A Conductive Thermal Well for Extracting Water from Buried Martian Ice: Sublimation and Melt Sizing

This paper presents a sized design for a Mars surface system based on conductive heating of buried ice by a heated well rod, melting and subliming ice in place for collection. A drilled thermal well, in the Rodriguez-well sense, that creates and sustains a subsurface cavity in an ice deposit. The study is SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED: all values are computed from stated assumptions and published Martian environmental data, and no hardware was built or tested. The principal computed results are well depth m of 18, cavity radius m of 1.6, ice density kg m3 of 920, cavity ice mass kg of 16278. Further results include energy per kg kJ of 449.5, total energy GJ of 7.32, heater power kW of 14, heating efficiency of 0.58. The design is a computed study for peaceful surface operations — power supply, thermal control, radiation protection, construction and resource extraction for a crewed base — and it has no targeting or weapon application. Losses, deratings for dust and temperature, and the margin between capacity and the stated load are reported alongside the headline figures, and the limitations section states what a physical test would still need to establish.