Month: January 2025

55km Mars tunnel idea 2.0

UPDATE:

Oxygen is lighter than CO2 so the tunnel will need to be adjusted accordingly:

Humans can settle in the Oxygen bubble cavities that are above a lower CO2 zone that has a water lake that the nuclear thermal reactor uses as a radiator thus keeping it warm. This CO2 zone can be rich vegetation zone with algae and trees converting CO2 to oxygen that floats into the habitable region accessible by ramp.

 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

Considering the scale height of Mars being 11km and Earth’s 8km, the difference considering the lower Martian gravity gives us hope to live inside  rather than on Mars without preassure suits, a 55km deep tunnel on Mars with a “silo” built into the vertical shaft can allow humans to live in Mars in the lower end of the tunnel where there is 1 bar of atmospheric preassure, there and any cavity excavated out horizontally after that.

The silo could be a nuclear thermal powered structure with a built in drill bit. We can have artificial lighting powered by a nuclear thermal reactor and waste heat from it could keep the air warm by heating artificial lakes.

What is a scale height:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_height

 

If built at the equator we get sunlight directly under the vertical shaft, if built at the poles we will need a system of mirrors and crystals to light the bottom portion. The poles is more guaranteed to provide us with ice and water that we will need to live on that our thermal reactor can heat and melt.

Inspiration of the megastructure from the TV series SILO:

 

500km Oribital Insertion – The Space Plane Corporation

The Space Plane Corporation

space-plane.org

Video:

https://fb.watch/xfXW2HlEqL/

Performance Summary:

MTOW: 250 tons

Dry Mass: 75 tons

Useful Payload: 5-10 tons

When considering 500km ISS orbital insertion and de-orbit fuel burn the useful payload does shrink to between 5-10 tons.

Telemetry:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zLmh4odwt-ejBSnMvJu-8BUq4YvuFtzn/view?usp=sharing

Lunar Atmosphere – Internal

Introduction:

We can give the moon an atmosphere, how do I know this? Because Titan which is about the same size as our moon has a thick atmosphere. The difference is that Titan is cold, damn cold! So if we dig a 290km tunnel we can create a solar shielded section inside the moon that can sustain atmosphere and expand that section horizontally. The scale altitude I have worked out is 12.4km.

Main Article:

Similar to my idea to dig in Mars I figured this would be more practical and useful for the moon. If we dig 290km deep: we can sustain an atmosphere of 1 bar. This was calculated by working out the scale altitude of the moon being 12.4km.

The illustrated vertical section will be cryogenic temperature gas. This makes mining the moon from the inside out more practical and safe with an atmosphere eliminating the risk of decompression. I had to work out the scale altitude of the moon despite it being a vacuum. It still has gravity. The main difference between our moon and Titan is that Titan is colder, this is why Titan can have an atmosphere while our hot moon cannot. So I figured we might as well replicate Titan in the moon with a tunnel that the sun cannot heat up. This way we can seal the tunnel into sections. The vertical section of the tunnel in the moon can be air sealed but not to keep in or out any pressure but instead to keep the warm air in (cold air out). The hatch only needs to be thermally shielded. It does not need to be rated to keep a vacuum in our out. If the hatch breaks we have time to to repair/replace the hatch without the risk of violent de-compresion. We will only be fighting the cold. So we can suit up in suits that are less demanding that just keep us warm while we repair it. We can also have multiple doors seals as redundancy. Let me know in the comment section if you like this idea or not!