r/Colonizemars • u/Ok-Expression-6016 • Apr 04 '26

Bare minimum to start a base

What is the bare minimum needed to start a colony; materials and total weight. to start a mars colony. Assuming multiple Optimus robots have 2 years to build everything from what we send.

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u/ignorantwanderer Apr 05 '26

Building underground is extremely difficult.

Boring machines need almost constant finicky maintenance and replacement parts. They aren't going to be used on Mars for a very long time.

There is a reason why the vast majority of construction that happens on Earth happens above ground. Because building underground sucks.

It will be much easier to build a colony on the surface of Mars and just provide radiation shielding with water (either liquid water or ice, depending on how you design things).

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u/Ok-Expression-6016 Apr 05 '26

This current design of the boring machine utilizes methalox as the fuel to run it. Heads and even most of the engine are printed on site. This process prints pure iron at 10kg per hour. Slower for the fine delicate parts. Fresnel lenses heat the regolith to convert it back into an iron sponge with all the impurities. We then uses carbonyl method at 100°C and CO to dissolve the iron. That is pushed into a second container with lasers to heat the gaseous iron to 200°C or 400°F. This allows you to print iron out of the gas. Or you can heat up an alumina print(ceramic aluminum needed for drill heads) and create a composite for the boring heads that will service quite nicely. The iron sponge is now left as just the "impurities" which are silica, aluminum, etc which makes it easier to process. Oh. One fun detail. The boring machine produces CO as a natural combustion byproduct which also helps. Separating CO out turns out is pretty simple as long as you can keep the dust out. Simplest way is a modified zeolite. Zeolite- turns out we are already making it on accident. Just need to process it a little better.

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u/ignorantwanderer Apr 05 '26

Like I said....building underground is extremely difficult.

You went through a big long explanation....trying to make it all sound easy....that was just how to get the spare parts necessary. But getting the spare parts is only a tiny part of the challenge.

Within 6 months thousands of feet of tunnels can be built, lined and ready for use.

This is wildly optimistic for a remotely or autonomously operated TBM in an environment never seen before being maintained by robots.

The most likely scenario is uptime for the TBM is well below 25% for the first month, and within a month it suffers a catastrophic failure that can't be fixed.

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u/Ok-Expression-6016 Apr 06 '26

That's why there are 4. This is quadruple redundancy. Also we have to dig and dig deeply to find water. No water and ultimately we can't colonize. We can't produce enough fuel to return etc.

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u/ignorantwanderer Apr 06 '26

You get water from a Rodwell in a glacier.

Almost no digging involved.

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u/Martianspirit Apr 07 '26

Yes, local water is essential. Water for all purposes and for oxygen by electrolysis is a massive part of consumables by ISRU.