vol. 01 · martian civilization

The Mars Tech Tree

Every dependency, every loop, every umbilical — for a Martian civilization built from regolith, ice, atmosphere and sunlight. An open encyclopedia, drilled to raw materials, cross-linked to the skills you train at the Academy.

127 nodes
68 reference-grade
40 hard imports
29 native
Open interactive explorer → View the wall poster
The Martian tech tree — full dependency graph from raw materials to end uses

The full dependency graph. Hard imports (red) bottleneck on regolith, ice, and atmosphere (green) through a 27-node bootstrap core that must be seeded as one block.

Reference-grade nodes

Entries authored to engineering depth — equations, cited constants, operating envelopes, failure modes, variants, Mars adjustments. The bar is "a working engineer would cite this." 68 so far; target ~ 2000.

Chemistry (12)

Power (9)

Thermal (1)

ECLSS (3)

EVA (3)

Propulsion (3)

Comms (3)

Agriculture (4)

Mining (4)

Manufacturing (8)

Construction (9)

ISRU (1)

Water (1)

Medicine (3)

Robotics (4)

The umbilical

Earth imports ranked by how many things the colony loses if you cut the supply.

01
Semiconductors Hard import · component
50 dependents 02
Copper wire Hard import · intermediate
49 dependents 03
Mars atmosphere Mars-native · raw
49 dependents 04
Alumina Semi-native · intermediate
48 dependents 05
Aluminium stock Semi-native · intermediate
48 dependents 06
Precision bearings Hard import · component
48 dependents 07
Reduced carbon (from CO2) Mars-native · intermediate
48 dependents 08
Chromium Hard import · raw
48 dependents 09
CO2 freeze-separation Mars-native · process
48 dependents 10
CO2 gas Mars-native · intermediate
48 dependents

Independence scorecard

Where the colony sits today on the journey from Earth umbilical to self-sufficient civilization.

Mars-native 29 (23%)
Semi-native 57 (45%)
Hard import 40 (31%)
Physics 1 (1%)

All nodes (A → Z)

Every entry in the encyclopedia. Click in.