The Mars Simulation Project is a Java-based open source project that simulates daily activities of the first generation of settlers on Mars with a higher fidelity of modeling and simulation details than a typical PC strategy game.
mars-sim is designed to be a general purpose simulator depicting the early development of human settlements on Mars.
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a computer simulation is the use of a computer to represent the dynamic responses of one system by the behavior of another system modeled after it. In essence, a simulation is a mathematical description, or model, of a real system in the form of a computer program.
mars-sim aims to integrate and incorporate as many research disciplines (such as physics, chemistry, biology, economics, psychology, and social science) as possible to simulate the dynamics and behaviors of people, social structure, physical and mechanical systems, and environment in the context of developing human settlements on Mars.
mars-sim models each settler as an intelligent agent which possess varying degrees of autonomy and mobility. It is a symbolic model of reality, given a capacity to learn from experiences and an ability to cooperate with other agents and systems. A settler has prescribed attributes and skills and makes weighted decisions and interacts with one another to produce unexpected results in a sandbox world.
For instance, each settler is assigned with a job, a role, having technical skills, personality traits, natural attributes, and preferences of tasks. They build relationship as they interact and work with one another. They are there to live, dream, explore, and settle Mars.
mars-sim depicts near-term human exploration and settlement on Mars. It speaks of a rich scientific language selected from research journal and paper in defining operation paradigms and programming models that are based on present-day technologies.
While at the Earth's sea level, the atmospheric pressure is 101.35 kPa (14.7 psi) and has 20.9% oxygen, in mars-sim, a low pressure atmosphere of 34 kPa (4.93 psi) is chosen for the settlement living with the composition of oxygen at 58.8%.
However, EVA suit or rovers (inside a vehicle) adopt an even lower pressurized environment of 17 kPa (2.47 psi) for more optimal use of resources and design specifications. In comparison, Apollo Lunar Module (LM) atmosphere of 100% oxygen at 33 kPa (4.8 psi). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Shuttle airlock has an oxygen concentration of 30% at 70.3 kPa (10.2 psi). NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU) has the operating pressure of 29.6 kPa (4.3 psi). The upcoming Artemis program's lunar lander will have an atmosphere of 342% oxygen at a pressure of 56.5 kPa (8.2 psi).
See Atmosphere wiki for more design details.
In mars-sim, each habitable building has a life-support system with various functions built-in that continuously monitor and periodically replenish oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water moisture. These gases are produced via chemical systems such as Sabatier Reverse Water Gas (SRWG), and Oxygen Generation System (OGS), etc.
Structurally speaking, a low-pressure environment reduces the need for a rigid structure that supports various load requirements for a building. It also facilitates occupants' Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) with the outside world.
An example of operation modeling is the sequence of steps involving the ingress and egress of airlocks.
To walk onto the surface of Mars, a settler must come through an intermediate chamber called the airlock to exit the settlement. The airlock allows the passage of people between a pressure vessel and its surroundings while minimizing the change of pressure in the vessel and loss of air from it.
In mars-sim, the airlock is a separate building joined to any Hab (which stands for cylindrical habitation module) such as Lander Hab, or Outpost Hub, Astronomy Observatory, etc. All rovers have vehicular airlock built-in.
To perform a team EVA, one of the members will be selected as the airlock operator, who will ensure that proper procedures be followed before going out for an EVA or after coming back from an EVA.
In case of an egress operation, (1) the airlock would have to be pressurized. (2) The air would be heated so that the atmospheric pressure and temperature are equalized. (3) Next, the airlock operator would unlock and open the inner door. (4) The whole team would enter into the airlock. (5) After all have donned EVA suits, the operator will depressurize the chamber and gases would be re-captured to match the outside air pressure. (6) At last, he/she would unlock and open the outer door and the whole team will exit to the outside surface of Mars.
Another example is Radiation Modeling, which account for how often the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) and Solar Energetic Particles (SEP) would occur during EVA. The cumulative dose is closely monitored in 3 specific exposure interval, namely, the 30-day, the annual and the career lifetime of a settler. It would affect 3 different regions of our body, namely, the Blood Forming Organs (BFO), the Ocular Lens, and the Skin. The dose limits are measured in milli-Severt.
