Now more imagining...
A growing colony is on mars and I, living here on earth, bought some martian property. What do I do with it? I decide to build an entertainment auditorium. It will have a stage (w/ backstage) for live entertainment, a wall for movie projection and seating for about 100. One day perhaps I'll put a historical plaque up indicating this to be the first in Marstown just like the rock slab here in town that says our little movie theatre still uses the same popcorn machine they started with in the 1920s (it's there on the lower left if you look close... the slab, not the popcorn machine...)
They say the first rule of real estate is location (repeat three times for emphasis.) Mine wasn't so good. Nobody would trade me either. So I ended up buying some adjacent to the main street tunnel. There's really no point in putting in a theatre without walk by traffic, is there? I'll just keep my old property for my grand kids (the new property as well, come to think of it.) Tapping into the main tunnel will require permits from the local zoning council but they can be bought easily enough.
I had to hire some construction workers. They're pretty busy, most working for themselves on their own projects, but I'm offering good wages. I found a team with their own tractor and brick compressor. They have plenty of recent experience. Later I'll find some masons to do the interior work.
Construction is pretty straight forward. First you dig a big enough pit. The tractor did that in just a few days including: shaping the floor toward the stage, a trench right up to the main street tunnel (not yet connected, that requires scheduling) a slope for the surface airlock (required by local zoning for emergency egress even though nobody will be wearing suits in the theatre. You just can never get away from people telling you what to do, can ya?) The trick is to get a fixed price contract. Otherwise they will spend forever on an hourly basis.
The iron beams for support columns and iron ceiling plates are standard items (about half or more of the construction on mars uses them.) I've even seen the 'Dirty Jobs: Mars One' video of the family that makes them (the cardboard Mike Rowe was a bit cheesy. I'm wondering where they got the cardboard? Oh, it's a thin iron plate. Yeah, that's more appropriate! Iron Mike!) They extrude the beams right to the martian surface from a shirtsleeve factory and have little telerobotic fork lifts for moving them around their open air warehouse. Delivery within ten kilometers is included in the price of the order. Another good reason for the new property I bought.
The dirt I took out of the pit is more than enough to provide radiation shielding on top of the iron plate ceiling with more than enough columns to support the weight. Now the interior work can be done in a full life supported environment. This will take a few months to do. Nobody will see any of the iron columns with their brick facade.
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