Suppose you have been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: you could be one of just 20 people to start a new offshoot of humanity — a permanent and self-sustaining colony on Mars. Most people don’t get that chance, so that’s the good news. But there is also the bad news.
First, you cannot change your mind. There is no coming back. Once there, you’re there for the rest of your life, like it or not. This makes technical sense. It is hard to get something all the way to Mars, and the spaceship will have to carry not only the colonists themselves, but also everything they need to build a self-sustaining, permanent habitat. It would be technically much more challenging and expensive to to carry along the fuel, extra hardware, and so on needed for a return trip. Besides, since the purpose is a permanent colony, what would be the point? Probably even the ship itself would be repurposed to be part of the colony habitat, since flying it back would not be planned. Repurposing the ship would only be a starting point, however. The colonists would need to build and deploy sealed glass domes to grow crops in or, alternatively, more efficient insulated glass-topped tanks to grow algae and perhaps fish in. Manufacturing equipment would also need to be brought along capable of producing the materials needed for the colony, such as the glass for domes and tanks.
Another piece of bad news you are informed of is that there is a 20% chance of mission failure. That cold phrase hides a stark reality: it means everyone dies. If something goes seriously wrong in the colony, it is unlikely that the folks back on Earth could help. (Would it really be 20%? It’s just a guess, but little more than a guess is all that is possible for something so unprecedented as this mission.)
Before making your decision to go or not, also keep in mind that even if everything goes as planned, living on Mars will most likely be cramped, crowded, and aside from the occasional space-suited jaunt into a barren, dull reddish landscape, desolate from horizon to horizon, there would be no chance to get away from things for awhile. If you go, it is because the idea is exciting, not because daily life will be better than on Earth, because it won’t be.
On the other hand, modern hand-held computers loaded with everything from games to wikipedia could be brought that would satisfy an unlimited thirst for that sort of diversion. Some sort of access to the web is certainly possible as well via radio communication with Earth, thus rendering the term “World Wide Web” not only incorrect, but extremely parochial. Interplanetary Web, anyone? Imagine growing up in such a tiny, isolated outlier society with one’s understanding of Earth and all it contains obtained from a computer. This will be the impoverished experience of the next generation colonists, born and bred on Mars, indeed, genuine Martians. And even that modest window on Earth needs electronic devices, which will eventually break and be difficult to repair, although shipment from Earth of small, lightweight digital components might be a possibility, especially if a trading relationship were established. There would certainly be a market here on Earth for at least a small number of high-priced Martian rocks and the like. It might also be possible to jury-rig access to at least some basics on the Web like static text documents with homegrown electronics, especially if a portal for this was built here on Earth.
In any case, a cool-headed assessment suggests the quality of life on Mars would be a lot lower than life here on Earth for the typical reader. So. Would you volunteer, or not?
Informal polling shows that a large majority of college-age males would go for it, provided enough females were going too. But females are often more wary, viewing the downsides with a more jaundiced eye. Your mileage may vary, but it seems clear that of all the problems in putting together a one-way group tour to the red planet, finding takers is not one of them.
Teeming cities. A 20-person colony is not a teeming city, though it may be teeming enough, with living space scarce due to the difficulty and expense of building each new square foot of high tech, hermetically sealed, oxygenated habitat for housing colonists and growing food. Large domes containing crops would be nice, but much smaller tanks of algae and (hopefully) fish might be more technically realistic. Expensive or not, however, square footage will need to be constructed because, unless the colony is heading for failure, children will be born and the colony will grow.