In terms of economic modeling, mars-sim implements the Value Point (VP) system, which keeps track of the supply and demand on each good and resource. As there is no standard currency established on Mars yet, settlers barter trades with neighboring settlements by keeping track of the credits and deficit based on the VPs of the resources in exchange in each trading session.
Settlers spend much of their time learning to live off the land. Assigning meaningful jobs to the settlers are vital to the health of the economy of the settlements. Settlers engage in various tasks such as maintenance, ensuring life support resources are plentifully supplied, growing food crops in greenhouses, making secondary food products, and manufacturing needed parts and equipment in workshops.
Settlers will also go out on field Missions to explore and study the surrounding landscapes, to prospect and mine minerals, and to trade with neighboring settlements, etc. They may even decide to migrate from one settlement to another.
The perils of living on Mars are very real. There is a total of 39 types of Malfunctions that can occur at a given moment. There are 3 metrics for tracking how reliable a part is, namely, Reliability percentage, Failure Rate, Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), which are dynamically updated in light of any incidents that occur during the simulation. Workshops and machinery factories are to produce parts for replenishing parts to be used during Maintenance tasks.
One of the goals of mars-sim is to populate the surface of Mars with human settlements. Each settlement has an initial sponsor to guide its development but will eventually develop its own command structure and development objective.
mars-sim loosely follows the Mars Direct Mission Plan by Robert Zubrin and has 6 basic types of settlement templates to choose from. A 4-settler initial base is called a Mars Direct Plan (MDP) Phase 1 template. An 8-settler base is constructed under MDP Phase 2 template. A 12-settler base is MDP Phase 3. A 24-settler base is designated as Alpha Base. Besides, players may build a Trading Outpost or a Mining Depot near sites with high mineral concentrations. Depending on its country or origin and/or sponsor, each level of template may vary in the numbers and types of building it contains.
Mars is a harsh world but is certainly less unforgiving than our Moon. Settlers come face-to-face with accidents, equipment malfunctions, illnesses, injuries, and even death. Survival depends on how well they work together, improve their survival skills and balance individual versus settlement needs.
As the settlers learn how to survive hardship and build up their settlements, players are rewarded with the pure joy of participating in this grand social experiment of creating a new branch of human society on another planetary surface.
Currently, mars-sim supports Java 11. We will transition to Java 17 in near future as JDK 17 is one of the next long-term support (LTS) releases.
- Requires only JRE 11 for running mars-sim
- Requires only JDK 11 (or openjdk 11) for compiling binary
Beginning Java 11, the JRE/JDK package is being decoupled from the graphic JavaFX API package.
For the open source community, the OpenJDK is also being decoupled from the OpenJFX.
Currently, mars-sim does not require JavaFX.
Note 1 : Specifically, the official release of v3.1.0, v3.2.0 and v3.3.0 of mars-sim do not utilize JavaFX / OpenJFX. Therefore, it's NOT a requirement to install them.
However, if you want to run any JavaFX apps, make sure you download and configure the OpenJFX or JavaFX package on top of the JDK.
See ticket #156 to read the discussions on how to set up JavaFX to run it under Java 11.
You may go to Bellsoft site to obtain the latest Liberica JDK for your platform.
We recommend downloading the Full JDK 64 bits JDK.
Full JDK includes LibericaFX, which is based on OpenJFX, for
running other apps that requires JavaFX.
For windows platform, choose MSI version that will automatically set up the environment path.
Assuming that OpenJDK 11 is being used.
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The debian edition of mars-sim comes with debian installer for quick installation. However, you will have to install, configure and properly update the JDK or openJDK binary in your linux machine in order to run mars-sim. Please google to find out the most updated instructions for your distro.
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To manage multiple versions of java with the use of a tool called
SDKMan, see this DZone article.
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Check if the directory of JDK is at
Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-11.jdk/Contents/Home. See DZone for more instructions. -
Enter
/usr/libexec/java_home -Vto find out which version of Java you have installed.
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Start a command prompt and type this
set PATH="C:\Program Files\Java\jre-11.0.12\bin";%PATH%. -
Alternatively, pre-set the
JAVA_HOMEandPATHin Environment Variables in Control Panel.
- a. Add
C:\Program Files\Java\jre-11.0.12\binto thePATHvariable.
Note 2 : The order of precedence inside
PATHis crucial. The first available folder having Java executable inside will be the one to be loaded by Windows OS.
