Sustaining Life on Mars

Brought to you by Kelly and Amy Draper

Here is our design for the Mars Space Station, it covers all of the
problems we have discussed, and includes a detailed plan of our
Space Station, enjoy!

By Amy and Kelly Draper

 Station
Plant Living
Growth Area

Communication
Pod

Water Electricity
Centre generator
 Research desk, with Individual
Plant Growth computers and data
analysis machines
study area
The plants will have to be genetically
modified to sustain the amount of
radiation they will be exposed to.

Carrots
Potatoes

Fruit
Trees Broccoli

Vegetables

Vegetables Vegetables
The plants would be grown like this to maximise
the area of growing space, and therefore grow as Sewage
many plants as possible. storage
Sewage would also be pumped down underneath
the plants to the soil, this recycles sewage and
creates fertile soil for the plants
Living space

Cleaning Facility
Bedroom

Kitchen/Dining
Relax

Area
Area
Running
Track
Running Track
The astronauts will be given
the opportunity to exercise
using our running track. We
expect them all to do at least
three hours a week of exercise,
as they need to be fit and
healthy to fulfil their missions.

They will all be given their own

time slots to use the running
track, this will help avoid
disputes over who can use the
running track, as it is only 1m in width
really ideal for one person at a
time.

When not in use, flaps fold

over and will seal the top of
the track, this should help keep
a warm air flow circulating
around the living space, and
will act as an insulated wall.
 The bed will measure 2m by 1m, and The bedrooms will
Bedroom will have a foam mattress. They will be
built on collapsible wooden frames. The
be about 4m by 3m,
which narrows
The doorway will be one astronauts will be provided with extra down to 2.5m.
thick sealable blankets, this way, at
metre wide, and will be a
night when it gets cold, they won’t
hole in the wall, as shown freeze to death!
below. The door, will be
made of insulating foil,
and will pull down from
the top, which will have a
latch to keep it down at The
night. wardrobe
will
Desk contain
The desk will be storage
collapsible, and can be
for
altered into one big desk,
or two smaller desks, It clothes
will have a set of drawers, and
and each of the astronauts personal
will be provided with a items
desk lamp. There will also
be electricity plugs behind
the desk, this way they
can use their individual
laptops in their rooms.
Cleaning Facility
Sinks, with
storage room
underneath
Toilet
All astronauts will be Middle island, with mirrors
allocate a ‘Buddy’, this and electrical items
will be another person
within their gender
group, who they will Shower
share different resources
with. For example,
showers, toilets and sinks.
When they land on Mars
and do expeditions, they
will also be responsible
for making sure that their
buddy is safe and does
not get left behind. This
way, everyone will have
an ‘angel’ looking after
them.
Kitchen/Dining Food storage

Area Drinking
water
Counter
This will be the area where the astronauts
will eat most of the meals. On the table Tea/coffee maker
there will also be engraved board games,
such as chess, draughts, backgammon, and Freezer
so on. We hope this will help introduce a
nice friendly atmosphere for the Fridge
astronauts. It also saves space.
Oven
In the food storage cupboards, there will Counter with
be enough food to last a month when fully microwave on top
stocked, then it will be two pairs of
Dishwasher
buddies job to restock it every month, and
they will alternate in turns. This way, the
food can still be kept in storage in the solar Sink
flare pod, and will free up room in the
kitchen.
Food storage
Relax Area
Computer area with a
camera, headphone and
microphone set with
Table each one
football
(Foosball) Mars Bar (best
Pool table/Table-tennis drinks on the
table, The table with have planet!)
a flip action, in which the
pool table part swaps
with the tennis table
part. The table-tennis
balls will also be a bit Darts
heavier due to the lower board Refrigerated
gravitation on Mars, drinks (none
however some normal alcoholic)
ones will be included for
the amusement of the
astronauts Sofas with TV set in the middle.
The TV will be a large 60” smart
TV, with a wide range of different
films to select.
Electricity Generator
The electricity will be
obtained from solar panels
placed all around the Mars
Station, and will be carried
through wires to this room.
The electricity is then used to
compress air in these air tight
metal boxes. This means that
extra energy not being used
in the day, can be stored.
At night, when the sun stops
shining, we will still need
electricity to keep the life
support functioning. We can
release air through a narrow
pipe from these compression
chambers, which will then
spin turbines to generate
electricity.
Water Centre
These are three big, curved mirrors, with a surface area of
10m squared. They will concentrate the suns light on the
ice lake, and therefore melt it. The pump connecting to the
water centre then pumps it to be processed and cleaned.