Natural growth rates for human societies vary, but are generally under 5% per year. Overall, world population is currently growing by about 1% per year. Let’s assume for a moment that our Martian colony experiences a growth rate averaging 1% per year. How long do you think it would take for the original 20-person colony to expand into a vigorous town of 1,000 people… 100 years? 500? 1,000? 5,000? The answer can be readily found with a calculator or spreadsheet: just 394 years. How long for the original colony to become 10 million Martians — a teeming city or, more likely, a few? Take a moment to guess. Just in case you did want to guess, I’ll write the answer out next, but spelled out backwards so you don’t read it by accident. .sraey neves ythgie dnasuoht eno erem A
Why stop at 10 million? Population growth on Earth didn’t, and there is no reason why it would on Mars either. A burning question then becomes, when will Mars pass its capacity and tip into overpopulation? If capacity is 10 billion people, er, Martians, it would pass that point, starting from the original 20 colonists, in only 2014 years. Here on Earth, the road to 10 billion has already taken a lot longer than that. How long? The question is unanswerable because we don’t know when the process started. Even if we had a full fossil record, it would make no sense to say the the population was not human before some time point, but human immediately thereafter. Perhaps a rough date could be assigned based on when the mutation(s) that enabled language occurred, assuming they occurred in rapid succession as part of an evolutionarily sudden selective sweep, pervading the population over a span of, say, a few thousand or so years. The FOX2P (forkhead box P2) gene has been suggested as key in this, though necessarily indirectly since, being a transcription factor gene, its function is regulating other genes. Even if this is eventually proven, such as by grafting it into a chimpanzee genome and observing dramatic improvement in chimp language skills, it seems unlikely that its first appearance in protohumans could ever be timed. We do know that humans and chimpanzees branched off from a common ancestral species at least 4 million years go, suggesting a long-ago starting point. On the other hand, the surprisingly low genetic diversity of humans (compared to most species) suggests we “began” (in a sense) at the time of a much more recent population bottleneck and have not yet accumulated the mutations needed for much genomic diversity. The Toba supervolcano eruption about 73,000 years ago has been proposed as this starting point, by causing a multi-year volcanic winter from throwing so much dust and smoke into the atmosphere. On this view, populations of protohumans were devastated, leaving only a small community alive. That group then expanded, sweeping across the world. Adding in a modest amount of Neanderthal blood (up to 4% im much of the world), and factoring in the evolutionary changes since them, we get the human race.
Whether human colonization of Earth began 73,000 years ago, several million, or something in between, it is clearly taking a lot longer to reach a population of 10 billion here on Earth than it would on Mars, given 1% annual population growth. This is due to the scourge of infectious disease — pestilence — as well as other privations. Without those curbs, populations have been often observed to expand at rates in the 3 – 4%/year range. So our 1% growth rate assumption for Mars may be too low. Let’s assume growth of 3.5% instead, and see what happens.
Now our lively little town of 1,000 happens not in 394 years, but in a mere 114 years. 394 years gives us, not a town of 1,000 as before, but a teeming city of over 15 million inhabitants! A mere 583 years suffices to hit the 10 billion mark.
What Martians can do. Without uncontrolled infectious diseases to contend with, Martians will be in a good position to quickly populate their new world. Food production and other necessary technologies will be solved problems right from the beginning, or the colony could not even get off the ground. Thus, overpopulation is a real issue for Martians who seek to keep their planet as pleasant a home as possible.
What you are reading now may well be available to the Martians as well. Given the surprisingly short time scales involved, even paper could last long enough. I advise the Martians to keep in mind the experience of societies on Earth, that a high standard of living in conjunction with readily available contraception can be major factors in holding back unrestrained population growth and resultant overpopulation. Conversely, a good standard of living can be promoted by keeping population in check so that plenty of Martian resources are available to everyone. Our planet may be humankind’s first step to colonizing the cosmos. It would be best to make the experience of Mars and her teeming cities a template for colonization of the solar system and the stars beyond.
References
“The FOX2P (forkhead box P2) gene has been suggested as key in this…”: S.E. Fisher and C. Scharff, FOXP2 as a molecular window into speech and language, Trends in Genetics, vol. 25, no. 4, 2009, pp. 166 – 177.
We know a lot about the conditions on Mars. Very cold, very little atmosphere, though the low pressure carbon dioxide could be used.
No oil, no coal, and even if Mars did have them, no oxygen to burn them. No deposits of uranium we know about. Sunlight is 1/4 of the intensity we see on earth.
Not saying I wouldn’t go, but there are sure a lot of problems to solve first.
Keith Henson
Response: I believe one can at least start to get a feel for the difficulties involved by contemplating starting a self-sustaining colony here on Earth – but on Antarctica, the middle of the driest desert, or underwater. Thinking that way, can you believe some people contemplate colonizing Venus by living in giant balloons 30 miles above the surface?
Interesting post, friend.
Now if we would just do the things on Earth now that you are suggesting we do on Mars in the future to prevent overpopulation, maybe we wouldn’t feel the need to get to Mars so quickly.
It’s a good read!
Response: You really know how to cut to the chase scene!
What are the tax rates there?
Response: the colonists will set them themselves. They will undoubtedly not allow operatives back on Earth to do it: “no taxation without representation.” But really, if that is the first thing to come into your head, you clearly don’t belong on the project.
Mars’ surface gravity is just 38% that of Earth. Lots of issues there for adults, not all of them known, let alone for child development.
I don’t believe that there’s enough genetic diversity for 20 people to seed a population of thousands, let alone millions. Of course, there could be periodic outside additions from Earth to the colony.
Response: yes the gravity issue is a question. As for genetic diversity, perhaps colonists could be chosen so as to make sure all common genetic variants are represented. But even genetic monocultures can be viable — witness the common banana.
“First, you cannot change your mind. There is no coming back. Once there, you’re there for the rest of your life, like it or not. This makes technical sense.”
If you were there for twenty or thirty years do you think technology wouldn’t advance enough to get people from Mars to Earth?
If there is a trading relationship they will certainly develop the ability to move people from Mars to Earth. A supertanker is much larger than a cruise liner.
I think they will colonize the orbial space around earth before mars so the life support technology for space habitats will be well tested. Also, you wouldn’t go with one ship that you repurpose to living quarters. You would go with several ships for redundancy and with room for population growth for a couple of generations. If you are going with all that redundancy, then a smaller ship capable of returning to earth is not a big deal.
I think 20 people is also too few. Maybe for pioneers to test the feasibility and setting things up for a larger population of colonists. Population growth won’t be only from native “martians” it will be much faster because of continuing immigration from earth.
Response 1: maybe…and maybe not. It’s hard to predict the future with much certainty.
Response 2: I was thinking of a much more modest trading relationship. Not sure what Mars could supply that we would need here in much quantity.
“Now if we would just do the things on Earth now that you are suggesting we do on Mars in the future to prevent overpopulation, maybe we wouldn’t feel the need to get to Mars so quickly.”
You first.
Population density does not impact standard of living. The greatest elevator of the human condition is free market capitalism.
I think this assumes women’s fertility cycle will keep working on Mars. Given that it seems oddly in sync with the moon (once every 30ish days), I think its a real possibility women will go infertile on Mars.
Do you cross your fingers or pack a fertility clinic in your spacecraft? If humans on Mars can only reproduce artificially, would it really be feasible and desirable to sustain a population there?
Response: The moon cycle is about 27 days. Women vary. They tend to sync with each other in groups. Not sure about the fertility issue but there’s one way to find out.
Well, no. What would happen is a catastrophic event that killed everyone.
The way to avoid that is lots of settlements.
Mars is no more hostile than Antarctica.
There is a small town in northern Alaska called Galena
that could be energy self-sufficient _if_ the Feds grant
their request for a mini-nuke power plant.
One use of such a colony could be as a refueling base
for spaceships, say asteroid miners or comet catchers.
One reason for family-oriented women to go there would be
to raise their children away from the hostile environment of
the coming Dystopia.
The Min/Max size for a society is around 1000 adults;
That provides genetic diversity, and as many friends
as one can make in a lifetime.
Mars is like Antarctica, except you can’t breath there.
Not enough genetic diversity.
Surfing the web from Mars is a very frustrating experience. Round-trip latency varies from 6 to 45 minutes depending where Earth and Mars are in their orbits. Real-time conversation between planets is physically impossible. I suppose the most popular websites could be cached on Mars, but bandwidth and disk space would have to be carefully rationed.
People love to have sex. Making babies wouldn’t be the problem, habitat and food would. If families are encouraged to have an average of five children, there would be closer to 10,000 “martians” after 100 years, if habitat and food production could keep up. We’re assuming terra-forming is out of the question, I guess?
Response: not sure of your math. Check it on a spreadsheet. As for terra-forming, I wouldn’t call it out of the question, I just didn’t consider it. You’d need a singularity first in order to do it, wouldn’t you? And with a singularity, anything presumably becomes possible.
