MaverickSawyer
Acolyte of the Probe
EDIT: Project has now been renamed. See last post for more details...
PROJECT PEACOCK: PAVONIS MONS BASE DEVELOPMENT
A while back, I started to work on an upgrade to the stock Olympus base. I had made some decent progress on it before taking a break from it to work on other real life issues.
Sadly, all the work was stored on a flash drive I have now lost.
So, I have just gotten restarted on the project, and I'm wiping the slate clean. New layout, new plans, new meshes, the whole shebang.
First on my list: the power plant. Any Mars base will need LOTS of electricity to thrive. Life support is the biggest power demand that I can think of, followed by heating the habitation areas. Since both of these loads will remain fairly constant, I can only see two methods of providing these levels of power around the clock: Nuclear, or areothermal. Areothermal would probably be the best choice for an early base, but a more mature base may be too big to be powered by areothermal power. This means I need to go nuclear.
Nuclear reactors are too heavy to be shipped to Mars, even in parts. So, you would have to make it from native materials. To meet this requirement, I have selected a [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor]liquid fluoride thorium reactor[/ame] as the primary power source for my upgraded base. I'm in the process of hashing out a rough model of it in Sketchup, and once I have more piping completed, I'll post some pics. Right now, it's just the reactor "core" and the primary loop entrance and exit from the core.
If anyone here has more info about the LFTR (or any other molten fuelled ractor) concept, feel free to nitpick my design as details emerge.
EDIT
As promised, pic with some more detailed features.
This is a simple version of the entire "hot" loop of the reactor. The big tank-like object on it's side is the reactor core, the vertical tank on the floor is the first heat exchanger, and the squat cylinder on legs is the hot loop pump.
To be added to this section:
-Safety drain
-fuel processing loop
The next section to be modeled will probably be the intermediary loop, another molten salt loop that will take the heat to the generator hall. How that will work out is still very much up in the air right now, as I want to see how this first section turns out.
PROJECT PEACOCK: PAVONIS MONS BASE DEVELOPMENT
A while back, I started to work on an upgrade to the stock Olympus base. I had made some decent progress on it before taking a break from it to work on other real life issues.
Sadly, all the work was stored on a flash drive I have now lost.
So, I have just gotten restarted on the project, and I'm wiping the slate clean. New layout, new plans, new meshes, the whole shebang.
First on my list: the power plant. Any Mars base will need LOTS of electricity to thrive. Life support is the biggest power demand that I can think of, followed by heating the habitation areas. Since both of these loads will remain fairly constant, I can only see two methods of providing these levels of power around the clock: Nuclear, or areothermal. Areothermal would probably be the best choice for an early base, but a more mature base may be too big to be powered by areothermal power. This means I need to go nuclear.
Nuclear reactors are too heavy to be shipped to Mars, even in parts. So, you would have to make it from native materials. To meet this requirement, I have selected a [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor]liquid fluoride thorium reactor[/ame] as the primary power source for my upgraded base. I'm in the process of hashing out a rough model of it in Sketchup, and once I have more piping completed, I'll post some pics. Right now, it's just the reactor "core" and the primary loop entrance and exit from the core.
If anyone here has more info about the LFTR (or any other molten fuelled ractor) concept, feel free to nitpick my design as details emerge.
EDIT
As promised, pic with some more detailed features.
This is a simple version of the entire "hot" loop of the reactor. The big tank-like object on it's side is the reactor core, the vertical tank on the floor is the first heat exchanger, and the squat cylinder on legs is the hot loop pump.
To be added to this section:
-Safety drain
-fuel processing loop
The next section to be modeled will probably be the intermediary loop, another molten salt loop that will take the heat to the generator hall. How that will work out is still very much up in the air right now, as I want to see how this first section turns out.
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