These stories about the logistics at Amundsen-Scott are a fascinating glimpse at the level of logistical complexity that'd be required for an off-planet (Moon, Mars...) base.
Every time I see people get excited about Martian human habitation, I note a lack of discussion of the essential intermediate step: a fully self-sustaining base in the most inhospitable parts of Earth.
Where are the Biosphere++ projects?
And Amundsen-Scott has it easy: pressure, oxygen levels, and dust aren't a problem! (granted: Martian equator has easier temperatures).
Also, I've long wondered what is the comparable level of yearly insolation (for sustainable power) in the South Pole compares to Mars' equator?
An unfortunate early design. Hopefully the engineering knowledge and access to far better design tools that have developed in the interleaving ~50 years would allow for a much better design today.
Though my hopes must be tempered by the prospect of greed. It would be better if the government(s) created an open design which could reuse off the shelf or components that any corporation could compete to create.
Eh, no.. a failed concept, to grasp the techological deep roots needed to supply something with specialists and machinery at all times, at a location that is 9 months off limits.
DARPA and NASA are currently developing designs to do exactly that under Kilopower, Megapower, and similar programs. Enabling long duration unmanned deep space missions is explicitly one of NASA's goals with this.
I'm no nuclear engineer, but my anecdotal experience has been that nuclear plants need access to large amounts of water for cooling.
I'm assuming a Martian reactor would need some other approach give the relative scarcity of water? Sure ambient temperatures are lower, but equally the atmosphere is not very dense.
Thinking about it, burning diesel is also not attractive (lack of oxygen) and solar is weaker than earth. But I'm not seeing a lot of alternatives to solar...
Primary cooling could be molten salt or liquid metal but unless you take the power out through the Seebeck effect like RTG’s on space probes, you still need water to make steam for turbines, I guess.
GHI is quite low (your array needs to be very spread out) and seasonality is 1/0, but if seasonal storage were available then a solar array in antarctica is fine.
Mars GHI is about 550W/m^2, but there are no clouds. An array there would perform about as well as france or spain.
> Every time I see people get excited about Martian human habitation, I note a lack of discussion of the essential intermediate step: a fully self-sustaining base in the most inhospitable parts of Earth.
I remember a pretty popular book and a Hollywood starring Matt Damon which primarily focused on this exact problem.
Unless you're talking about an entirely different story with the same title, it's about an individual person trying to survive alone somewhere with very limited resources. At no point is his situation sustainable, and he only barely just survives to be rescued.
It really has nothing at all to do with developing a sustainable base on any planet. It's about some clever survival strategies, all of which are considered temporary at best.
The first people on mars will be self replicating robots. Due to the way the exponential function works - I think enough terraforming could be done really fast.
Every time I see people get excited about Martian human habitation, I note a lack of discussion of the essential intermediate step: a fully self-sustaining base in the most inhospitable parts of Earth.
Where are the Biosphere++ projects?
And Amundsen-Scott has it easy: pressure, oxygen levels, and dust aren't a problem! (granted: Martian equator has easier temperatures).
Also, I've long wondered what is the comparable level of yearly insolation (for sustainable power) in the South Pole compares to Mars' equator?