Mars' Southern Polar Region's Argentea Dorsa

Nucleating Heavy Industry on Mars

What does it take to colonize Mars? What resources does Mars possess to allow for the conquest of our solar system?

Mars is the red planet in part because of the presence of iron. Iron is obviously a useful resource. Iron is used to make steel, and steel can be used to make just about anything. Of course, space age technology often use higher performance exotic materials, but steel is still a very versatile material.

On the other hand, water is another critical resource. Water can be used to grow food, to make oxygen, and also to make hydrogen which is an excellent rocket propellant.

The CO2 in Mars' atmosphere is also a useful resource. CO2 can be used to make CH4, which is also a useful rocket propellant, and CO, which is important in refining iron ore, like hematite, into raw iron, and also in processing raw iron into steel.

What does it take to colonize Mars? What resources does Mars possess to allow for the conquest of our solar system?

So, all of the necessary resources are present on Mars to produce air, fuel, food, iron, and steel, but where can they be found all in one place? Hematite can be found in abundance in several locations on Mars, but the richest deposits exist only in small, localized regions. Water can also be found throughout Mars, but is much more plentiful in the polar regions. Huge reserves of water could be extracted from the permanent ice caps at both poles. But, is there a place where we find hematite and water in abundance in the same location? The answer is yes, in Argentea Dorsa.

Argentea Dorsa

This image is a color coded image of the Argentea Dorsa region in Mars' southern polar region, near 76° S Lat and 318° E Lon. The color scale on the right indicates hydrology data, which ranges between 42% and 53% water by volume. The red shaded regions indicate 2 large areas of high hematite concentrations. This region is in the southern highland area of Mars, so the altitude is 1000 to 1200 m. The floor of the large crater in the northern part of this region is as low as 800 m in places, while the rim reaches 1800 m. Surprisingly, even the smaller craters are quite deep, around 800 m at the floor, which is a local elevation change of nearly 400 m from the rim. Even the small crater in the northern hematite deposit has a rim near 1100 m and a floor at 900 m, a 200 m depth These small but deep craters might also prove useful. The atmospheric pressure at the floor of the craters would be slightly higher, and would also develop significant thermal variances from the surrounding plateau. These thermal differences might be used as a local energy resource. For example, they might generate high winds near the rim which could be harnessed by wind turbines.

Note that the rectangular map projection introduces severe distortion due to the high latitude. You can see the circular craters have become highly elongated. The horizontal distortion is approximately 5 to 1. Narrow angle MOC images footprints are also indicated.

The following image is a wide angle MOC image of most of Argentea Dorsa, annotated with lat / lon lines and the hematite deposits. A 10 km scale is included to give an idea of the size of the region. Each lat / lon line is one degree, the center of the image again is 76° S lat and 318° E lon.

NASA Data Resources

Most of this data was acquired through the marsoweb data visualization tool. The MOLA view has clickable links to narrow and wide angle MOC images. You need to click on the "Display MOC Images" button to enable the footprints, and then clicking on a footprint will either display the MOC image or link to the MOC image web page, which is more useful. You can select the web page link by clicking on the radio button to link to web pages. One of the links is broken, and "AB1-06805" seems to be misplaced, as the image does not show two large craters which should be obvious if the footprint was accurate. It may be that either the scale or orientation is wrong. Hydrology data was obtained from the Los Alamos National Laboratory

Why Argentea Dorsa?

The main advantage of this location is the abundance of both hematite and water. Although water is found throughout mars in lower concentrations, it is most plentiful at high latitudes, for obvious reasons. Little is known about low latitude water reserves. It might be possible to locate extensive reserves of water at lower latitudes, which would be more desirable, but the high probability of finding readily usable water and hematite at this location offset the difficulty of the high latitude. However, the near polar location poses a number of difficulties. Because it is in the southern highlands, the atmosphere will be thinner, which in some ways might be an advantage. Seasonal temperatures will be extremely cold. However, the thin atmosphere and low temperatures are challenges all over mars. The one real disadvantage of the high latitude is the inconvenient orbital configurations it involves. Polar orbits involve expensive orbital maneuvers to get into and out of. Fortunately, Mars has comfortably low gravity to begin with, which makes maneuvering in to and out of a polar orbit less costly.

