2 Mars pressurized rovers

In 2008, I made 3D models of two Mars pressurized rovers, but roughly, for photo-montage use. Now, here they are both updated, detailed and fully presented on these fresh technical sheets. The "Manchu Explorer" takes its name and design from a renowned SF french illustrator. I did a post about his rover before and you can too visit Manchu's blog. The "Elson Eplorer", much larger, takes name and design from Peter Elson, a "dead too young" english illustrator who painted the beautiful first cover for Red Mars. Again, here is an older post about the painting. Take a look at Peter Elson's (post mortem) official site.

(3D model on Sketchup) (Layout on Inkscape)

I dedicate this post and this rovers' graphic work to Peter Elson who passed away at the age of 51 during the painting of an aquatic mural.

Mars architecture by Janek Kozicki

After a long series of personal creations these days, I'd like to make some space here today to the great work of Polish architect and civil engineer Janek Kozicki. Since 2004, he studies in high details how could be accomplished a Martian outpost with greenhouses for 8 inhabitants. He and his wife Joanna (architect and Mars-interested too) have published a couple of Mars papers in online journals. The studies are both technical and psychological. As example, their latest paper's title is "Human Friendly Architectural Design for a small Martian Base."
Janek Kozicki's website is a fantastic mine of informations, plans and pictures. Many pdf are available for further explorations of this vast research work. The architectural details are amazing, feeling like if the project is almost ready to build ! No surprise then that NASA, ESA, JAXA and the Mars Society have all shown interest in the project. Janek and Joanna's study evolves through the years and builds in realistic details. Here is a quick glimpse at the work, but don't miss the whole site and take a look at this fly-by video of the outpost.
(3D model made on Blender, open-source 3D suite.)

Driving in the storm

Mars is a planetary desert. Living and exploring it will be a challenge in many ways, for both humans and vehicles. Here is a new photo-montage of a big pressurized rover riding dunes during a dust storm. Such vehicle -that would carry an entire crew of scientists- will have to be perfectly designed to face many kinds of terrains and keep humans from the deadly atmosphere, in particular from the very fine and tricky dust of Mars, one of the toughest issues for missions out there. Just as Kim Stanley Robinson describes in Red Mars, the planet sometimes gets covered by dust storms that can last several martian years. Then imagine how many drives like the one above settlers would have to do. In such conditions, geolocation help from satellites will be a question of survival. But well, maybe the choice would be to move as few as possible during those storms, even if it lasts years...

The rover is a 3D model made with Sketchup, and the photo-montage is made with TheGimp on Linux-Ubuntu.

DA VINCI : why this name ?

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For those who haven't read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR), I must explain "Da Vinci", the name of this blog.
In Red Mars (the first book), when humans settle on Mars by 2026, they build stations and then, entire cities. Among these places is "Da Vinci", working base for an ambitious community of scientists innovating in very different areas such as agriculture, terraforming, weaponry and medecine.
Of course, "Da Vinci" refers to Leonardo Da Vinci, scientist, engineer and extremely polyvalent artist of the Renaissance who studied and practiced painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, weather, astronomy, military engineering, religious art, philosophy... The Renaissance definitely inspired KSR to express the pioneer spirit that Mars settlers felt in front of the infinite potential of this new world.
In the books, Da Vinci is a planetary laboratory and also an efficient productive place. In the Mars trilogy, it will develop the longevity treatment (that doubles or triples life span), provide weapons for the first martian revolution (2061), humus for the green part of the terraforming effort, and thousands of oxygen masks for the refugees of Burroughs, the capital town flooded and destroyed during the second revolution (2127).
I then called my blog "Da Vinci" as a tribute to this conceptual and technical creativity that the human-settlement on Mars requires.

For more about the Da Vinci lab, visit the Da Vinci page of MangalaWiki, a rich database on the Mars trilogy (and other books by KSR), linked to the news site KimStanleyRobinson.Info.

I'll end with a word on the roundel here above. It's a creation of mine. A symbol of the 3 stages of Mars in terraforming : Red, Green, Blue (as the 3 books of the trilogy).

Sheffield and the space elevator

Here is a new montage showing the base of the space elevator on the tented town called "Sheffield", built on the summit of Pavonis Mons volcano (see Red Mars). The cable is supposed to be 10m thick, which means here than Sheffield city is very big here, at a large level of development. On the foreground, you can see coloured urban lights. I imagine the main entry to the planet's surface would like to be a rich and welcoming show for new settlers. I also imagine the tent' skin would be blue, to balance the so red and grey landscape.

(Made with The Gimp on Linux-Ubuntu)

For details on the space elevator in KSR's Mars trilogy, read the space elevator page of MangalaWiki, the wiki of KSR-info. 

Down in Noctis Labyrinthus

Valles Marineris, the famous martian canyon, is among the biggest geographical features of the solar system : 4000 km long, 200 km wide and up to 7 km deep ! (Wikipedia)
To give an idea of the terrible scale of this place, I've made this new photo-montage showing a rover exploration of Noctis Labyrinthus, a region in the western edge of the canyon.
As an information, the rover you can see here is a 6 m tall vehicle. A man would be half of its wheels height.

(Made with The Gimp on Linux-Ubuntu)

Cultivating bamboo on Mars 01

In Red Mars, Robinson imagines the importance for settlers of cultivating bamboo as a material for interior architecture. They have a greenhouse in the big Ares ship that takes them to Mars, and when they set on the planet, they go on growing bamboo for the constructive use.
So here is a vision I've had in mind for a long time : a vision from inside a bamboo greenhouse on Mars. The bamboo photo is a shot of an actual bamboo forest I do maintain near Grenoble (France). Here is a link to my bamboo blog.

The colors are pretty saturated, but well, this sight is just surreal !

(Made with The Gimp on Linux-Ubuntu) 

Olympus Mons from orbit

And now, Olympus Mons !
Here we have an orbital sight on the oversize volcano as a ship is entering the atmosphere down there.
Olympus Mons summit is 26 km above the surrounding plains, its caldera (crater) has a 60-80 km diameter and 3 km high cliffs. (Wikipedia)

This montage is based on a beautiful mosaic of 12 images from NASA's Viking orbiter 1 taken in 1980 and assembled by artist Daniel Macháček in 2011. You can see Daniel's series of high resolution mosaics here.

(Made with The Gimp on Linux-Ubuntu)

Tent on a canyon 01

I just completed this new montage, a quite challenging one actually ! It shows a tent on a canyon, where shelters a scientific station.

I choosed blue for the main buildings, because I think this color would be very sane for the Mars settlers, and also because it does contrast well with the red dust and then makes the structures more visible in the distance. The two big gates are airlocks large enough for rovers.

(Made with The Gimp on Linux-Ubuntu)

To have a vision of my best Mars pictures, get to the gallery !

A mohole behind the horizon 01

In Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson describes some very industrial aspects of the terraforming. One of these is the moholes. They are over-size pits, 1km large and going around 15km down in the planet's crust ! It reaches geothermical depths that smoke out of the moholes and contributes to the warm up of the atmosphere needed for the terraforming. This smoke makes the moholes visible from very far.
I just made this montage to express such heavy human presence on the (still) red planet. I put on the ledge of the mohole a gigantic crane, and a tent that protects the town where live the many workers of the mohole.

(Made with The Gimp on Linux-Ubuntu)

To know more about moholes, visit the excellent mohole page of MangalaWiki, the wiki of KSR-info.