We wanted to write about the most compelling hardware projects possible today and explore their implications for life here on Earth, and on other planets. In particular how new energy systems like nuclear thermal process heat will be used to take civilization into a new age.

The prescient question of today is why should civilization make investments into space exploration? There are many philosophical explanations, yet the most profound is that it simply makes financial sense to do so. Inventions developed during NASA programs have created immense value for the US economy (for example the transistorized programmable computer, Apollo 11).

While it is important to make civilization multi-planetary and understand the origins of life, the economic return on investment from NASA missions have changed civilization for the better and made America a technological leader.

We wanted to dive into a core technologies that will power life off-Earth, in particular Nuclear. One of the key elements to a Martian colony will be a Methane fuel depot, which we will explore in this article.

Location

NASA recently highlighted Noctis Labyrinthus (SETI article link) for modern civilization’s first off world colony. The location is at the equator of Mars, offering a significantly warmer temperatures, and its low elevation increases the atmosphere density to a reasonable level (providing radiation shielding). The geology of an ancient volcano and proximity to Valles Marineris (the largest known canyon in the solar system) makes the area fascinating for science.

Perhaps the most interesting discovery outlined in a recent research paper shows the promise of potential water ice. Ancient volcanic activity left large caverns that some believe will be filled with ancient glaciers. If this shows to be true, then Noctic Labyrithus, the “labyrinth of the night”, will more likely than not be the location of our first off world settlement. If we can find the ice, we have the first steps of our new civilization, and the first ingredient in our Martian fuel depot.

The Rodwell

Developed in the 1950s during secret Project Iceworm arctic bases, the Rodriguez Well (or Rodwell) was created to provide fresh drinking water supply to the base. You can find some fantastic diagrams and drawings of the design of a Rodwell in Antarctica here. Seriously go look at the Antarctic designs, it’s seriously cool.

The process is quite simple, involving a heater and submerged pump placed at the end of a rope that melts a hole in ice. There are two configurations, one electrically heated and on heated by steam (which is more efficient). As this melted hole gets bigger, freshwater is pumped from the well. Designs for a Rodwell on Mars will be extremely similar to the designs deployed in Antarctica today as the technology is quite proven. (The declassified files by the US Army Corps of engineers on the ‘Thermal Design of an Antarctic Water Well” 1995, can be found here).

According to Southpolestation, a website documenting life on the south pole, The Rodwell produces around “2450 gallons per day in 2005, depth to the water surface was 390', and water depth was 72'.” South Pole Station provides a good glimpse of how Rodwells will be used, along with ice tunneling infrastructure. Southpolestation has some fantastic posts about this showing the ice tunnels, Rodwells, and how empty Rodwells are used for sewage storage. Most likely on mars, sewage will be a valuable resource and will be recycled.

Energy on Mars

Mars will be a nuclear powered civilization. The power to weigh ratio of nuclear power cannot be matched by solar panels. NASA understands this well, piloting the KILOPOWER project, a 1kWe microreactor for the Artemis Moon Program. While this is cute (we couldn’t think of a better word), U-235 is Very expensive, poses proliferations concerns, and Russia currently controls much of the supply chain.

We propose using a Thorium nuclear reactor cycle (which is far more plentiful on Earth and mars). We spoke with John Kutsch, founder of the Thorium Energy Alliance, who is a well respected figure in the next generation reactor space.

“Thorium is ideal for nuclear as it allows for the near complete burn up of [fuel] and something approaching the pure cycle, which was outlined by Copenhagen atomics” Kutsch tells us. This concept was pioneered in the 1954 by Homi Bhabha, founder of Indias three stage nuclear program, which was created to make maximum use of India massive thorium reserves. To this day India is following this plan, recently announcing the start of phase II.

Kutsch continued, ”A thorium cycle would allow you to have to transport much less fuel, and a fuel that was much less active when you were transporting it. You're burning it up for a much much longer time before you need refueling". The only downside is you would need some sort of online redox control and separation system to keep the fuel relatively clean, but the key here is you can get a lot more power, a lot safer from a compact molten salt reactor running in a near pure thorium cycle.”

