Martian Regolith from Arcadia Planitia – First‑Generation Simulant for Early Colonies

“If we want SpaceX’s first crew to plant salad on Sol‑30, the seeds need to meet the dirt before the rocket ever leaves Earth.”

Why Arcadia Planitia?

• Chosen landing zone – Musk & co. favour Arcadia because it’s flat like a parking lot and sits just below datum (–3 to –4 km), trimming velocity on landing burns and leaving plenty of solar hours.
• Ice in the backyard – Ground‑penetrating radar shows a continent‑sized ice sheet a metre or two beneath the surface. Basically free water and radiation shielding.
• Starter pressure, but not too much – Ambient pressure hovers around 7–8 mbar: lower than Hellas, but enough to take the edge off greenhouse wall forces once you inflate to 200 mbar.
• Focus – rapid‑cycle crops and nursery stock: lettuce, radish, wheat, dwarf tomatoes. Trees come later; here we care about speed and scalability.

Mixing Arcadia Planitia simulant in 11 minutes

The basalt problem

A follow‑up clip shows me burning an afternoon hammering 10–15 cm basalt chunks into 0.1-1 cm gravel – and still nowhere near the 0.1–0.3 mm dust that dominates Martian regolith. Buy pre‑milled basalt or rent a mortar grinder. Don’t waste your time.

Recipe

1. Basalt dust (50 %) – opt for 0.1–0.3 mm. The video shows why.
2. Quartz sand (25 %) – 0.4–0.8 mm adds skeleton and SiO₂.
3. Red Fe₂O₃ pigment (10 %) – iron + the iconic colour.
4. Dolomite flour (8 %) – CaCO₃ + MgO, buffers pH.
5. Gypsum (CaSO₄, 3 %) – matches Martian sulfate load.
6. Epsom salt (MgSO₄, 2 %) – extra Mg and sulfate.
7. Bentonite clay (2 %) – water retention.
8. Coarse basalt chips (trace) – 1 cm stones for realism/aeration.
9. NaCl (≤ 1 %) – optional trace chlorides; skipped in this batch.

Total mass ≈ 1 kg. Cost ≤ 5 USD. Build time ~30 min if you buy the basalt dust.

Full Composition Table

Target pH: ~8.3 (matches alkaline in-situ measurements)

Why plants matter beyond calories

Let’s skip the food topic for now. Food production can be managed reasonably well with aquaponics and controlled environment agriculture. The harder problem is sanity.

We lose it sometimes even here on Earth, especially in concrete jungles most of us live in. But no matter how you lose it, one reliable path back is surrounding yourself with living nature. NASA studies on long-duration spaceflight back this up, but forget the studies for a moment. Just remember.

Do you remember how your mood changed when you saw a tree blooming? Especially after a long winter? That lilac you saw in May when you were a kid, or that cherry tree covered in pink during its two-week window? I bet you were amazed. That moment was filled with something close to pure joy.

Now imagine what that effect would mean for people on Mars. And imagine life without it: a rusty rock where you cannot step outside without a spacesuit, forced into an endless apartment block under a thin orange sky. After a while, you would simply lose your mind. And so would the colony.

That is why I am trying to adapt plants to survive in 90%+ Martian regolith before anyone lands. Apple trees, cherry trees, sea buckthorn, lilac, magnolia. Not because they are efficient calories per square metre, but because a single blooming tree might be the difference between a crew that thrives and one that falls apart.

Mars colonization is inevitable. Let’s make it beautiful.

Arcadia vs. Hellas in one breath

Ingredient Cheat-Sheet

References

• Video tweet – process: https://x.com/i194wisp/status/1938838168666808362
• Video tweet – basalt crushing: https://x.com/i194wisp/status/1934200322416632178
• Soil sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p6y9mfRsjVSnz9jFGhxnw41mjvcu-vK6_ELHifunWNg#gid=1184354963
• Soil Ingredients sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p6y9mfRsjVSnz9jFGhxnw41mjvcu-vK6_ELHifunWNg#gid=946184608