Star City Image Gallery

To ensure a vibrant, diverse and resilient society, Star City will be co-founded by five distinct villages which will be constructed simultaneously around the crater rim. The founders of all five villages will fly together on the six-month Starship flight to Mars, building strong bonds of friendship that they will rely upon once they start constructing their habitats. All villages will face the same survival challenges, but each will develop its own solutions. Villages will share ideas, support each other in times of crisis, provide residents with other, different places to escape to from time to time via the interconnected tunnel network, and eventually pool resources to build a central university, park and hospital. (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

Energy abundance and heavy equipment make it possible for Star City’s residents to utilize the natural geomorphology of Mars by tunneling inside a crater rim to create extensive habitable volume which is easy to pressurize and safe from radiation. (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

Excavated material will be mined for water ice and useful minerals, which will serve as critical inputs to build aquaponics facilities and in the food production process (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

All residential tunnel segments (brown) are located at the highest levels and include amenities such as swimming pools, shops, sport facilities and public areas. Lower level tunnels include agricultural (green), industrial (blue) and transportation (purple) tunnels. All residences have easy access to a nearby neighborhood dome with spectacular panoramic views of Star City or of the surrounding plains. Every tunnel in the village has roadway access to every other tunnel at all levels, enabling the transportation of large volumes of equipment and products. (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

The living room of a private residence at Star City. Private residences are built inside tunnels for protection from radiation and other dangers. All private residences have artificial skylights that faithfully recreate the entire solar spectrum and intensity in real time. The steps leading up to the bedroom were custom designed locally and made by a Star City artisan using a continuous process. (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

The bedrooms are located at the upper level of the private residence. After sunrise, light streams into the residence from the artificial skylights and past the open curtains. (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

All tunnels will be interconnected for easy, shirtsleeve access. At ground level, the pressurized tunnel network ends at rover docking ports which allow easy access to the natural Martian environment (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

The five villages will interconnect their tunnel networks within the first year and go on to develop their own unique approaches to addressing survival challenges, cultivating a distinct culture and aesthetics, while at the same time remaining connected with the other villages through bonds of collaboration, friendship and inter-marriage, through cultural and athletic events, through visiting each other’s shops and restaurants. The dome shown in this render has panoramic views to the distant horizon outside the crater. It was built in a village to remind the neighborhood residents of their hometown in Europe and features a pizzaria and a clothes boutique. (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

 

As the decades pass, and the wealth and capabilities of Star City grow, its residents may decide to cover the whole crater with a dome and flood its basin with water, thus creating an inner lake where residents and visitors can swim, sail and more generally enjoy a deep connection with the water that is the hallmark of our blue planet Earth. (Image Credit: Star City Team / Delta Architects)

For more information on the Star City concept, the full 20-page paper submitted to the competition in March 2019 can be downloaded here, you can read the MIT News story, or watch the YouTube video of the 30-minute final presentation.