Martian Cities - Sapphire
The center of tech development on Mars, where exciting innovations are being made every day!* Site of the tallest buildings on Mars, both because of the lower gravity and because all the tech companies have to compete with each other to have the biggest and flashiest and tallest buildings.
Sapphire City was originally created because of the opportunities afforded by Mars for technological innovation - the lower gravity allows for more fragile structures or crystals to be created that wouldnât survive in the harsher Earth environment, plus the near-vacuum of Mars (<1% Earth) allows for a lot less contamination of valuable electronics. Several companies moved their production lines there, and this let the city rapidly grow because of employees following the company, and new jobs that attracted recent immigrants to the city.
Where does Sapphire City get its power from? This is one of the most common questions, given the immense power drain created by so many companies, and the lack of a massive power grid. Wind power is unusable, given the thinness of the air on Mars, and its farther distance from the Sun means a truly massive field of solar panels would be required to generate the required power.Â
The answer is two-part. Nuclear energy remains just as viable, and on the outskirts of Sapphire City there are some truly immense power plants. However, even they canât provide enough energy for an entire city, and are in fact largely there as backup/support power systems for the true generator of Sapphire City: geothermal energy.**
Though Mars is somewhat geologically dead (no tectonic activity, no active volcanoes, etc.), there is still plenty of heat stored or even temperature gradients that can be used to generate energy. Sapphire City is one of two Martian cities to be built over a large source of water (the other being Aquamarine, although for different reasons), and it uses this large underground reservoir in order to generate the power required to run the city (for more on Martian geothermal energy, check out this paper).
Sapphire City is both the second-most populous Martian City (behind Ruby) and the second-largest in area (behind Diamond City)
*a note: the UMC makes no guarantee on the quality, frequency, or excitement-causing level of the innovations in Sapphire City, see Sapphire City v. Tobias (holding that a private citizen cannot sue for lack of innovating during their visit to Sapphire City). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
**Technically, this should be arethermal energy, because itâs from Mars, not Earth. Apply to anything with the prefix geo- in this work.
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