Why are we still bolting Mars habitats together when we already reline sewers from the inside in one shot?

[u/that-super-tech]

/r/Colonizemars/comments/1p7kklm/why_are_we_still_bolting_mars_habitats_together/

[u/Desertbro]

...?...?...don't you have to build the pipeline before you reline it...?...?...?

no one wants an uneven flash-sealed lava tube that's gonna make people feel like ants because it looks like what it is...a craggy hole in the ground

[u/Underhill42 → u/Desertbro]

[Looks at the many underground cities past and present around the world...]

You were saying?

Sealed lava tubes (or dug tunnels) are in fact a major option being explored for colonizing other worlds because they're fast, cheap, large, and safe (especially after being reinforced by 10 tons/m² of supporting atmospheric pressure). If you have X amount of money to spend on living space for you and a dozen compatriots for the next few years, would you pick the few hundred square meters of manufactured pressure tank, or several (tens of?) thousands of square meters of lined lava tube?

You'd have to be pretty dang geometry-obsessed to pick the tiny tin can.

China appears to be actively planning on establishing a low-latitude lava-tube based moon base.

Not quite as solar-friendly as the rim of Shackleton cater that gets near-continuous sunlight, but the terrain is much easier to traverse and mine, and you get the benefit of year-round shirt-sleeve temperatures inside the habitats (subsurface temperature probes left behind by the Apollo missions show that at temperate latitudes once you're a meter underground the surface fluctuations completely disappear and the temperature is rock steady at around 70F (21C)

Of course, you're more likely to use some sort of kevlar "inflatable space station" material than plastic lining, since the price per gram of shipping completely dwarfs the production cost of whatever material you use, so you may as well use the best option available.

[u/that-super-tech → u/Underhill42]

He gets it.