Hopefully someone opens a Dome Depot there so we can repair the domes easily and conveniently

The capital of mars in my scifi book is within a large crater, with a transparant dome over the top. Miles and miles wide. Always loved the idea.

A SF book I read back in the 1950s, "Bubbles in the Sky" included living spaces that were enclosed by spherical "balloons" made of 5 or 6 layers of self-healing plastic film. Besides being self-healing, the layers were sealed together every few feet to form offset bubbles. So if a micrometoroid struck, each bubble that it passed thru would collapse, and the layers would cover the hole and seal against it. These bubbles started out as habitation space for construction workers building the first space station. Overtime they got "customized" by the people living in them, and gradually became mostly self-sustaining, using algae gardens to process the air and produce oxygen. Some workers became unable to work but could notvreturn to gravity due to health causes. So they became a rather anarchic second society next to the official space station. Over the decades since about 1980 I have tried to find any reference to this book, without success. I can picture the cover illustration in my mind. This might have been one of those "double feature" books, with two novellas back to back.

I can't express enough how grateful I am for your channel. Your videos have helped me understand complex scientific concepts in an easily digestible way

Hybrid approaches certainly make a lot of sense to me! Tons of habitat underground, and surface domes for parks, farms, and light exposure. Can't go wrong with light tubes and skylights too!

Kingdom under the Mountain for the win!

I feel so blessed every time a Issac Arthur video is dropped upon us. As always, keep doing the great work

Love your videos ! Domes however are a big big challenge. If you go for roughly 15psi plus a 50% safety margin, and add 2psi for a relief valve setting you get an ultimate load case of 24.5 psi. The stresses from this on a large diameter structure are simply enormous even with large thicknesses of far off novel materials (nearly an order of magnitude improvement in mechanical properties, especially damage tolerance, is probably required)

Another case one might use a dome is for camping. Imagine for a moment, a Mars colony built on the surface or under ground. Depending on the set up, you could have either light pollution or a rock roof preventing you from seeing the full night sky and you can't just go outside lay down a tarp and look up at the sky... i mean you can but you got a space suit on so it won't be comfortable. On Earth along many hiking trails there are shelters. The Appalachian trail has about 260 shelters scattered along the entire length of the 2,190 mile. One shelter every 8.5 miles. There are also mountain refuge shelters giving hikers a roof and fire place to stay out of a blizzard and warm up from the cold. Some even have spice shelves to season up your food. So imagine building a shelter for space campers? You put on your space suit, grab an oxygen and battery pack designed for long walks, some food, extra water, and get marching. The shelter would be a dome with an airlock. A place to get warm, take off your suit, and get a good night sleep while looking up at the night sky of a martian night. It should feature that same breach sealing system, a battery, monitoring system, and radio leading back to home. Maybe some sound proofing to get that real lonely feel out on the martian surface looking up at the galaxy. That would be an experience. Now that i think about it, the Apollo moon landings were just very expensive camping trips with a failure to "leave no trace" and i don't think you have done a space camping episode, yet.

I like a combination of both: Underground for living, domes for working and gardens.

Love the episode starting with this poem! I don’t know who made it but it really ignites the spirit in prep for the episode!

Another wonderful video to listen to on the way to work. Good and informative as always Isaac.

Having lived and worked in Toronto for 35 years I think the idea of domes, or some sort of surface structure, connected by tunnels is the most realistic expectation. Downtown Toronto has the PATH system which covers a fairly large area and expands every time a new building is added or renovated. There is something awesome about walking through an underground and then coming out into a space lit by sunlight. The idea of the spinning dome city was interesting too. It is quite conceivable with existing technology. We already have rotating restaurants, and I have worked with rotating stages. Project it a few years and technologies ahead and it is quite conceivable. I could also see a class structure developing around it, after a while, of those Martians who grew up in that environment, and those who, for any number of reasons besides economics, did not get to live in those places.

Yeah, a new SFIA video, this makes my day

What may be the most important is bringing industry as well as science. Even if the industry is a shovel, the mass issue is the sole most difficult part, and starting building with native materials as soon as possible is probably the single most important thing we can do as a species.

Since im up stupid early every day, I always prep myself with an older episode before the new one drops. Happy Arthursday

An inflatable tetrahedron is particularly good at plugging triangular holes. They are quite off-the-shelf in boat racing. Like round manholes, the shape makes a difference when you're making dome segments and skylights that might become holes.

You the man, Isaac!

