Due to its properties, Martian ice, more than regolith, could prove to be the most suitable material to offer shelter to future human colonists.
If you imagine future Martian cities as low, red earth-colored architecture, try changing the scenario for a moment: the human colonies on the Red Planet could rather resemble the enchanted landscapes of Frozen.
Ice, present in over 5 million cubic kilometers on Mars, could in fact prove to be the most advantageous building material for our future extraterrestrial settlements. This is supported by the space architecture experts at MIT, models in hand, who presented their conclusions at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Ice? Better than regolith
Setting aside the idea of ​​transporting building materials from Earth, Mars offers two abundant raw materials: regolith, the layer of dust and surface rock fragments full of iron minerals, and water ice located beneath the surface and present, for example, in enormous accumulations along the Martian equator. However, regolith is not the ideal material, because before it can be used it would need to be filtered from some of its elements and processed at high temperatures. It is easier for MIT scientists to imagine living spaces obtained from ice, inspired by the ice caves that form as a result of melting water in Icelandic glaciers.
As explained above ScienceRather than caves, the ice shelters built on Mars could resemble domes of 10,000 square meters of surface area, with several rooms divided into spaces for living and dedicated to agriculture. Ice would have two important advantages: thermal insulation and protection from harmful solar radiation. A layer of ice several meters thick would allow the internal temperature of the inhabitants to be brought down from -120 °C typical of Martian winters to -20 °C: not exactly a mild climatebut better than nothing. Furthermore, the frozen water would block the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation and other harmful cosmic radiation, while allowing visible and infrared light to pass through.
Materials such as hydrogels (gelatins composed of polymer chains, which retain large amounts of water) brought from the ground could be used to treat Martian ice and increase its strength and flexibility, while a water-resistant coating could ward off sublimation reactions, i.e. the transition of ice from solid to gaseous in the Martian atmosphere.
Energy and… dust problems
However, between us and the future Martian ice cathedrals there are considerable obstacles. One is the amount of energy needed to extract and process the ice: 15 square meters of shaped ice would require the energy produced in one day on the International Space Station, which could however also be obtained from the waste of other solar or atomic energy plants present in long-term Martian settlements.
The second problem is represented by sand storms on Mars: by settling on the ice, the dust would jeopardize transparency and the benefits of thermal insulation.