1/ The potential Mars Settlement has been narrowed down by @elonmusk to 7 locations on Arcadia Planitia Region first identified at LPSC-21 in the attached paper. In this thread I will go into depth on what we know and how you can research these sites.

hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2… 2/ During his brief he appeared to narrow the final decision down to all 3 of the Eastern most sites identified as AP-1, AP-9 and AP-8 clustered together in the deepest part of Arcadia Planitia Glacier at 1km deep water ice.

1/ 1000 ships a year, 3 ships a day.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1928185351933239641

2/ Gigabay will be one of the largest structures in the world, will have a second Gigabay in FL

.@grok is getting much better at this 😀

x.com/i/grok/share/m… 2/ This is getting fun now, the final goal is to have @grok fully design a complete system for Starship to see what it comes up with and what innovations it makes. 🚀😀

x.com/i/grok/share/k…

1/ I am personally fond of the HLS Ferry plan from @KenKirtland17 , one of the arguments I usually hear is about Life-Support, without any recycling and just CO2 scrubbers 4 Crew for 6 months is 3.6T of O2/H2O/Food for a ship that can carry 150-250T this is negligible and

https://twitter.com/BellikOzan/status/1865123577764417932

2/ liquid/solid waste can be stored for long periods. The other main area is thermal control, an external radiator like the ISS-ATCS can solve this problem by mounting the radiators along the hull.

Active Thermal Control System (ATCS) Overview
nasa.gov/wp-content/upl…

Just received the new Starship draft EA for 25 launches a year. This will take a little while to review.

Revised Draft Tiered Environmental Assessment for SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle Increased Cadence...
faa.gov/media/87646 Air separation unit appears to me near OLM-2 next to Hwy-4

1/ Usually I start with Pt 1/2 on Solar Activity, Pt 3 goes into Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR), Dr @TamithaSkov explains this without scary Math. People going into Space need to understand the basics of Space Radiation.

…youtube.com/live/NekOPPqHQ… 2/ I love Dr Skov's use of a slinky to explain the actual path of particles, it gives a great reference that we can all understand.

Q&A Mini-Course (P1): The Invisible Killer— Radiation Storms from the Sun & Beyond (PartI)
youtube.com/live/bqQfblgtj…

Another neat advantage to METHALOX powered ships like Starship (long post), using a Sabatier based life Support system allows you to take the CO2 and water and process into METHALOX stored in main tanks, O2 can be used directly, a METHALOX Fuel Cell can be used reversing the process to produce power with an exhaust of H2O and CO2, tank the CO2 in a buffer tank and use the water for Life-Support (drinking water, adding to dehydrated food, etc...).

ISS is around 98% water recovery now but vents the CH4 from their Sabatier ECLSS since they do not use it in any internal systems and have periodic supply deliveries.

Food/waste would be the main life-support constraint on Starship, converting 100% of the solid/liquid waste back into food to recover the carbon at the shipboard level is the goal for a fully closed loop life support system. @SierraSpaceCo has a system called AstroGarden that will allow recovery of some of that Carbon as CO2 turned into food, more Astrogardens = more Carbon Mass recovery = more food.

AstroGarden - Growing Vegetables in Space
sierraspace.com/space-applicat…

@SierraSpaceCo has a system to recover the water from the waste called Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS) that extracts water and turns the remaining solids into dry bricks that can be used in radiation shielding, this removes some mass from the life-support cycle, but does put 17.7% of the food mass to a still useful form as radiation shielding while recovering 82.3% of the food mass as water for recycling.

Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS)
sierraspace.com/newsroom/blog/…

Sierra Space are far more than just inflatable structures and DreamChasers, they are working on important parts of Life-Support needed for long term survival in Space. 2/ A few of the points Dr Robyn Gatens (@NASA @ISS_CASIS) has made many times (another long post) maintenance/repair parts, expendables and consumables are a long term problem. These issues become less of a problem in a large ship like Starship that @elonmusk is planning on transiting in a fleet vs independently, just like a Naval fleet extra repair parts supplies can be stored in cargo ships to replenish Crew-Starships. I would also recommend initial designs of systems be 3D printed where possible to allow for 3D printing repair and replacement parts (@Robotbeat).

