Surviving Mars: How to Refuel and Launch Rockets

How to Refuel and Launch Rockets in Surviving Mars

Early on in your attempts to build a grand Martian Colony in Surviving Mars, you’ll be limited in your resources and reliant on what you can, and can’t, bring back from Earth. Your first rocket will have a lot of what you and your drones will need to get your colony going, but long term, it’s not enough. You will eventually run out, and until you’re able to be self-sufficient through the use of human labor, you’re going to need to rely on resupplies from Earth. This, in turn, means you’re going to need to know how to refuel and launch rockets in the game. All rockets are reusable, but if you need more than you have in total, you’ll need to buy more.

When you land a rocket in Surviving Mars, it will right away begin to refuel, albeit very slowly. You can check on the progress of the refueling by clicking on the rocket. Until the rocket is completely refueled, it cannot return to Earth. On its own, it probably takes about ten Sol days. You can, however, speed this process up. By building the Fuel Refinery you can have drones aid in the refueling process by generating fuel from water and allowing you to return to earth faster. Keep in mind, however, that the rocket acts as a drone hub/controller. Meaning if you return the rocket to earth, you’ll need some kind of other Drone Command, to keep your drones active and powering up your other buildings in your colony.

To bring rockets back to Mars, or to launch new rockets such as passenger rockets carrying human colonists, click the rocket tab on the bottom left (rocket icon). There, you can select whether you want to send a cargo or a passenger rocket. Depending on how you set up Surviving Mars, you have a limited amount of rockets available for use at a given time.

For cargo rockets, you can fill it up with whatever you like within the confines of your budget for the rocket, and the amount of carrying space. Everything has a weight, so you’ll need to be careful about what prefabricated buildings and resources you want to send to Mars.

For passenger rockets, you’ll be able to select parameters for what kind of humans you want to recruit, and then be shown an applicant pool of would-be colonists each with their own skill sets and traits. Select as many as you can fit, and then you can blast them off to Mars. Just keep in mind that you’ll need a fully functional dome with living quarters, food, oxygen, and water for them to survive.

Once you launch your rocket from within the menu of the rocket tab for passenger and cargo rockets (bottom left), you can check on its progress from Earth on your middle icon tab on the bottom middle of your UI. Once it reaches 100%, you can choose where on Mars you want to land it and begin collecting your requested resources if it’s cargo, or if it’s passenger, your colonists will quickly walk to the nearest dome.

That does it for how to refuel and launch rockets in Surviving Mars! Be sure to search Twinfinite for more Surviving Mars guides, and FAQs answered.