Why Colonize Mars?

In fact, it is Mars' low gravity which makes it so attractive in the first place. Really, what makes Mars attractive is not so much that its escape velocity is low as it is that Earth's escape velocity is so high. On earth, we live at the bottom of a voracious gravity well. Earth's escape velocity is 11.2 km/s, whereas Mars' is only 5 km/s. However, the 11.2 km/s of earth puts it very close to the limits of our current technology to actually break free. To achieve this velocity, it takes upwards of 99% of the final payload mass in fuel, using chemical propulsion like LOX/LH2. This high cost also forces us to use expensive multi-stage launch vehicles which are close to impossible to re-use. On Mars, however, the fuel required to reach escape velocity goes way down, to around 50% of the final payload mass, and that is a huge economic advantage.

Although the cost of building a colony on Mars would be literally astronomical, the benefit would be just as great. The cost of lifting heavy materials from Mars would be only 1/50 that of earth, based on fuel savings alone. In reality, the cost would benefit would be even greater, because launch vehicles could be reusable on Mars. Furthermore, launch vehicles on Mars could be engineered in a more simple, robust way, since there is more room for lower performance. In other words, launching a payload from Earth requires the vehicle to get 110% performance every time, so sophisticated, "space age" designs are required. On Mars, it is a lot easier to get to escape velocity, so performance does not need to be so high. Launch vehicles can be made from heavier materials, like steel, and built to lower tolerances, and still achieve adequate performance.

A Modest Proposal

Beginning with something very similar to the mars Design Reference Mission (DRM), you would send a modestly sized manned mission to mars, equipped to do some in situ resource utilization.   While the DRM proposes only modest in situ resource utilization, basically just converting water into fuel, using power provided by a nuclear reactor, if your goal is long term residence and in fact nucleating heavy industry, you would scale this up a little bit but not too much.   By doubling the mass of the overall mission, you could include some extra equipment.   A spare nuclear reactor, for more power and also backup if the first one fails to survive at reduced capacity if necessary.   Also, you would add 2 nuclear powered rover / tractor / dozer / backhoes. At about 7 tons each, each vehicle would have its own nuclear power source and the ability to move lots and lots of dirt.   The nuclear reactors in the rover / dozers could provide additional backup power in case of catastrophic failure. So, now you have 4 redundant nuclear reactors on the surface.

You would also modify the landers and return launch vehicles so that you have 2 each of a reusable light lifter and heavy lifter, both of which double as landers. The light lifters would be about 500 kg dry weight / 2500 kg fully fueled. The heavy lifters would be 1500 kg dry / 7500 kg fully fueled. Both lifters would have the ability to either lift or land its fully fueled mass, that is 2500 kg and 7500 kg respectively, and would be reusable on mars.   You would also carry some spare rocket motors just in case. You would want both light and heavy lifters to use the same motors, to reduce spares.   Also, both heavy and light lifters would be able to deliver a smaller payload to orbit, maybe only 10% of its dry weight, and then land. This crucial ability is the holy grail of space flight, a reusable launch vehicle.   On mars, it is possible to use LH2 / LOX to deliver a small payload to low mars orbit and return with a full powered landing using a single vehicle. This is not possible on earth using today’s technology. There is no technology which gives sufficient ISP and thrust to deliver a payload to LEO and return under powered flight, but this is possible on mars, using LH2 and LOX. This would give the mission the ability to ferry payloads to orbit and return multiple times.

You would need some additional equipment to refine materials on mars, and this is the bulk of the additional payload.   In addition to the ability to extract water and produce rocket fuel, you would want to be able to extract and refine hematite iron ore into iron and steel, and further process the steel into usable materials.   You would want to be able to produce cast iron and steel products, as well as rolled, sheet, and machined iron and steel. The equipment to do this would be bulky, and it would also need to run off of a nuclear electric power source. The rollers for sheet stock work and also a basic machine mill are not too bad, but being able to melt and cast iron and steel, even to produce steel itself from iron and a source of carbon is tricky. But, I think if you keep the equipment to the bare minimum required, you could do it.   At first you would only need to process small quantities of ore. But, you would then be able to use local resources to produce more bigger and better stuff. This would be the nucleation of heavier equipment, larger bases, lifters, etc.

