r/spacex Discussion: Crowdsourcing technologies needed for a mars colony? u/-rv3h SpaceX has limited engineering resources and they are focusing on the transportation aspect of getting to mars. But getting there is only part of the problem, surviving there for any period of time (let alone establishing a permanent colony) will require a lot of new/improved technologies in almost every field. (How do we dispose of waste, keep people healthy, filter air, extract water, drill martian soil, etc.)
I keep seeing posts from people asking how they could possibly help SpaceX, and the response is usually: "you can't". I think at least some of the people asking have experience in certain fields and would be willing to work on an open source solutions for problems of surviving on mars. (Designing drills, pumps, air filtration, whathaveyou). Some companies might join in as well. (For both publicity - having a toilet you designed being used on mars will make for a killer ad campaign - and possible future lucrative contracts with space companies)
Could we compile a list of what exactly do we need for the first mission and what are the exact requirements for all the needed equipment? We could sort them by how difficult/important they are and maybe try to get some monetary incentives for solving the top problems. Maybe make a simple web app for it where you could select problems you have experience with and join teams working on them?
What do you guys think?
1015 Best Write a comment dguisinger01 • 2h I've been thinking the same thing. I've been considering designing collapsible (flat packable) trusses that could be used to put together early structures and greenhouses.
Tools is probably also something we can help with, integrated 3d printing/milling to produce replacement parts on the fly, surface mining, the ability to move dirt/rocks out of the way to make flat surfaces or to bury things.
5 Kocidius • 2h 3rd year civil engineering student here. My impression was that most structures would be almost completely tension based. The massive positive pressure would make inflatable structures very rigid - with taller structures being supported by guy wires.
Direct metal laser sintering I imagine will be hugely important in developing an infrastructure base - assuming we can reasonably mine and process the metals we would need from the surface.
A small fleet of extremely versatile rovers for exploration, cargo transport, 'earth' moving, etc will be necessary for developing the base as well. Designing a flat packing collapsible rover will be a significant investment.
Ultimately the long term viability of the project relies on exponential growth. This means the technologies that the whole project will hinge on will be resource collection, resource processing, and material manufacturing. Will we be able to produce steel on Mars? Can we manufacture aramid fibers, or carbon fibers? Which resources absolutely must be brought in the first few decades - and which can be produced on planet in exponentially increasing amounts?
2 sjogerst • 2h My take on this subject is a great many of the technologies that a colony would need have been invented already and really we just need to repackage them for use on the Red Planet.
Computers are a good example. The colony will need computers. Thats a given. Our modern society runs on computers. Big and small, computers form the basis of everything from air conditioner controllers, to automobile brains, to your desktop PC. A struggling martian colony needs computers that are extremely flexible. I believe the following list is a good starting point for good properties.
Extremely flexible applications. The colonist need computer systems that are just as capable running the lighting systems as they are running the solar arrays.
Powerful enough to be useful to the colonists in varied uses.
Standardized close enough that individual malfunctioning units can be cannibalized for parts to maximize usefulness.
Lightweight, compact, durable.
Easy to use.
If any of this sounds familiar, its basically what the modern micro computer movement like Raspberry Pie is based around. In fact, I think a martian colony sent to mars without a crate of 10,000 Raspberry Pies (or something like that) would be foolish. That type of compact ultra capable computer is perfect for a colony that might not know what problems they will face. They are going to need a computing swiss army knife.
As another example, consider atmospheric regulation. One would hope that excessive oxygen from gardens and farms is a constant problem facing the would be colonists. As the oxygen levels rise, they quickly become a problem and there must be systems in place that are capable of pulling oxygen from the atmosphere as needed. So where would we find an existing solution to something like that? Believe it or not, nursing homes. Old people sometimes need oxygen. Old people often cannot constantly carry and replace oxygen bottles. The solution is an on-demand portable oxygen concentrator that pulls and concentrates oxygen from the atmosphere. These device are extremely common in nursing homes.
4 -rv • 1h But that's exactly my point. There's gonna be a million tiny problems in need of a solution, and a whole lot of them can be solved by a just a few people with specific experiences.
If we list the problems and let people coordinate - we will have cheap and easy solutions for a lot of them. So that few years from now when spacex needs a devise to control oxygen levels in the gardens they can just look it up in our database and find schematics for a devise made from oxygen concentrator and a raspberry pi that does that, with contacts of people who worked on it.
2 dguisinger01 • 1h Yup i've said the same thing. Most things with embedded electronics should share a swappable card that contains the processor, a bunch of generic analog controls for things like motors, etc, that in most cases won't be used, but so you can steal the board from your microwave to put in your rover or to put in your life support system. Have a chip in the device you insert it into which has the programming information so when you insert the board it recognizes what its supposed to do.
That way you can pack spares of a single electronics module, and of common repair parts like certain types of motors, and promote re-use of those in all your designs.
1 -rv • 2h Now that I think about it, it doesn't even have to be open source.
If a group of people forms around a certain problem and makes considerable progress - nothing would stop them from patenting their solutions and forming a company around it.
The main objective here would be to make it easy for people with experience to find problems in need of solving and connect with other people already working on them.
3 dguisinger01 • 2h agreed, not sure how to go about doing that. What unfortunately happens with a group of people, even before you get a group of strangers together online, is someone always tries to take things as their own and messes up the group :(
1 davidthefat • 59m GrabCAD has been running competitions where companies can set up problems for the community to solve for prize money. ULA currently has one running: https://grabcad.com/challenges
NASA had a more complicated one where an actual subsystem was to be designed: https://grabcad.com/challenges/nasa-experiment-attachment-system-eas-challenge
There are software versions of this like Topcoder where there are many more challenges offered. https://www.topcoder.com/challenges/
2 jazzyjaffa • 1h Have you seen the work that the open source ecology people are doing? https://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski?language=en They want to to build a "global village construction set" whereas you want a "Mars village construction set".
1 glennfish • 20m Spacex wants to be the transportation company that facilitates a mars colony.
I think it's very clear from his presentation that even getting his $10 billion to build the rockets, he needs help well beyond making the trip affordable.
I think that for your $200k ticket, you get there, with a certain poundage of your personal cargo.
Once you're there, if you purchased and packed a space suit, you can go for a walk-about. Otherwise, you come home.
Your cargo and pre-agreements with others on your "colony team" should provide you with some means to have a place to live/work, some food, and I'd guess that the refueling plant can provide you with methane, oxygen, water, and some electricity, for a set price, provided you don't want more than they need for refueling the next landing.
Fundamentally, I don't see Spacex having the ability to clear land, build habs, make rovers, bulldozers, skid steers, farms, sewage plants, etc. etc. etc. That's well beyond what you expect of a transportation company.
Fed Ex capabilities is what I see, and not much more, albeit to a different planet.
When you talk about crowd-sourcing, the presumption is free in the public domain, which doesn't derive the capital required to fabricate a vacuum rated skid steer and sell it to a colonist.
What I think Elon's done is say, "I'll get you there, but someone else has to figure out what to do when I open the doors and let you out."
You're not talking about open source tractors, you're talking about for-profit enterprises that invest in the development of needed stuff, that can manufacture it, and sell it to would be colonists.
The best contribution, IMHO, that can be made to support this, is to define the types of companies that have to be created on earth, that will fabricate and sell, for a profit, the types of things that the colonists need to purchase to have a chance of making things work once they get there, and NOT take the next ship home.