Great video as always Isaac! It's extra topical for me too as I just got a new book in the mail on the topic lol, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's book: A City On Mars. The book takes a harsh view of space colonization in the near term, which I generally agree with (the most I imagine in the next century is our first permanent Moon Base which will slowly but surely be put to work building the components we need for proper colonization programs in the future), but I still think it's a great read for anyone interested in the future of humanity in outer space as it goes in depth on a lot of the challenges and concerns pertaining to our colonization goals. I am also glad you talked about multi-dome setups, I have always thought that having a sequence of domes within domes makes more sense as it would be an effective way for people to get away with cruder and lower cost construction techniques. It even makes sense from a historical colonization standpoint as odds are as the colonies get bigger you will probably have smaller earlier settlement domes get covered in larger domes as colonies increase their industrial and economic capacity.

The idea that the extra half hour on Mars would be used for sleep instead of squeezing the colonists for more "productivity" makes me want to live there already.

NOTIFICATION GANG!!!!!!

Great episode!

Happy ArThursday! Carl Sagan's COSMOS played a significant role during uncertain times. People need something to believe in or the future stops getting managed.

Use the inflatable as a mold then coat it with locally made “concrete”.

Great video, also thanks for mentioning Ground News. I had never heard of it and I'm now interested.

Thank you for the dreams Mr Issac.

I grew up in a cool, mountanous and forrested area with lots of green around. I went to Idaho once and all it was was endless yellow hills everywhere. Drove me so crazy I'll never go back.

The repair panel that is a drone made me chuckle. Where is my hammer? *hammer drone zips into the scene.* Heck just make everything, every piece of it also a drone, nuts and bolts, all of it. Have everything zip around like the sorcerers apprentice cartoon.

Thanks, Isaac! 🟠

Thank you from Saskatchewan Canada!

OH ALGORITHM GODS! SPREAD THIS VIDEO!

Yaaay new Isaac Arthur :)

The writing on this episode is crisp and nicely paced.

Great video, thanks! Domes are fine so long as they use expensive domes. You know what can happen if they use cheap ones. See you at the party. 🙂

Thank you.

Another great video

NICE GRAPHICS :)

Domes are so vulnerable to damage, and attack, they would need to have an extreme ability to mitigate damage and self repair. Everyone will need their own personal P-Suit of the "Have Space Suit, Will Travel - R.A Heinlein" type

Here's an idea: An inner high pressure dome, outer low pressure (just above Martian) dome. Reclaim gasses that leak, by just pumping it back in. The outer dome won't leak much, as it hasn't got much pressure difference to force the air out of it. Also, this dome would be great as on outer wear layer, that is more easily replaceable.

Tunesian Style underground houses (as depicted in Star Wars) with a glass roof on top, might become the Marsian equivalent of Terestrian suburbs.

I have never watched one till the end. No better way to fall asleep then watching Isaac Arthur and waking up to some random weird video YT thinks i like.

“Panzer Glass”, “Transparent Aluminum” & other materials can provide significant protection, and the reduced gravity means we could have an insulating layer of water (15 cm) between 2 layers of a dome. And, we could always have an extra outer layer of protective material on the dome.

melt large amounts of ice with reflectors, spray sprung structures with water from the inside - ice as building material be self sealing and give vast structures in no time give everyone 9m diameter luxury apartments, make river-like lakes for indoor walks, seafood and o2 algae, waterlocks as airlocks make living easy (boiloff from icemelt be atmospheric pressure and rocket fuel works as batteries )

Cant listen now. But I very much appreciate the subtitles. Whoever is doing them is doing a better job than every other content creator on youtube.

To be the 1st to set up mars for the rest of us would be the biggest heroes ever. The chance to get up there, mess up and die is scary crap. Love your work Issac.

Windows made from "diamond sheets reinforced with thin sheets of...graphene" - how I love Isaac's future technology!

My estimation on mars colonization would be starting with inflatable domes. Those would be used as a capstone to an underground habitat, with excavated material used to make a concrete shell around the inflatable to replace it, with continuing excavations used for additional domes. Distant domes I'd expect to be connected by rail and/or highways made by excavating about half the requisite height of traffic and using that material to provide an arched tunnel to provide shelter from Martian weather. Domes on earth, whether enclosed suburban homes or vast city-in-a-dome arcologies, were a big hallmark of retrofuturism, and grace many a cover of classic Popular Science magazines and the like.

Hey, thanks Isaac, another thought-provoking episode. Your ideas got me thinking along this line: okay, instead of hauling up the parts for the domes, haul up the factories to make the parts on site. No wait, haul up the diggers and so forth to deal with the site and make the factories. No, wait, haul up the tools we can use to make the diggers and so forth to allow us to deal with the site and make the factories. No, wait, haul up the minimum possible foundry parts and tools - use those to process local materials into the actual tools needed to make the diggers and... That's as far as I got...

