Mars Tech Tree diagram

I have made the following tech tree:

Stage 0: landing a rocket on mars

• you can re-use the rocket as a living habitat and stocked food for a while.

Stage 1:

• electricity : potentially through solar panels
• water : regolith evaporation and condensation

Stage 2:

• methane : including for fuel and energy-storage
• oxygen : for breathing, mostly, from the electrolysis of water
• plants : greenhouses need water, and humans need food.
• plastics : can be produced from methane by some organic chemistry tricks.

Stage 3:

• minerals : construction uses heavy stuff like metals, portland cement, ceramics, glass
• TBA

Visualization:

As always, your discussion is welcome.

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To explain why i set it up like this: water is important for a lot of things, but current water extraction proposals go into the direction of heating up regolith to release water vapor. That requires energy, which can be provided electrically.

Methane can store energy, but i’d like to store it away from the living habitats due to risk of leaks and explosions. I think the rocket that gets people there can be re-used as a living habitat, and its fuel tanks can be used to store oxygen for the winter and when the sun don’t shine.

Plastics can be made from methane with some organic chemistry tricks. I lack the wits to fully explain that, i hope you can forgive me.

After that, there’s still a lot of construction that needs to happen, to expand the base and build more houses for more people, including if people have babies. That will require some more substantial building than just some plastic greenhouse, and will be a mineral construction building. It’s not on the diagram above due to lack of space, but you gotta imagine it. Cheers!

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i wrote this a while ago on reddit (/r/MarsSociety) but reddit kinda sucks and i’m thinking about shifting the materials here.