(8 April 2017) I was watching a PBS special called “Space Time – The First Humans on Mars” [1] and found that in the discussion they talked about building a city that essentially would be an over-sized Gravitron [2]. In the video the city would be built on a band that rotates around in a circle like an artificial gravity style space station but at less of an angle to ground, like a Gravitron, just much bigger. It seems at least some one has thought this idea through, as you could use this as the basis for building a 1 ‘G’ city or colony on all most anybody in the solar system including the Moon and Mars.

Now imagine though, I want to build a smaller version. I need a huge 3D printer to make the tubes for say a Hyperloop system that is just a touch ‘bigger’ then normal and that can be made from local materials on Mars. I need some earth moving equipment and a nice crater with some water ice. Then just dig a nice trench around edge and install my track (tubes). Then I can bury it, and at one section I can put in my hyper loop car that is a 2 story house ‘module’ and it runs around this track at some degrees tilted above perpendicular around that track. Moving around at a certain speed those in that ‘house’ would experience 1 Earth ‘G’. As more people come I just add more of these ‘house’ cars into the system until I have a moving ring around the hold system spinning around and you have a nice 1 ‘G’ colony on Mars. At least it is cheaper than building the dome at first and I solves the low ‘G’ problem upfront. With time of course you can go ahead and build that dome too.

But OK, maybe Musk has not thought of that (but I think he has) or maybe I’m wrong let’s see a few of the facts…

There is the whole SpaceX thing and declaring the goal of putting Man on Mars and further the fact that the rockets are reusable (http://www.spacex.com/ ) etc. etc… The aforementioned video seems to have a lot of info focused on SpaceX and they suggested this Gravitron style City… [1] (see included picture too) Elon Musk does seem to be doing a lot with tunneling and earth moving… as seen here: https://futurism.com/elon-musk-released-a-photo-of-his-underground-tunneling-machine/ He did start the Hyperloop project/Company and has suggested using it on Mars [3]. (https://hyperloop-one.com/ ) Actually this point has come up in numerous articles [6]…

So, given the vision of Musk, his history and his activities; I suspect the ‘Hyperloop’ is likely the basis for not just transportation but potentially the first colony itself hidden in plain sight; AND a new form of transportation. Oh yea, and its designed to work in low atmospheric pressure such as you might find on Mars, but never mind that detail… This is the plan that I would do if I were Musk, while I might be outing his super-secret plan I totally support it and think it’s brilliant. I hope to see those colonies built in my life time.

References

[1] PBS; “Space Time – The First Humans on Mars” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jowVq81AgGw (see video at about ~6:00)

[2] Wikipedia “Gravitron”, Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia, 9 April 2017

[3] Williams, M.; “Musk Says Hyperloop could work on Mars… Maybe even better!” Mars News Technology – Universe Today https://www.universetoday.com/127356/hyperloop-on-mars/

[4] List of articles mentioning Hyperloop on Mars: