Let's celebrate the successful landing of Curiosity on Mars at the 6th of August 2012!
In order to prepare the terra forming and colonization of Mars, humans created a series of tracked vehicles. This was only possible by using a standard chassis and utilizing it in order to cover all the upcomming requirements:
- Communication (transmitter & receiver antenna, driver & officer)
- Mining Vehicle (combined ground sensor and driller, driver & engineer)
- Service Vehicle (cable winch and spar parts, technican & service droid)
- Tactical Tank (laser cannon turret, driver & gunner)
- Defense Tank (flick-fire missile launcher, driver & gunner)
Additionally - due to sharing the standard chassis - spare parts can easily be exchanged between the different vehicle typs.
To be able to handle the complete fleet with less astronauts, a full featured service station was constructed. It is powered by 2 dual solar panels and has got an own communitation antenna system. The entry works like a two-way airlock and is secured by a camera system.
The service station is based on a hanger with 8 autonomous repair robots and two base buildings interconnected by an airlock system. There is a rest room for the astronauts and a conning bridge to control the robots (incl. mainframe for computation) available. The complete station is managed by 4 astronauts and 2 service droids, so it's ready to run at 24/7 mode.
Service station details and convoy in action (tactics - service - comm - defense - mining)