. Space is the frontier. Momentum 🚀

Base, outpost, settlement, frontier, colony, civilisation. In that order.

Pattern recognition.

1:200 concept diorama of CAIRN-7: one shell finished in sintered regolith, one cut away to show the inflatable inside.

This evening's update! CAIRN-7 render, demonstrating mid-build. Now printing! Once finished, we'll set it on an analogue Martian surface for the final touches 📸 Enjoying the process: the central hab is half complete, the outer structures finished one by one.

Simulated orbital camera image: a ship glowing white-hot on its leading edge as it enters the Martian atmosphere, a violet plasma trail behind it. Readout: ARES RELAY 1, hi-res imager, 0.9 m per pixel, range 918 km, 50 m scale bar. Rendered.

Another animation on the inner/outer-system working economy! The Moon's helium-3 + Earth's deuterium run the first plants. Mars becomes the hub; its water holds 5–7x Earth's deuterium. A base on Titan, tugs hauling Saturn's helium-3 to a gateway in Mars orbit, then on to the Moon & Earth. That fuel unlocks fusion drive & opens up Uranus, where helium-3 is easier to mine, & beyond that the Kuiper belt. Asteroid mining runs alongside all of it. Now, the Kardashev scale! If all our energy came from fusion: 0.73 (today) about 1,100 tonnes of helium-3 a year. The Moon's roughly 1 million tonnes would last about 1,000 years. 0.9: 50x today's energy, about 54,000 tonnes a year. The Moon runs out in about 20 years, so imports from Saturn begin. 1.0 (Type I): using about 500 times today's energy. If all of it came from fusion, we'd need about 540,000 tonnes of helium-3 a year. Only the gas giants can supply that: the Moon's entire supply would last about 2 years, while Saturn holds about 10¹⁹ tonnes of helium-3 (estimate). Solar does most of the climb. We harness the Sun with a Dyson swarm, countless of collectors orbiting it, & that takes us towards Type II. But deep space runs on helium-3, starting with Saturn & eventually Uranus, both invaluable for us to expand. Zubrin, NASA's Palaszewski & a new Titan study have covered parts of this. My bit is the numbers showing why each step is needed, & the full route.

I’ve since updated the site to 5 small fission reactors. Seperated the hangar.

The beginning of our solar system economy. Earth-Moon-Mars, then Mars as the energy hub fuelled by Saturn. A credible far-future goal.