Minecraft Mars Outpost: "Building Like NASA with Minecraft MakeCode"

"Coding Mars Project" Overview

Fryer, Wesley. Mars Colony in Minecraft (AI Visualization). photo, 5 Jan. 2024. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/53444527170/.
Fryer, Wesley. Mars Colony in Minecraft (with Dome). photo, 5 Jan. 2024. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/53443188417/.
Fryer, Wesley. Mars Colony (AI Drawn). photo, 2 Nov. 2023. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/53304684987/.
Fryer, Wesley. Mars Landing 1 (AI Drawn). photo, 2 Nov. 2023. Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/53305742086/.

SPACE 2024 Presentation Resources

These are the slides (with embedded videos and embedded links) for my June 26, 2024 presentation at the Kennedy Space Center, "Minecraft Makecode meets Mark Watney and Mars Colonization."

Direct links include:


Coding Mars #SPACE24 by wesfryer.com

Our middle school computer programming class is building a [virtual] colony on Mars, using robots and Microsoft MakeCode programs we're creating in Minecraft Education Edition. This is the website our teacher (Dr. Fryer) is using to share resources, links and videos related to this project. Current resources include:

We also have collected some Mars and Space Related Sprites / Graphics from Canva.com.

Minecraft Mars Colony Project - AI Assisted Overview

Visions of a Mars Base / Colony

(Drawn with help from ChatGPT-4 DAL-E 3. Documentation is available, along with more AI tips and experiments!)

Check out the OFFICIAL "MakeCode for Minecraft Documentation" for more examples and tutorials!

The initial coding demo sequence / robot build was in a Minecraft Education world using seed 128388. (Photos are available!)

Protective Dome Update

Yesterday (15 Nov 2023) our class created an initial draft of our Mars Colony base, and started identifying coordinates in our "Mars Seed World" (128388) for the different buildings we are going to construct. With help from ChatGPT 4, we calculated the needed radius for our base, using the coordinates of the center / origin as well as points on the "outer circle" of the base. We're creating a 78 block radius "protective dome" of glass around the base / Mars Colony. Next steps will be identifying the location (by Minecraft Coordinates) of the different structures our 7 different student teams will build.

Lessons Learned and Questions

Here are some of the lessons we've learned so far (as of October 11, 2023) building and farming with Microsoft MakeCode in Minecraft Education. (Also available as a slideshow)

27 October 2023

11 October 2023

Share Our Project!

Please SHARE our project with others who might be interested in replicating / remixing these lessons!

Short link: bit.ly/codingmars

lessons.wesfryer.com/lessons/minecraft-mars

Our middle school coding course focuses on developing student computational thinking and coding skills using two "block based" programming environments. We start interactive programming using Scratch, an innovative graphical programming language developed at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students also use Minecraft MakeCode for Minecraft Education, by Microsoft...

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