Due to Starships sheer size, they will be able to incorporate other facilities, Micro-G showers like AKOS, if combined with a recirculating water system like ShowerLoop will not unnecessarily burden the main ECLSS system. You also have the option of using a Micro-G washing machine, presently ISS sends new clothes to the ISS and old clothes are sent to burn up in the atmosphere. For any cleaning product like shampoo, toothpaste, mouthwash, detergent, of basic cleaning supplies you will ultimately be introducing them into the ECLSS filter systems, and must not interfere with the systems operation. Most products that put Organic on the label are just greenwashing (@skdh), they must actually be tested with the system as completely biodegradable. For a surface cleaning solution, I have seen spray Hydrogen-Peroxide recommended since it breaks down into H2O and O2, to that end there are studies on how to produce H2O2 in impoverished areas that may be adapted to Shipboard life.

AKOS: A Multi-Purpose Astronaut Shower for Long-Duration Mirogravity Missions
researchgate.net/publication/25…

ShowerLoop: Real-time filtration, purification, recycling & heat recovery system for showers.
showerloop.org

@NASA and @tide team up to do laundry in space
cnet.com/science/nasa-a…

@CarnegieMellon Producing hydrogen peroxide when, and where, it’s needed
engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/ne…

Older video but with important info including fire suppression. Biocides are a problem since what is added to water or air must be removed, (opinion; UV sterilization is a better path long term.) Chemical analysis will need to be done on ship vs Earth return with ISS. Quiter fans is a long-term problem for crew rest. "Simplicity equals robustness." Fire suppression; water misting vs CO2(w/emergency breathing system) and post fire air cleaning. Long term dormancy of the ship on surface or in space presents a separate set of problems.
youtu.be/OnLrbffGKII?si…

1/ Now that we have new data, what can we do with it? This will be a series of long posts on how you can view potential Landing Zones and see the detailed imagery (where available) on your computer. This may take a few days for me to complete.

https://twitter.com/esascience/status/1747983995843826087

2/ My main working program is Google Earth Pro (free), Google Earth Pro has the ability to view, tag, and create routes through terrain on the Moon and Mars as well as Earth.

Google Earth Pro - Download


Once you have installed Google Earth Pro look on the left top window for Places, under the tag My Places create 3 folders Earth Moon and Mars, this is where you will place your data for each.

Next go to View/Explore and select Mars, then go to Layers and select Global Maps, select Colorized Terrain (easiest to work with). Go to Search and type Nicholson Crater (most of this report is in this area).

Next go to Layers / Spacecraft Imagery and select HiRISE Image Browser this will bring up red rectangles for HiRISE image sets with a red square in the middle, I will go into how to use HiRISE/HiVIEW page in a separate post.

Go to the toolbar and select the yellow pin, move the pin on the map to something you are interested in and name the pin in the popup window. Select OK to close the popup window and locate your new pin in the Places window on the left and move it to Mars folder (this can be done for Earth and Moon), this allows you to turn on/off all bookmarks for the selected planet under the folder selection button.

Periodically select My Places and left click, then select Save Place As this file will allow you to move to another computer with Google Earth Pro, or send your My Places file in an E-Mail to friends.

Feel free to explore the Moon and Mars to your delight. 😀🚀google.com/earth/about/ve…

1/ People seem to be missing the sheer Audacity of @elonmusk's plans for Starship. He is building an automotive production line for Starships, he is aiming for 1 per week at each factory or 104 per

@arstechnica "build one Starship a week" @SciGuySpace
arstechnica.com/science/2020/0… 2/ year. @spaceX can have a Fleet of 1000 Starships in a 10 year period, and fully reusable on top of that. The Cape and Boca Chica will not be enough launchers for this Fleet, he will have to construct many Mechazilla's around the world to support this plan, and he is designing

1/ "Fully Closed Loop Life Support"

We can convert CO2 to O2 at near 100% efficiency, we can purify H2O to 95-98%, but look closely at this image from NASA Johnson. The average person breathes in .83kg/day O2 and breathes out 1.13kg/day CO2, that Carbon came from Food, you 2/ intake 3.53kg/day H2O and output 3.87kg/day of Urine/Sweat, that non-H2O waste also came from your food. In order to have "Fully Closed Loop Life Support" you have to convert the CO2 and solid/liquid waste back into Food, most systems convert the CO2 into CH4 or CO and vent.

1/ This is a good question from @CJHandmer now that NASA is onboard with Starship and its capabilities, lets carry this idea out to see where we can go. @elonmusk has a lot of resources at his disposal already, most importantly his people, by a strange coincidence he owns

https://twitter.com/CJHandmer/status/1383853723256979457

2/ @boringcompany that has Geologists and Geotechnical Engineers that know how to design and build equipment to move regolith, rocks, and heavy equipment to where they are needed, and @Tesla that knows how to build autonomous equipment that runs on battery power and Solar.