Sunday, May 1, 2022

How we will travel beyond Mars - shortfilm by Erik Wernquist

Swedish digital artist Erik Wernquist, the author of the stunning shortfilm "Wanderers" which depicts a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, has created another inspirational shortfilm "Go Incredibly Fast" "to identify a few propulsion approaches we might utilize to send humans to the worlds in our Solar System beyond Mars and reach out across the vast distances between stars."

Here you can watch the shortfilm and see some Mars-related images from it:

Astronaut in front of Mars colony:
Astronaut in front of Mars colony by Erik Wernquist
Space station orbiting Mars:
Space station orbiting Mars by Erik Wernquist

Friday, April 15, 2022

SpaceX Starships at Mars Base Alpha by TijnM

YouTuber TijnM has created an animation of SpaceX's Starship traveling to Mars and landing at Mars Base Alpha. Here are two renders of the base made for the animation:

SpaceX Starships at Mars Base Alpha by TijnM

Mars Base Alpha by TijnM
Here is the full animation:

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Militech colony on Mars in Cyberpunk 2077

Militech is a megacorporation specializing in weapons manufacturing and private military contracting in the alternate universe of the futuristic dystopian Cyberpunk franchise. It dominates much of the New United States of America's (NUSA) economy and politics, with the last few NUSA Presidents being ex-Militech executives.

We gave a brief insight of the space travel in Cyberpunk world when speculating about possible space-related content in Cyberpunk 2077 - a recent first-person open world role playing video game set in the universe of Cyberpunk. When playing the game we came across a short news segment announcing Militech's plans to construct a new colony on Mars and beginning selling (expensive) residential modules in the residential area of the colony:

Militech's colony on Mars in Cyberpunk 2077 video game
Full news segment about Militech's new colony on Mars:

Saturday, February 19, 2022

Mars Base Alpha by Colin Doublier

Picture of the Day 19/02/2022 - Painting of several SpaceX Starship launch towers equipped with Mechazilla catch system in front of Mars Base Alpha by French urban artist Colin Doublier. More of his art here.

SpaceX Starship at Mars Base Alpha by Colin Doublier

Saturday, February 12, 2022

Elon's latest vision for Mars Base Alpha

During Starship update presentation on Thursday SpaceX CEO and lead designer Elon Musk shared to us SpaceX's latest vision for Mars Base Alpha. Here are some images from the animation.
Part of Mars Base Alpha is covered with a large, transparent dome:
SpaceX's Mars Base Alpha from Elon's Starship update 2022
Starships are landing on landing pads some distance away from the base:
Starship landing pads at Mars Base Alpha from Elon's Starship update 2022
Settlers arriving at Mars Base Alpha:
Settlers arriving at SpaceX's Mars Base Alpha from Elon's Starship update 2022
Animation of Starship landing at Mars Base Alpha shared by Elon:

Friday, February 11, 2022

SpaceX Starship update 2022

On February 10th SpaceX CEO and lead designer Elon Musk provided the latest update of SpaceX's Starship architecture. Here are slides and animations from his presentation.
Animation of Starship launch and arrival to Mars Base Alpha [updated on April 2023]:
Full presentation:


Slides from the presentation

Starship specifications:
SpaceX Starship update 2022 - Starship specifications
Super Heavy booster specifications:
SpaceX Starship update 2022 - Super Heavy booster specifications

Sunday, January 30, 2022

Spaceport on Phobos (concept art for Aliens: Colonial Marines)

Digital paintings of a spaceport on Phobos, the closest of two natural Martian moons. These images are concept art for Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) - a first-person shooter (FPS) game set in the universe of Alien franchise. Unfortunately this location didn't make to the final game release.

In Alien's universe (depicted in Alien, Predator & Prometheus movies, games and books) Mars is the first planet colonized by humans in mid-21st century. There are many colonies and military bases on the planet established by both national and commercial entities and housing millions of people. On Phobos there is a commercial research facility experimenting with xenomorphs or aliens - a highly aggressive endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species.

Spaceport on Phobos (concept art for Aliens - Colonial Marines game)
Spaceship leaving Phobos' spaceport. Note the partially terraformed Mars below:
Spaceship leaving spaceport on Phobos (concept art for Aliens - Colonial Marines game)

Saturday, January 22, 2022

Spaceship landing on Mars by Evgeny Kazantsev

A large spaceship with the design similar to Star Trek's USS Enterprise landing on Mars by Russian sci-fi artist Evgeny Kazantsev from his "Ural Airlines Fantastic Fleet" series. More of his art here.

Spaceship landing on Mars by Evgeny Kazantsev

Spaceship landing at Mars base by Evgeny Kazantsev

Sunday, January 16, 2022

Mars Base Alpha animation by Slave Popovski

A short animation with SpaceX's Starship & 6x6 Cybertruck at Mars Base Alpha by former avionics engineer, now CGI artist Slave Popovski (known as pslavi) from Australia.

Sunday, January 9, 2022

New settlers arriving on Mars

New settlers arriving at Martian spaceport – a concept artwork by Canadian illustrator Alexandra Hodgson for upcoming computer game Terraformers. It's a Mars colonization strategy game to be released in Q1 2022 and developed by indie game developer Asteroid Lab. Since October 2021 you can play free prologue of the game.

Design of the spaceship is clearly inspired by the initial design of SpaceX's Starship when it was first presented in 2016 and called Interplanetary Transport System. As we have observed – that first 12m diameter Starship design is quite popular with artists and game developers depicting colonization of Mars.

New settlers arriving on Mars (concept art by Alexandra Hodgson for Terraformers game)