Airborne wind energy system to power a Mars habitat� �

Roland Schmehl, Mario Rodriguez

Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech - Processing: Elisabetta Bonora & Marco Faccin / aliveuniverse.today

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Habitat Location Changes 

• The habitat location was changed various times to accommodate different requirements.
• At first, Deuteronilus Mensae was investigated by DSE1 due to the location’s high potential for habitability.
• Then, the Rhizome project refocused on Tharsis Bulge due to the present of lava tubes required for underground habitats.

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Habitat Location Changes

Tharsis Bulge

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Arsia South A and B Location

Ref. Location

Arsia South

• First, the habitat was relocated to Arsia South A and B because the lava tubes found there have a lava tube diameter < 30 m.
• But Arsia South locations are very high (~9 km) and thus low atmospheric density, which makes the use of wind power practically impossible.
• Therefore, a new reference location at roughly 0 km altitude was investigated.

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Reference Location

Reference Location coordinates: 

6.76° N, 233.93° E

Ref. Location

Arsia South

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Evaluation of Reference Location

• It can be said that the depth of the collapse is related to the lava tube diameter.

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• The graph illustrates how the collapse width and depth are related.

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• Therefore, the collapse width is also related to the lava tube diameter.

Arsia South

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Evaluation of Reference Location

Ref. Location

Arsia South

The following image shows the collapse area of the reference location. This was found using the line tool in Google Earth Pro.

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Lava tube specifications

Ref. Location

Arsia South

Av. W – Average width of collapse

Av. D – Average depth of the collapse

σ D – Standard deviation of D

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The reference location was found to have a collapse width roughly equal to 4 km. This is much larger than Arsia South A and B, so the reference location was abandoned. Arsia North was then considered since the lava tube satisfies the lava tube diameter requirements.

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Arsia North Location

Arsia North coordinates: 

-3.062° N, 236.07° E

Ref. Location

Arsia South

Arsia North

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Evaluation of Locations

Ref. Location

Arsia South

Arsia North

A dataset of wind speed values can be entirely represented using a probability distribution function. For wind measurements, it is common practice to use a Weibull probability distribution. A dataset is represented using two variables, namely, the shape and the scale factor.

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The scale parameter is proportional to the mean wind speed, usually measured in m/s. Since the proportionality between power and wind speed is cubic, a higher wind speed is desired.

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The shape parameter effects the distribution width of the data.

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Evaluation of Locations

Ref. Location

Arsia South

Arsia North

• The annual mean wind speed and density is compared at every location considered thus far.

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• Red of considered the worst condition and green is the best.

• As can be seen in the table below, Arsia North has the highest wind speeds. However, the density is still very low.

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Questions?

 r.schmehl@tudelft.nl

 twitter.com/kite_power

 awesco.eu

Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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