2036

This invention is a novel mission plan to terraform a region of the Martian surface. Terraformation improves a planetary environment to support life; this terraformation supports crews. The improvement is accomplished in 2036, opening the door to the first settlement and commercial development of Mars.

The Mars Terraformer Transfer (MATT) is the first practical terraformation plan. It is patent-pending in the U.S., available for licensing by the Lake Matthew Team.

The Shepherd

Many details of the mission plan are under licensing NDA, but it can be said that one commercial satellite executes the entire mission plan. This satellite – a Shepherd – accompanies a designated celestial small body beyond Mars orbit. It restructures the body and deflects it along a specific, unobvious flight path for impact at an optimal target site on Mars. Impact prepares the site for life in 2036.

The Shepherd uses a DE-STARLITE-class laser and a suite of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) instruments for body deflection, tracking, physical characterization and restructuring. Commercial firms / units with ability to build the Shepherd include:

Omaha Crater

Impact excavates a uniquely useful crater, 9 km across. This is Omaha Crater, named after the U.S. Army’s most hard-won D-Day beachhead. Omaha Crater is dotted at creation with a pattern of worksite depressions. Bedrock holds over one quintillion (10¹⁸) Joules of impact heat, centered on the new, lowest point on Mars. Here 1.3 kPa of atmospheric pressure, the depressions, and crater heat make possible a lake and other reservoirs for settlement use. Water surface temperature is set via circulation and heat exchange below 11 °C to prevent boil-off. Other crater properties are described in a supplemental geophysical note.

In time, settlement industries will vent excess oxygen into the crater, forming a protective local ozone layer. Ozone, heat and the pressure of air and water set the stage for a photosynthetic archipelago on the open crater floor – a true terraformation site, with appearance similar to the masthead site, Alaska’s Aniakchak caldera.

The terraformation resources persist beyond our time. Omaha Crater bedrock will remain warm to the touch for thousands of years.

Water Domes

The Omaha Crater site has abundant ground ice to fill and refill the crater’s Lake Matthew. Water treatment with heat exchange can supply crews with treated hot water. Returning cold water can serve as massive transparent radiation shield and architectural pressure-equalization medium over ballasted subaqueous dome habs.

The notional subaqueous dome design has a low pressure differential across surfaces, to free domes from the radius-limiting scaling law of pressure vessels; thereby the domes can achieve unmatched mass efficiency at scale, roughly two orders of magnitude lighter than the equivalent pressure-vessel designs. Domes can scale to millions of cubic meters of pressurized interior space, while using only some hundreds of tons of cargo for construction. Omaha Crater’s interconnected hab network can have a total pressurized volume of roughly 100 million cubic meters, sufficient for Mars’ first city.

Such immense habs are feasible only with the resources created in terraformation. The scale is impractical beyond Omaha Crater, on unimproved ground; thus, every spacefaring organization will have reason to lease hab space at Omaha Crater.

2061

Shepherd laser power may be boosted in future, to ten times the 2036 Shepherd specification. If this is achieved in the 2030s, a second terraformation becomes possible in 2061, with deflection impact of asteroid 2005 LF8.

The 2061 construction crews can be flown and provisioned from the settlement city of the 2036 Omaha Crater, speeding development of the second crater. This second application of the invention’s methods can improve upon the first, potentially scaling settlement beyond Elon Musk’s ambition for a million settlers, in this century.

Contact Us

LakeMatthewTeam at gmail.com