I love your vids. I put them on when i do anything

Happy Arthursday everyone. Will be listening once I get into my work flow 💪🏾

Ayyyyyyyy guey, your intro had some barz 🤘🏽🤘🏽🤘🏽🤘🏽

Isaac, did you ever get the chance to go to the Four Seasons Golf Center before it closed in 2017? It was down south of you in Whitehall and had a massive inflatable dome, I presume to keep stray golf balls from getting off the property. I remember it holding up pretty well against the elements but they had to use industrial fans 24/7 to keep it inflated.

Growing up, we used to drive past the Goodyear Blimp hanger!

" and out there, on a red planet, there is a city inside a Diamond " " ok, grandpa... time for your medicine "

Has anyone read the “Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle” manga? That story has the entire planet Mars covered in enormous domes dozens of miles across held up by miles high sky-trees. It makes the planet look like it is covered in giant soap bubbles.

Domes aren't necessary. You could have one window with mirrors around it and then amongst several options you could have fiber optics transporting some of that light to different places or just a dispersion lens array inside an underground dome.

There's an easier shape to transport and offer protection on the surface of Mars than a dome. Regolith could be used to cover over it. Windows would be on the side. Mirrors close to, could help to reflect light inside such a structure.

My favorite mars mission in sci fi is found in Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

Mars Local Time. The clock should have the usual 24 hour readout with a time called 'lost time' that comes between 24:00 and 24:01. Helps with clock adjustment for daily and yearly adjustments.

Honestly, I prefer closed underground habitats to these domes. In theory, lava caves on Mars are large and sturdy enough to accommodate a much larger population - the equivalent of a few dozen to a few hundred domes - while being much easier to build: simply sealing the cave mouths is enough to create a pressurized environment inside. The problem is that we don't know much about the caves yet, something that could be resolved through future missions.

Not gonna lie, I’ve been waiting for an episode like this. You should consider doing lunar domes also.

Putting rotating habitats in Phobos makes more sense than colonizing Mars itself. You could make 1g without going down into a dusty toxic gravity well.

Two cons to domes that might not be obvious: 1) After being cooped up inside a dome for months, the wide-open spaces outside begin to look awfully inviting, and a part of your brain starts to question whether the outside is _really_ as dangerous as you have always been taught… 2) The kid who always _always_ loses at hide and seek has just spotted a hiding place no one will ever think to look…

24.5 hour days sounds great :) that's about my natural sleep cycle anyway

One things for sure, window cleaners will never be out of work on mars lmao

I'm not a 'glass' dome fan... They have big temperature control issues, not just from surface temperature fluctuations. The dome will harvest solar energy and heat up during the day, then at night it will cool, and the air will contract - so a massive soft bladder is needed to store expanding air, otherwise constant 24/7 heating and cooling is required. These domes are also vulnerable to flying shrapnel, so you can't land or launch ships anywhere near it.... They are radiation exposed and dust cleaning would be energy intensive etc etc I think plants will need to be grown with reflected light, direct light would have too much radiation. So, greenhouses wouldn't be domes, they'd be linear, with a protective roof and reflectors on each side. Mars base rule of thumb: If it doesn't need to go outside, it doesn't....

I liked the foam idea to temporary close holes that appear

The first pair of glasses I got that was polycarbonate ended up as an experiment years, and several pairs of glasses, later. Knowing the stuff was super strong, and being a kid, I smashed the everloving hell out of them to try and break them. The lenses held nicely as expected, but scratched into total opacity. So that cleaning and polishing of polycarbonate is gonna be a pretty important chore.

Good video

The asteroid belt will have one million inhabitants before Mars has one million inhabitants. That's my prediction.

Nice Poem Isaac!

22:14 RIP Arkady Bogdanov

I would like more information on the passages for pollinators and birds to pass through the domes. How would this work? They would fly through mars itself or tunnels or what?

Solution : triple layered dome, with the lower 2 layers holding 1 meter of water. Layer1 - vacuum -layer 2 - water + hydrogel - layer 3 If the outer layer is breached, nothing happens. If the middle layer is breached you are still protected by the hydrogel layer, which will be easily noticed. You only get a problem if the 3 layers are breached.

Earth bag homes are a thing here on earth. You could bring only the bags and fill with the dirt there. Then cover with a slurry mix once built.

You could also have screens designed to look like windows projecting a view from outside cameras, this would help people living underground instead of just having skylights.

