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The HP Mars Home Planet challenge encouraged engineers, architects, and others to design a Mars habitat that could protect one million future human residents as they live and work on the planet.
crafts can be housed, launched from, and refueled, Forlini says. They’re creating CAD models of the main aspects of the hub—modeling the entire system would be a huge undertaking, outside the realm of the contest, Forlini says. But the two are particularly keen to model specific parts of the rockets that can be launched from the hub. “We want people to be able to see what they look like inside and see the control panels,” Forlini says. “We’ll model as much as we can and submit it to the contest from there,” he says. “We’re always adding new things and refining what we have.” They’ve called in help; a few of Levick’s friends with strong AutoCAD modeling experience. For the third stage of the contest, Forlini and Levick will bring in more friends who can help them render a virtual reality model of their refueling station and airport hub. Third-phase entrants will bring their winning 3D models in the Epic Unreal Engine game engine. The environment will be built on Mars Valley terrain from the Mars 2030 game from Fusion, which itself is based on NASA Mars research and high resolution photography, according to Shelley.
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That way, the refueling station will look as though it’s actually situated on Martian terrain. Beyond the contest, Forlini says, he and Levick will continue to work on their Martian concept “tying our project into a whole planetary timeline. “We have everything flowing with this timeline, so you can extract resources from Mars to create fuel using methane as a propulsion system to get oxygen and water from the airport out into the region,” Forlini says. “We have systems for rare earth and water extraction, to extend the ability for life, with nothing required to be transported from Earth.” “Our goal is to become earth independent and be self sustaining to explore the minor galactic region around Mars,” he adds. Roman Domes 3D printed Jose Daniel Garcia Espinel was the only winner onsite at Autodesk World when the winning first-phase Mars Home Planet proposals were announced in November. His team anticipates a city on Mars named Martropolis located within the Mars Valley crater and built using 3D printing with materials harvested directly from the Martian soil.
February 2018 www.designworldonline.com
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Espinel is a civil engineer working as director of digital innovation at the Spanish renewable energy and construction company Acciona. The biggest challenge the as-yet-dreamedof Martropolis faces is, of course, the planet’s environment. “The atmosphere is too aggressive; full of dust storms,” Espinel says. “The climate is too cold and the pressure is quite low. Also, water is needed for life and local minerals must be used as raw materials to build the first Martian structures.” The solution: a system of tunnels, or tubes, that connect domes where humans will live. He plans to use common construction machinery--robotic bulldozers, excavators, compactors, trucks and water vehicles. “These machines could be self-driving or be remotely controlled from a space base,” Espinel states in his proposal. To construct the system, Espinel has taken a page from the 3D printing process. The machines will use a pressurized system— analogous to how the 3D printer operates--to layer minerals previously mined from the Mars soil. The layers will compress, forming a type of concrete, he states in his proposal. But how to create the internal living and transport space within? Steel beams are far too heavy to be transported to Mars from DESIGN WORLD
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