Mars Colony Biome Evacuation Analysis by Szymon Matkowski

Our support team has been assisting Szymon Matkowski with his recent project based on a feasibility study, completed by a team at Wrocław University of Science and Technology, of possible layouts and technical solutions for a theoretical base on Mars. The study was part of a competition sponsored by The Mars Society in which the team at Wrocław won second place. In Matkowski's study, he analyzes evacuation of a Mars colony biome under threat of decompression or fire.

Safety of the people is a top technical priority in every building or device - in any place. All: structure, MEP systems and the layout should be focused on minimizing the risk of life loss. Design of a base, or colony on other planet also should comply with this principle. The layout of all safety egress communication (passages, corridors, staircases, lifts etc.) should not be changed or altered. The unchangeable layout of those elements is a bone system for the functional layout and all the decoration we see. The drawback of such solution is that - once designed the layout is frozen. Any change leads to re-examination of all safety measures - which is very expensive (even in Earth's conditions). One of the most important coefficients is evacuation time. Time - which people have to save their lives. This blog entry describes my research on Evacuation movement speed on Mars and a sample evacuation time count. Depending on the threat (decompression, fire and smoke) additional means should be provided : smoke exhaust, additional air supply, sealed safety rooms, emergency teams access routes and action plan. For the purpose of the investigation I have used a fragment of Twardowsky Mars Colony. Twardowsky won 2nd prize in 2019 competition organized by Mars Society. You may see the presentation here. Also, the competition entry of the Base was published in a book.

During Matkowski's analysis, which he completed in less than two months as his first Pathfinder project, many challenges were addressed. This included approximating the speed adjustment with Mars gravity and with various space suit equipment, behavior adjustment upon triggering events such as decompression, and the simulation of airlocks with pressurization phases. The Thunderhead Engineering support team aided Matkowski throughout these challenges which led to his successful analysis.

You can read Matkowski's full analysis for free on the Marsity.org website. You can see all videos related to the project on our YouTube Playlist.