It’s official – a company has just developed plans for the first human city on Mars, according to an ABIBOO press release.
Named Nüwa City, the first large-scale Martian settlement could accommodate 250,000 people and could be built along and on the side of a colossal rock – where people on Mars would have access to sunlight without risking overexposure to the deadly threat of cosmic radiation.
Most importantly, ABIBOO claims that construction will begin in 2054, the first settlers moved by 2100.
The ABIBOO plan for the first Martian city will be built on the side of a rock
Most of the new renditions of Nüwa describe the interior of the rooms (and the word operative seems to be a luxury), and if the 2100 lens is a realistic estimate it is enough. But it is clear from the press release that ABIBOO has done the work of analyzing how a city on Mars could work and ultimately thrive. The part of a rock on the Red Planet will allow settlers to live in personal homes, with other areas dedicated to agricultural and energy purposes, where people can raise animals or generate energy from the sun.
The goal is to build a self-sustaining civilization on the Martian surface that can survive without the need to constantly transport supplies from Earth, but the exact plans for how this will happen have not yet been seen. But the walk will be difficult. The atmospheric pressure of Mars is less than 1% of that of the Earth, the temperature is cold enough to melt tears, which would certainly be thrown from a person exposed to lethal radiation that would severely burn any freely exposed skin to cosmic rays.
“We had to do a lot of computational analysis and work with scientists to try to understand the circumstances we will face,” said Alfredo Muñoz, founder of the ABIBOO architecture studio. “[W]We have to face challenges that are very specific to the conditions on Mars, one of them gravity, which is only a third of gravity on Earth. “
However, fortunately for us, there is CO2 and water on the surface of Mars.
The future city on Mars probably should not be based on Earth
“Water is one of the great advantages that Mars offers, it helps to obtain the right materials for construction,” said Muñoz. “Basically, with water and CO2, we can generate carbon and, with carbon, we can generate steel.” Critically, ABIBOO intends to use only materials from Mars to build the first city on the planet.
The new Mars project is involved in a larger scientific project organized by The Mars Society – with development work from the SONet network, which is an international team of scientists and academics. “The lessons we learn from developing a fully sustainable city on Mars give us so many ideas and knowledge about things we could do differently on Earth,” Muñoz explained.
Many people are very passionate about building a substantial human presence on Mars. From Carl Sagan to Robert Zubrin and from Mars enthusiasts to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk – interest is far from waning. While some of Musk’s estimates seem to be unrealistic, the consensus is that any future city on Mars will eventually have to be self-sufficient – otherwise the future people of the Red Planet will never achieve independence from Earth.