You would keep the earth return vehicle in orbit.   The earth return vehicle would double as an orbital platform to ferry materials and supplies from the surface to orbit. The earth return vehicle would use VASIMR propulsion, which deviates from the DRM standard to use existing technology, but the clear advantages of VASIMR are worth the cost.   In fact, you would want to build 2 VASIMR spacecraft, one to deliver the first payload of supplies / etc and then stay in orbit around mars, and the second to deliver the crew.   The first, unmanned mission would include two landers, both nuclear reactors, the two rover / dozers, and a small surface habitat. The second manned mission would include the crew, crew landers, and any other equipment they would need. The second mission would probably be a lot smaller. And, having two identical nuclear powered VASIMR spacecraft at mars would essentially provide a completely redundant earth return vehicle.   So, at this point, you have 4 lander / lifters, 2 earth return vehicles, and 4 nuclear reactors on the surface of mars, which is more than a comfortable safety margin for a long term mission.

This is a minimal first mission.   You would be able to refine and produce useful stuff on the surface of mars. To begin with, you could produce additional habitation shelters, basically just a big pressure vessel with an air lock. Eventually would be able to grow limited amounts of food hydroponicaly, using local water sources. If you can build a pressure vessel, you can build a spacecraft.   You could even build a rocket motor, or at least the combustion chamber and rocket nozzle, which are the bulk of the mass of a rocket motor.   Even a nuclear reactor is mostly pumps, pipes, and pressure vessels. At first you would need to import most of the "finished" materials from earth, but most of the mass, the iron and steel that everything is made out of, could be produced locally. You would produce the bulk mass of iron and steel on mars, and then import cabling harnesses, circuit boards, and other finishing touches from earth.   And, you would have 2 earth return vehicles in orbit, which could be refueled and sent back home for supplies.   You could send one crew back home and bring back a new crew, supplies, and items difficult or impossible to manufacture locally. At no time would you leave the surface of mars abandoned. You would rotate the crew a few people at a time.   At first, you would keep one earth return vehicle fueled and in orbit at all times. You could build another earth return vehicle on mars, or at least the pressure vessel, reactor, and spacecraft structure, and then import some new VASIMR engines and reactor core from earth. Going to and from mars would become cheap and routine. In fact, the most expensive part of the trip would be earth surface to LEO.   Eventually, it would be cheaper to build and launch geosynchronous communication satellites from mars than from earth.   And the rest of the solar system would open up too. The asteroid belt.   Jupiter.   Saturn. Once you get started, all it takes is time.

The cost of moving materials through interplanetary distances is very much analogous to oceanic freight costs.   Once you get a spacecraft moving it keeps moving without any resistance. All it takes is time to reach its destination, and with efficient propulsion system like VASIMR, the fuel costs are low. In theory, it could be cheaper in energy costs to move material from mars to earth than from Los Angeles to Taiwan. The only problem is that if you build a super freighter in a shipyard you could never lift it into orbit, apart from the fact that superfregithers do not work in space, but the point is you could build a space freighter or similar size on earth but you could never lift it to orbit.   On mars that is not true. You could build a 100 ton spacecraft on mars and easily lift it into orbit.   Remember the 50:1 payload advantage on mars? This is where it really pays off. And that is why mars is the key to a space faring civilization. Of course, the same is true of the asteroid belt or in fact almost any other body in the solar system, besides earth.   We are unfortunately stuck in the worst place imaginable for building really big spacecraft. However, mars has the advantage of having well known resources, that is water and hematite, in close proximity that can be exploited from a single mission, and reasonably close to earth. Phoebe is another attractive target, having both water and some ferrous materials, but Saturn is much further away than mars, so it is not a good starting place.   But, in the long run, we would want to go to places like Phoebe, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, even Mercury is attractive because of vast amounts of local energy in the form of heat and sunlight.   It is all out there, all the wealth of the solar system, we just need to get a foothold.

Conclusion

In the end, the materials necessary for heavy industry in space, like steel, food, water, and fuel, could more easily be lifted from Mars than from Earth. Over time, the benefits of nucleating heavy industry on Mars will repay the initial investment many times over. And, Argentea Dorsa would be a very good place to start!