The water will pump directly into a large tank in the

middle, in this tank there will also be water pumped from
drainage facilities. This way, we can reuse the water. The
only water which won’t be reused will be water used for
the pants, and from the toilets.

When the water is inside, it will be chemically treated, and

separated into drinkable water and other water. Because
the centre will by raised 3m higher than the rest of the
station, this will provide enough pressure, that the water
can travel to the rest of the station.
Drill
Send up 1,000 of these drills

£100,000,000 per Rocket

Therefore £100billion to create

an atmosphere on Mars
through volcanic drilling
50m

5m
Solar Flare Detection

There will be two solar flare detection units orbiting

Mars, these will be able to give the astronauts a four
minute warning of a solar flare approaching
Solar Flare Pod Enough of the following resources stated
below for a week, for sixteen people.
More can be retrieved through
underground tunnels to the other
departments. A Solar radiation proof suit
will be provided in this room, in case of
need for the retrieval of supplies
• Food
• Water
• Communication
• Heat
• Beds

The configuration of the bricks will be as shown in the

picture above, it will create a cylindrical shape, with a
hemisphere on top. It will have a diameter of 15m,
and height of 3m, and will be positioned under the
main research centre.
Bloopers
Kelly: Hello we’re Kelly and Amy Draper and this is our entry to the 2030 stem engineering challenge about problems which engineers will face in
the future.

Amy: We considered many different problems including over population, renewable energy pollution and climate change. However, we decided
the issue which interested us the most was in fact sustaining life on mars.

Kelly: Ever since we were little we were interested in space travel and exploring the unknown

Amy: Although, it’s always seemed like an impossible dream to fulfil to travel many light years, especially because of Einstein’s theory

Kelly: But we are delighted to be given the opportunity to research this,

not just for our benefit but hopefully for yours as well and we hope that this will help make our dream become a reality.

“SUSTAINING LIFE ON MARS”

[Enter with lab coats]

Amy: Okay, so as you know we are doing a presentation about sustaining life on Mars, we will run through the different problems and how we
could solve them. But firstly you may ask why? Why spend billions of pounds on this? Well we have come up with four main reasons why

New Research

Kelly: By expanding human knowledge we can advance the human race, make new discoveries, and invent new things.
We can also study what the Earth might become, and this will help us in the future when we face this problem!
It may also open our eyes to alien life, and we can discover if life ever existed on Mars!

Escape Plan

Amy: This picture shows all the different asteroids that have a chance of hitting the Earth in the next 10,000 years. Yes this is pretty
overwhelming, and quite frankly scary that the Human race will go extinct over some measly asteroid if we don’t act now so we must adapt to
survive, and it’s all about survival of the fittest isn’t it.

Overpopulation

Kelly: As we all know, the human population is dramatically increasing from 1 billion in 1800 to over 7 billion in 2013.This shows an increase of
over 6 billion in just 200 years. Now, we already have poverty and overcrowding., there’s just simply not enough room and if the human
population keeps expanding like this, well… where can we go? It just so happens that the nearest habitable planet is mars.
Problems;

Kelly: Obviously there are challenges to face with sustaining life on mars, these are things which we will need on this expedition but aren’t on
mars. We shall now talk about the 4 main problems and what they entail.

Water

Amy: Humans need roughly 2 litres of water a day, it is essential for our survival and without it we’d die within a week. Therefore we need to
make sure that each one of our astronauts gets the amount of water they need

Oxygen

Kelly: This is quite an obvious one because we need oxygen to respire and therefore convert food into energy. Humans breathe in 11,000 litres of
air per day but only 550 litres of this is oxygen which we use. There’s no other substitute, we need to supply oxygen for them.

Food

Amy: We need an average of 2000 calories a day for a woman and 2500 for a man. But on Mars the gravitation is slightly less; therefore we’d
reduce it to about 10% less calorie intake for each. However, because the Astronauts would be doing a lot of physical activity, we’d need to
increase it about 30% each; equalling about 2400 calories for a woman and 3000 for a man.

Electricity

Kelly: Electricity would be needed for many different uses including Radio Camera Light Heat Sewage Pumps Water and Cleaning Facilities.
However the most important would be the use for research by powering the computers and data analysis machines.

Solutions;

Food

Amy: Food will be supplied for the journey there in the form of condensed space food packages. But we plan on the astronauts being able to
grow their own food source once on mar using the garden section. We will supply
Thank you so much for taking your time to
read/watch this, we hope you enjoyed it!

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Kelly & Amy Draper