No domes. Dig. Praise the Omnissiah, and Dig. Terraform it later, when Fabricator-General says so.

Nice poem at the start of the video.

Hey Isaac, Love the channel and always enjoyed listening to you breakdown the sifi world, but this video has me wondering; would it be better to say slowly Dome the whole of Mars in one big dome, than terraforming the whole planet?

The problem with allowing a 'leak' would be loss of humidity as well as any much less available nitrogen or argon buffer gas. But you could probably do a reasonably efficient heat/cold exchanger that freezes or liquifies CO2 and eject just that. A good use for the excess waste CO2 (a lot might be absorbed by plants grown for fresh food) would be inflation of a large work chamber to nearly 1 atmosphere, where people could work on large equipment with just warm clothing and an air supply. If kept just below the air pressure of the main hab, you'd only need a couple pressure-sealed doors and a "dust room" for changing out of work clothes in between, as the small amount of air lost wouldn't matter much, and the air pressure difference would keep most dust and CO2 out of the hab.

I have spin on the inflatable dome. Make it double hulled inflatable and then later fill in the gap with foamcrete or something similar to make it a perminate structure.

Diamond, sapphire, glass, you forgot transparent aluminium!

I am a fan of ground news. Though SFIA videos are unbiased by nature and much more entertaining and much less depressing than the news :) I can't even say how much SFIA has influenced my sci-fi writing. I run my new ideas through what I call my SFIA filter for better realism. Even though sometimes technobabble is still needed, i can even add a hint of realism to that. 😊 I am very excited for agriworlds, too, since it is part of the 40k video series!

I would really like a steam programming team to make an orbital colony city builder simulation, maybe where you can buy/build other colonies.... torus, cylinders etc.

Finally the good stuff! Praise the Omnissiah!

Rotating orbital habitats are still a better idea. Built by robots at a LaGrange Point near the moon, loaded up with all the remote operated heavy equipment needed, and a massive stockpile of supplies & spares, then launched towards Mars or where ever.

Damnit! Now I feel bad. I wish I'd discovered Dr. Arthur's site two years ago while writing my first and only Syfy book about wormhole travel to Proxima B that used Mars as the starting point. Now I gotta do that book all over again.

Of course Isaac has a farm. He’s just that kind of smart guy! I grew up on a farm too.

Hey Isaac. You brought up in other videos relating to oxygen procurement through baking it out of the rock. What sort of machinery or general technological concept would be used for that and would that be able to be solar powered?

One if hit on the surface, two if on an edge, three or more if it's the junction between them that's hit.

Heck yeah. Ice shields and Martian concrete FTW

Don't know about diamond however synthetic sapphire 'glass' looks like a good contender with current technology.

I've often wondered if we could offset/mitigate the negative affects of the lower gravity by rotating people between the surface and orbit. On the surface they have the diet and exercise regime that offsets the effects but it's merely allowing the long-term negative effects to occur more slowly but in orbit they could exercise and rehabilitate at 1g or potentially even higher and thus life on Mars would be a split between 0.4ish (lets round it and not be pedantic) and 1.0g+ in orbit.

A night on Mars under a Sapphir dome.

Hey... If you infused water with nitrogen under gass presure. And froze it down to liquid Nitrogen level... Would this be viable as to insulate current *warm* superconductors to the point it can cheap enough?

Is the music at the end from or a reprisal of the music from Civilization: Beyond Earth OST?

Said it befor will say it again.... pick a mountain range in a good spot, and build under and into the mountain.....Or even into the walls of the BIG canyon ,the view would be worth it,as cloud layer has been seen there at times.

I really hope that .38g is good enough for terran land creatures. The mere thought of having to sleep in an underground centrifuge threatens to give me motion sickness. Domes, however, seem like a no-brainer. I've always been an avid fan of domes for para-terraforming. Mile-wide domes would make great parks. Imagine ecosystems especially designed for 540 acres each, like Biosphere II written large, possibly even connected like adjacent hexagons. Engineering the daily air pressure changes could support a whole side industry alongside dome building. I wonder which view will be of most interest, however, inside with the growing living things, or outside with the beckoning expanses begging to be explored. I can't wait! Of course, it only makes sense to have underground tunnels for sleeping, storage and distribution, and refuge in emergencies. I just wouldn't want to spend most of my time down there.

Fractional distillation is a highly effective method of generating nitrogen for industrial use. The process involves the supercooling of air to its liquefaction point and then distilling its component gases at their various boiling points, no need for taking comets in m8 :)

Your awesome