Mars Ice House

January 13, 2016 8:44 AM

A 3D printed habitat for four Mars explorers from Clouds Architecture Office. Awarded first place in NASA's Centennial Challenge Mars Habitat Competition.
posted by OmieWise (18 comments total)

Is it called the Centennial Challenge because a manned trip to Mars is always a hundred years in the future?
posted by fairmettle at 8:47 AM on January 13, 2016

Hmm.
posted by gwint at 8:56 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's a pretty great igloo. We're an amazing species.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:00 AM on January 13, 2016

They should have called it frozen mud house--because thats what its going to look like once the Martian dust starts blowing around and the inevitable ambient water vapor coalesces on the panels.
posted by Chrischris at 9:01 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is it called the Centennial Challenge because a manned trip to Mars is always a hundred years in the future?

Or ~15 years, according to current NASA plans.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:11 AM on January 13, 2016

Well, the outside would always be well below freezing point, there's not going to be condensation on the outer shell, so there shouldn't be Mars-mud. But I'm pretty skeptical that enough light would get through two layers of ice to maintain a greenhouse, which would also have to be kept perpetually at freezing. Are there even enough food plants that can grow at 32 degrees?
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:13 AM on January 13, 2016

Somewhere an old Inuit raises one eyebrow.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:31 AM on January 13, 2016

This is amazingly cool.

Er, chill.

Ice Ice Baby?

I love this creative and forward thinking design approach and the notion of doing a majority of the work with such a fundamental life-essential and simple molecule is a sort of genius in it's own right. I want more of this.
posted by meinvt at 9:38 AM on January 13, 2016

I could not see any reason other than cool rendering space picture for the pretty asymmetrical shape of the habitat, or for the height. I'd expect the first round of buildings on Mars to be squat, utilitarian and kinda efficient as possible/ugly.

Here's a project that would probably make more sense, build the smallest self contained solar panel factory. Then start giving them away to tribes in the various deserts and at the poles/Siberia to find out what works and what breaks.
posted by sammyo at 9:47 AM on January 13, 2016

Height-wise, it looks like it's designed to ft over a landed spacecraft. But therein lies the next question, what the hell are they going to do with the heat from the habitat proper? 'Cos I'm guessing the Mars Explorers aren't going to be interested in living in an Ice Hotel at <0°C and the heat will have to go somewhere...
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 9:53 AM on January 13, 2016

Has this kind of speculative design ever borne fruit for any type of advanced projects? I feel like any Mars construction is going to be built around the basic mechanical necessities of the habitat, and will consequently be bulky, irregularly shaped, and full of access hatches.
posted by Think_Long at 9:58 AM on January 13, 2016

I don't understand why they have ribs for robots to navigate around but then a weird meaningless hole in the "back" of the habitat between the inner and outer shells. Why make it asymmetrical at all, other than it looking nice? It's not like Mars has enough atmosphere to need an airfoil shape. Something like a big beehive shape would be far more practical.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:03 AM on January 13, 2016

I feel like any Mars construction is going to be built around the basic mechanical necessities of the habitat, and will consequently be bulky, irregularly shaped, and full of access hatches.

I was at Johnson Space Center in September as part of a research trip for (obvious caveat: self link) this thing, got to go behind a lot of closed doors and talk to scientists, researchers, astronauts, etc. (also: drove the prototype rover! Holy shit!) The general impression I formed was that they were leaning more toward something like this - domes and tunnels/hangar-shaped structures built out of 3D-printed bricks from local regolith.

There was a lot of talk along those lines and not much else, and it makes sense: the more weight you carry with you, the greater your transit time (read: potentially fatal radiation during flight), and once you're on the surface you've only got 1/100th the atmosphere and no magnetic field to speak of for blocking cosmic rays. Mars naturally receives 44% of the base solar output that we do, which is more than enough to be extremely problematic given the lack of natural shielding.

So you're going to need to provide your own shielding, and shielding means density and therefore weight. The current HDU or something like it would presumably be a temp structure while the initial buildings were printed, and it seems logical larger structures would follow.

