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The
Petals
The Petals came into being when I realized that constructing a tile/hex
combination off world would be too difficult to do from scratch. A
tile/hex combination could be constructed later, after a more easily
constructed, reasonably self-sufficient habitat was in place. The petal
design is essentially a "street," that is, a tunnel between hub
assemblies, opened out into a hexagon. It is about half the size of a
tile and is more easily enclosed. The petal design can be assembled
into what I've called Flowers of Heaven, or it can be worked into the
corners of the Starfield Valley or World Ark designs. It also serves as
the "legs" of the crab that is the Vista de la Luna design.
Petals can serve a variety of purposes, from providing living space to
serving as a hospital, or a hotel, or a manufacturing area. Like the
tiles, the petals can be dressed in an infinite number of ways. I've
even used them to design my proposed spaceport in New Mexico, even
though no one paid any attention to it.
For purposes of developing a Lunar or Mars settlement, the basic
procedure would be to build one hub assembly (see under the tile
section for views) to serve as the beach head and base of operations.
This would be a two level structure, with pressurized living quarters
below (in what will become a transit station) and partially pressurized
work areas above, along with vehicular storage, during the period of
surveying and constructing the first living petal. Once that is
pressurized and terraformed to the point where the modules inside can
be finished, and the second hub assembly is also online, the
construction and support crews can move into the petal while they
continue working on subsequent petals.
It is possible to have several petals under construction at one time
once the first petal comes online.
Most of the construction materials such as lunarcrete or cast basalt,
metals (such as for wiring, piping, etc.), water and oxygen, plus some
other volatiles, and soil substrate will be obtained locally, much as
they are on Earth. The biological materials needed to terraform the
living petal will initially come from Earth in the form of seeds and
seedlings, humus, pregnant mothers (animal, mostly), and so on. To some
extent, new petals can draw on the original petal for biological
material, but many of them will also draw on Earth so as to increase
the biological diversity available in the settlement.
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A
typical Petal Design
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Some
Designs Using Petals
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