Self-Sustainable Smart City Design on the Red Planet

The author of this paper created a design process and design plan for a 1000 person Mars colony for the 2019 Mars Society contest. Particular attention was given to In-situ resource utilization and civil engineering, critical factors for constructing a substantial infrastructure for an almost completely self-sufficient colony. However, it is not possible to produce everything needed on Mars. To make the colony and its habitat self-sustaining and expandable as rapidly as possible, it is necessary to study multiple development schedules to determine the optimal weight of cargo per flight to be sent from Earth and the timing of when to send them, as well as, what should be produced on Mars to reduce the total resources needed. Therefore, our Mars colony development model created for analyzing the development schedule takes into consideration total mass transported from Earth to Mars, total resource mass obtained on Mars, the total energy required, and the total cost required. We determined the most feasible option would be using approximately 200,000 m2 of habitable area on Mars for a colony consisting of eight greenhouse domes with basement habitats built with resources found on Mars and brought from Earth.