- b. Set
JAVA_HOMEto a JRE or JDK's destination such asC:\Program Files\Java\jdk-11.0.12\bin\orC:\Program Files\Java\jre-11.0.12\bin.
Note 2a : The
\binis crucial. When runningjava -jar xxxx.jar, mars-sim will look for the presence of thejava.exein Windows OS. If\binis missing in theJAVA_HOMEvariable, the Windows OS may not be able to locate thejava.exeand may continue to go down thePATHvariable to look for a valid JDK folder. If it's not found, java cannot start mars-sim.
- c. Add
%JAVA_HOME%;toPATH. Type "path" in a command prompt to double check the order of precedence when it comes to searching for the JDK.
Note 3 : The BEST approach is to enable only one Java build (such as Java 11.0.12) inside
PATHand remove all other folders referencing other java versions/builds.
- Remove any path similar to
C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath;inPATHvariable. It can interfere with the correct version of Java that you would like to use.
Note 4 : Depending on the order of precedence in Path variable,
C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapathcan load the undesired version of jre/jdk, instead of the java version you prefer.
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To test the version of Java that your machine is using, type "java -version" in a command prompt window.
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It's very typical for a machine to have multiple versions of Java installed. To check if a particular Oracle version of Java is being enabled, start Java Control Panel (JCP) from the Control Panel as follows :
- Move your mouse to the magnifier icon (the 2nd icon from the left) on win 10 task bar.
- Type
Configure Java. - Hover your mouse over the
Configure Javaand click to start theJava Control Panel. - Click on
Javatab on top. - Click on
Viewbutton to open up another panel window. - Click on the checkbox on the
Enablecolumn to enable or disable any installed versions of Java.
Note 5 : In JCP, each row represents a version of Java. Unfortunately, this panel only tracks the official Oracle versions. If you install any openJDK's on your machine, JCP won't be able to recognize them.
- To track what versions of openjdk have been installed on your machine. Use JDKMon.
To set up true headless mode in your platform, follow the steps in this wiki.
Feel free to use our Facebook community to discuss relevant topics with regard to the development of mars-sim. See also old/archived SF discussions.
Feel free to start a thread on a particular topic at our GitHub Discussion page.
Help us by filling in the info below when submitting an issue :
Describe the bug
- A clear and concise description of what the bug is.
Affected Area
- What area(s) are we dealing with ? [e.g. Construction, Mission, Resupply, Settlement Map, Mini-map, Saving/Loading Sim, System Exceptions in Command Prompt/Terminal, etc..]
Expected behaviors
- A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen.
Actual/Observed Behaviors
- A clear and concise description of what you have actually seen.
Reproduction (optional)
- Steps to reproduce the problem
Screenshots
- If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem. e.g. Include the followings :
- Person Window showing various activity tabs
- Settlement/Vehicle Window
- Monitor Tool's showing People/Vehicle/Mission tabs
- Settlement Map, etc.
Specifications (please complete the following information):
- OS version : [e.g. Windows 10, macOS 10.13, Ubuntu 14.04, etc.]
- Java version : [e.g. Oracle JDK 11.0.12, AdoptOpenJDK 11.0.12, openjfx 11 etc.]
- mars-sim build version : [e.g. r4255, v3.1.1, etc.]
Additional context
- Add any other context about the problem here.
Note 1 : By providing the info above from the start, you help expedite the handling of the issue you submit.
Note 2 : if you double-click the jar file to start mars-sim and nothing shows up, it's possible that an instance of a JVM be created but it fails to load MainScene. In Windows OS, you may hit Ctrl+ESC to bring up the Task Manager and scroll down to see any "orphaned" instances of
Java(TM) Platform SE binaryrunning in the background. Be sure you clear them off the memory by right-clicking on it and choosingEnd Task.
We welcome anyone to contribute to mars-sim in terms of ideas, concepts and coding. If you would like to contribute to coding, see this wiki for developers. Also, we will answer your questions in our Gitter chatroom.
For a more detail description of this project, see our project website.
- Check out our wikis at GitHub.
- Windows
- MacOS
- Linux
Check out the most recent pre-release build in the GitHub's Release Tab.
Also, see the previous and official release version at SourceForge Repo.
If you like, click on the SF's button below to automatically sense the correct OS platform to download.
This project is licensed under the terms of the GPL v3.0 license.