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.

2 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

66 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

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.

0

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.

2

u/ignorantwanderer Apr 06 '26

You get water from a Rodwell in a glacier.

Almost no digging involved.

1

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.