Summary

Hey, this is my design for the Makerbot Mars Base competition!

I figured the greatest difficulty any future human mars missions would face is the sheet difficult of transporting the building materials or prefab buildings to Mars, so i designed this entry around the theme of portability. I was inspired by existing NASA designs and also their game Moonbase Alpha in terms of aesthetics, and wanted to keep it looking close to the core.

To begin with, the large round structures away from the main building are inflatable gardens housing genetically engineered plants for food and moss or algae with a high surface area to help generate oxygen (Hence the tanks)

Then we have the main base itself. This building is designed to be assembled from whatever spacecraft took the astronauts to mars in the first place. In the middle we have the control center, completely with communications array. Branching off are several corridors made from a thick, resilient fabric and metal supports so they can be collapses into a smaller area.

To the bottom-right is the crew quarters, the tubular building. Designed much like an old military pre-fabricated bunker this would provide accommodation for anywhere from six to twelve astronauts. This part of the base would form the core of the original ship and serve much the same function. To the top-right is the airlock leading to the Mars surface, a simple two-way door system.

Finally in the bottom right is the reactor. I noticed a lot of other designs going for wind or solar power, and this was my initial thought as well. But then I realized frequent dust storms on Mars would necessitate constant maintenance of both. So I came to the conclusion that the lightest and most efficient form of power supply would be a nuclear reactor, akin to the ones found on submarines. This would also be used as the on-board power supply for the craft itself.

As for the model itself, I designed it to be modular and for complete assembly with glue. All the necessary parts are included in the Pieces.zip file. I hope you like!

Created using 3ds Max 2010 and Zbrush