122.42 W
san francisco
purpose
burning martian puts two groups in the same room: the people engineering the path to mars, and the people who already know how to raise a temporary city on radical self-reliance in a hostile desert and remove it without a trace.
it began in san francisco on 8 october 2024 as a single evening and became a standing group: people from nasa and spacex, lunar and mars startups, space foresight researchers, and burners.
the premise is practical. black rock city is the largest recurring rehearsal of off-world settlement that exists: every litre of water imported, dust in every mechanism, radical self-reliance, total teardown. those lessons belong in mission design, and mission discipline belongs in the desert.
membership is by introduction. there is no application.
119.21 W
black rock desert
principles
- Iintroductions over applications.the group grows by members vouching for people. what someone is building matters more than their title.
- IIone set of requirements.a settlement on mars and a camp on the playa answer the same list: water, power, shelter, waste, medicine, morale. we design against one list.
- IIIearth first.any system worth sending to mars should first survive somewhere hard on earth: the playa, then antarctica, where distance and scarcity are not simulated.
- IVthe argument stays open.whether mars serves ordinary people is an unsettled question. we treat it as one: in person, with evidence, without a party line.
- Vleave no trace.the playa's ethic and planetary protection are the same discipline at different scales.
- VIsmall proofs first.a cheap, verifiable result now is worth more than a grand plan later.
77.6 E
jezero crater, mars
concept study: the flag-dart
the smallest credible mars surface mission we could define.
- Ahardened penetrator nose, sized to survive impact rather than avoid it.
- Bflag canister, deployed by impact shock.
- Cbattery transmitter with a single function: confirm arrival.
- Dtail fins for passive stability through a thin atmosphere.
an unpowered penetrator released on approach, stabilised by its fins, burying its nose in the regolith. the impact deploys the flag and wakes the transmitter. no landing system, no rover, no return.
the value is the exercise: what is the least mass, cost and complexity that still produces a verifiable result on another planet.
status: concept. not funded, not flown. dimensions undetermined.
san francisco
joining
membership is by introduction.
if you work on space systems, extreme-environment infrastructure or desert-scale building, and want to be introduced, ask for the group link.
request an introductionno form, no mailing list. a person reads every request.