Watch a CITY Grow on MARS for 50 Years - 3D Timelapse

One ship lands on an empty plain on Mars. Fifty years later, five thousand people live there. Watch the town of Hearth grow, ship by ship, on real Mars terrain: robots first, then the first crew, the first harvest, a dust storm, a lost ship, the first child, and the first ship built on Mars. 0:00 Hearth, Year 50 0:10 Year 0: Wayfarer lands 0:30 The first solar rows 0:50 Year 2: reactors arrive 1:10 Ice at White Well 1:30 The first methane and oxygen 2:10 Landing pads 2:30 Year 6: the first crew 2:50 The first night 3:10 The first harvest 3:50 Year 8: the dust storm 4:50 Wayfarer becomes a workshop 5:10 Year 10: Kestrel is lost 5:50 The first return to Earth 6:10 The first child 6:30 Lantern Walk and the first school 6:50 Still Garden 7:10 The thousandth resident 7:30 Sprig, the first ship built on Mars 7:50 Year 49: five thousand people 8:10 Year 50: the festival of lights How it was made: no AI imagery. Everything you see is built in code and rendered in Blender. The ground is real: a HiRISE stereo elevation model of Arcadia Planitia, a plain in Mars's northern mid-latitudes with ice close under the surface. The greyscale orbital image is tinted Mars brown; rocks and fine surface detail are added in code. The settlement is fiction. The years, names, landings and population are invented. The way it is built follows published engineering studies (below): cargo ships of about 100 tonnes, solar and fission power, buried ice mined for water, methane and oxygen made on site, homes shielded under regolith, greenhouses, landing pads kept clear of the town. Nothing appears from nowhere. Every machine, kit and home either came off a ship you saw land, or was made on Mars from material you saw mined. Until the first crew lands, every machine is a robot. Ships, homes, machines and people are our own models, with no logos or real company designs. Sources Terrain: HiRISE DTM DTEEC_060363_2200_060429_2200_A01 and its orthoimage. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona. uahirise.org/dtm/ESP_060363_2200 Transport and propellant made from Martian ice and air: SpaceX, Making Life Multiplanetary (2017). spacex.com Solar power on Mars: NASA Technical Reports Server, 19910057365. ntrs.nasa.gov Ice mining, water processing and cryogenic storage: NASA COMPASS ISRU study, 20230017069. ntrs.nasa.gov Settlement logistics and mission assumptions: published mission study, PMC9527650. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Shielded construction: NASA construction study, 20180006612. ntrs.nasa.gov Prepared landing pads: NASA pad study, 20210012836. ntrs.nasa.gov Greenhouses: NASA, lunar and Martian greenhouse research. nasa.gov Fission power: NASA Moon to Mars Architecture, Revision C (2025). The larger reactors later in the film are our own extension. nasa.gov Radiators: NASA heat rejection study, 20220013540. ntrs.nasa.gov A landed ship turned into a habitat or workshop: "From Spacecraft to Space Habitat", a conceptual study of the Starship HLS as a lunar base. researchgate.net Radiation shielding on Mars: ESA, Building on Mars (2025). esa.int Studies inform how things are built, not the dates or the growth rate, which are ours. This video is not endorsed by NASA, ESA, the University of Arizona or SpaceX. Music (YouTube Audio Library): Magical Triumph by Sir Cubworth, Breathing Planet by Doug Maxwell, Timelapsed Tides by Asher Fulero; Kayak, Event Horizon, Nebula and Laniakea by The Grey Room. Wind, engines, machinery and radio sounds are made in code. Which world should we build next? Tell us in the comments. #mars #timelapse #space