Using ice makes a certain amount of sense if a polar landing is indeed pursued for the primary purpose of saving on water weight. It's worth mentioning that growing food from local topsoil is ...surpassingly difficult (I was told that the latest tests results since The Martian's research was conducted have not been at all promising), and it seems unlikely given current knowledge that access to water for that purpose would be a goal. In fact I'm not at all convinced a greenhouse would be worth attempting for any effort in the mid-future (ie before 2050).

Note: I don't claim to be an expert on any of this stuff, I'm just relating what I heard while visiting.

Finally, mad props to whoever got the boots-on-the-ground colorspace right in that first image - the typically public-facing Earth-lighting as seen in the third image is beyond infuriating for those of us who have to spend ridiculous hours hunting down the few correctly balanced reference photos.
posted by Ryvar at 11:12 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

They actually go into a lot of detail in a crappy slideshow format. First off, it's not just ice, it's a transparent membrane to pressurize and keep the ice from sublimating, a mixture of ice and 'a fibrous clear silica additive' forms the bulk of the structure, and then a sprayed-on aerogel insulation layer to keep the interior heat from melting the ice.

It seems kind of goofy but there's (at least superficially) real science that's gone into this.
posted by Skorgu at 11:35 AM on January 13, 2016

'Cos I'm guessing the Mars Explorers aren't going to be interested in living in an Ice Hotel at < 0°C and the heat will have to go somewhere...

It seems quite possible that keeping the living habitat at 0 C might not be a bad idea. With appropriate clothing, personal heating apparatuses, and high tech sleeping bags etc I don't see why this couldn't be feasible. You wouldn't have to waste energy heating all that interior space.

The ice is a great idea as a radiation shield, which is one of the big barriers to colonization.

The ice is sandwiched between an ETFE outer barrier and inner insulation, which should increase the stability/reduce sublimation. I like it. For the first time, it seems like there are actual feasible ideas for colonization that don't involve real leaps in logic from available technology.
posted by Existential Dread at 11:56 AM on January 13, 2016

Are there even enough food plants that can grow at 32 degrees?

I doubt there are any that would meet requirements, yet. But it also doesn't strike me as an unsolvable problem.*

The process of colonizing Mars is the process of working out solutions for thousands of novel problems just like this.

^{*Chemistry of life requires cells to be above freezing point, but there is wiggle room between the freezing point of water and the freezing point of brine (cells), and more wiggle room between the freezing point of water and the higher temperature at which the room can be maintained with insulation film. Given that it's a highly controlled environment that presumably includes optimal gas concentrations, augmented light, etc, it doesn't raise "unlikely" flags for me, it just seems like one among a myriad of tough challenges to be methodically worked through.}
posted by anonymisc at 2:19 PM on January 13, 2016

Here's a project that would probably make more sense,

Focusing on what (we think) is currently the biggest problem doesn't get us anywhere. It's far too slow. Mars is a lots-of-challenges endeavor requiring working on lots of problems in parallel at any one time. I don't think it does "make more sense" to solve one problem rather another, when both problems need to be solved. What matters is that problems in the problem-bucket are getting worked on.

build the smallest self contained solar panel factory. Then start giving them away to tribes in the various deserts and at the poles/Siberia to find out what works and what breaks.

Give away the factory you mean? It's possible the tribes might not be interested, because the labour required to produce their own cells would likely be more than the labour required to purchase much better cells from a specialist manufacturer operating at scale. Making solar panels on Earth at small scale is generally against your own economic interest unless you're doing it as recreation, as a hobby.
(You can do it as a hobby)

IIRC there are other projects underway looking to use remote Arctic environments to simulate isolated Mars living. Maybe ship the factory there and see what breaks? :)
posted by anonymisc at 2:38 PM on January 13, 2016

w/r/t life in sub-freezing environments, c.f. notothenid fishes. These guys have antifreeze glycoproteins that (the mechanism is still not completely understood) prevent ice from forming by (and this is where I get fuzzy) binding to small ice particles and stopping crystalization, or something like that.

Anyway, there are fishes with clear blood (no transport pigments!) that live in sub-freezing (-2°C) waters. Can't we CRISPR that shit into a broccoli or something?
posted by deadbilly at 11:02 PM on January 13, 2016