A breeder reactor would be particularly useful for a martian base, as it would allow in-situ breeding of nuclear isotopes (meaning you could mine thorium on mars, which is far easier to separate, and breed it into Uranium 233, which is fissile). We prefer a molten salt breeder reactor configuration for their safety and ease in processing fuel, but you can choose your favorite flavor of reactor. Breeder reactors are cool because they create more fuel than they consume.

Think about that for a second.

We know how to build power reactors that make more fuel than they consume, and we aren’t using this technology. It’s insane.

Even Robert Zubrin agreed in his latest book, A New World on Mars. He envisions mars running thorium molten salt reactors. He gets it.

The Chemistry for Methane Production

Robert Zubrin popularized the idea of using Methane for rocket fuel, as it can be made in-situ on mars (seriously go read all of this books). Because of his work, SpaceX has designed Starship to run on Methane, and its missions are planing on being able to manufacture it on mars for a return mission back to earth.

Mars naturally produces methane (CH4). It is a mystery that no one has quite solved yet, as generally methane is a signal of biological life. In order to produce methane in high enough quantities for rocket engines, we need Carbon, and hydrogen (Methane is CH4). Over 100 years ago Paul Sabatier invented the Sabatier reaction, a method for converting CO2 and Hydrogen into Methane. A cool side effect is you get water.

Carbon dioxide is rather simple, the vast majority of martian atmosphere is CO2. Atmospheric distillation (liquifying and chilling the atmosphere) provides the simplest way to provide pure CO2 in mars. Theres a great explainer video here.

Water from our Rodwell can be separated using electrolysis to provide pure hydrogen and oxygen. Besides making rocket fuel these elemental primitives will be essential for creating civilization on mars.

The Sabatier reaction involves a high temperature catalyst that creates Methane and water, the latter which is removed from the gas using a dehydrator.

Something to note about electrolysis and catalytic reactions is that they operate at much higher efficiency at a high temperature. We believe the process engineering will make use of steam or molten salt thermal loops to heat each part of the chemistry and improve yields. This is why a molten salt reactor chemistry is preferred as we can go from a liquid nuclear fuel, to liquid non-nuclear thermal loop. This resolves issues around nuclear fuel cracking, and allows heat exchangers to operate at higher temperatures (and thus higher efficiency). This heat can be routed directly into chemical reactions, power generation, and even a nuclear heated shower.

With methane being pulled from the reaction, we can store it in tanks (old starships tanks most likely) and power missions into the beyond.

Applications on Earth

With our Methane Fuel depot running smoothly on mars, we can look to how this type of chemical process architecture can be applied here on Earth. The commercial applications for such a system are quite valuable to Earth.

Every few years Livermore National Labs publishes a chart on how the US uses its energy. A massive amount of the energy we produce is “rejected” going into waste heat. For Industrial processes this is tremendous. Nearly all of the energy used for American industrial applications comes from burning petrochemicals and nearly half of all this energy is wasted:

There is a great debate regarding how nuclear reactors will be first deployed here on Earth. Some argue, like Mark Zuckerberg, that the demand for AI is growing so rapidly that nuclear powered data centers are the only was to scale AI. Others (like myself) argue that nuclear is far more interesting for chemical process heat.

Currently, electricity produced by solar power is nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than nuclear (primarily because permitting a reactor takes so long). By the time a new nuclear power datacenter becomes close to being zoned in America, we will all be very old and solar and battery storage (largely subsidized by the Chinese government) will have only gotten more affordable.

This leaves compelling chemical process applications for nuclear, that we believe will be first applicable within the U.S. Military. We see great opportunity for nuclear heated chemistry here in Earth. We will explore this idea in our next article as we go back in time, exploring how technologies for the distant future are beginning to manifest today.

If you’ve made it this far, awesome. Send me a message, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Garrett Kinsman

Santa Cruz, California, Earth