Habitat Failure
Being in a colonial habitat that is experiencing an atmospheric issue is the same as being in a submarine or on a burning ship, you don’t have much time to resolve the issue. Just as submarines are equipped with watertight doors between compartments, so should the habitat have airtight doors between sections?
Many dome type habitat designs often show a one room dome that is intended to facilitate all of the necessary daily work space and crew quarters. This single room concept has one problem, “what if.”
What if the dome fails, what if there is a fire, what if the air becomes toxic. The easy solution to these issues is to build the habitat like a submarine with compartment separation capability.
Then there is the issue of what if someone becomes isolated in a section after an incident. The solution is to have each section equipped with its own life support systems and airlocks in each section.
Does a house have two doors? Does a car have more than one?
These designs point to built in redundancy, there is always more than one way in and out. A colonial habitat should also have this built in redundancy.
If someone becomes isolated in a section that has become sealed off from another part of the complex due to fire or atmospheric breach, there should be immediate life support availability, supplementary life support connectivity, and a secondary route of egress from the section.
The section airlock should be fitted out with the same capabilities as noted earlier in “A walk in the Park”.
Redundancy regarding habitats also means more than one. I have noted earlier that a design problem with many concepts is that there are individual habitats (like a normal urban street) requiring that you go elsewhere each time you wish to accomplish some work.
This design makes the normal work day quite time consuming as you need to exit your “building” to go elsewhere or accomplish something in another part of the colony. (as illustrated here) NASA Ice Dome
NASA Ice Dome
The solution is to utilize the “redundant” habitat as an emergency habitat only while actively using it as a storage area. It would not need the usual amenities as it is intended as a short stay emergency location.
This may seem like a waste of resources until you realize that on a wind swept planet like Mars, protecting your transportation and equipment etc from the dust storms is something you need to do. There will be limited space within the habitat and general work area so storing extra supplies (there will be re-supply from Earth for the foreseeable future) and outdoor work materials in a location other than your living quarters is logical.
The J-Pod flat packable designs I have promoted elsewhere are ideally suited to redundancy, storage, sectional sealing, ease of use as well as the two door feature.
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