How about this? Let’s say we opened the interior of Antarctica to colonization. How many people would sign up? How many would soon regret their choice? How many, if they were prohibited from emigrating from there would resort to suicide? The South Pole is a warmer, less arid, more hospitable place than Mars. Can we really imagine that there would ever be teeming cities at the South Pole?
I recommend to you a little novel from the 60s called “The Last Hope of the Earth” by Lan Wright (alternately entitled “The Creeping Shroud”). It has greatly affected my ideas of interplanetary colonization.
Response: please send me your review of that book. I will be happy to post it to this blog for you if you wish. JD
Oh, also, the experience of the Israeli communes has shown that if you don’t keep children separate from each other prior to puberty, they will see each other as siblings fail to copulate. So any colony that wants population growth would need to maintain a half-dozen separate settlements.
Response: this is a well known phenomenon (though hadn’t heard about it in connection with Israel). Good social engineering point.
If you were limited to 20 passengers, it would make sense to have 15 women and 5 men, with a sperm bank hardened against radiation. Men’s greater physical strength would not be as necessary, even in a pioneering situation, given the lower gravity. A gene pool of only 20 original members is not enough for the long-term genetic health of the population; http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=113 suggests that a minimum of 160 would be necessary (it is apparently a very hotly debated question; one site suggests that, with genetic engineering, only one, a female, would be necessary, but I am assuming that using parthenogenesis was not the intent of the colony, as a failure of only a small part of the technology base would IMMEDIATELY wipe out its ability to reproduce, while losing MUCH of the technology base might still be survivable with natural reproduction). Multiple colonies would be a very good idea; we are all aware of the all-of-your-eggs-in-one-basket problem. As the colonies grew, they could exchange members to increase the genetic diversity.
For those who were saying we needed to deal with overpopulation on Earth, you are well behind the times; current projections are that the world population will peak sometime in or near the middle of this century, and then diminish. Most of the population growth now is in the “undeveloped” countries, i.e., those least capable of feeding them; the “developed” countries are facing a population CRASH. Japan, for instance, has a birth rate of 8.2÷1000 population, well below that of the world average of 20.3÷1000 (the U.S. has a birth rate of 14.0÷1000, right at the replacement rate; its population is expected to increase to a peak of about 450 million due to immigration).
Response: interesting suggestions regarding colony size and polygamy…hmm. Btw the world population *will* stop increasing. The hope is that it will be for other than Malthusian reasons.
It occurs to me that if overpopulation were a genuine concern we WOULD open Antartica for colonization and make more land available for development in places like Alaska and the Northwest Territory. At the same time, we should place population limits in places like Micronesia and the Hawaiian islands.
Response: Why Micronesia? It’s got one of the lowest growth rates in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate. Don’t know about Hawaii but I wouldn’t think its growth rate would be particularly high.
I liked Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars trilogy’s take on colonizing mars. Most of the issues people have brought up here were dealt with. He did, however, spill a lot of ink exploring the social and political implications of the opening of Mars to people on earth. Like what if the people of Mars decide to do things their own, brand-new way? New economic systems? How would they react when the economic interests from earth who financed the colony invade their planet and start strip mining for minerals? How about diplomacy with Earth as well as other solar system colonies (Luna, Mercury, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and asteroid colonies)?
My favorite part of those books is that they span a period of maybe 200 years, but due to a medical breakthrough many of the same characters are alive at the end that were part of the initial colony…plus people can tailor their own genetic map to incorporate traits they prefer. Want to be more muscular, or be able to run faster or live in a high-CO2 atmosphere without a breathing filter? No problem. A little cross-species genetic tinkering and you can have designer-colored skin or purr like a cat. Fun stuff.
Radiation will ensure that Mars is never more than a quick science stop unless everyone wants to live underground forever.
Add to that a lack of political will to do anything about problems here and this is just a thought exercise. Mankind will die out right here on the home planet. Colonizing is for peoples who have cultural confidence and a unified will to do it. Aside from tiny pockets buried in ignorant masses we have neither.
Response: interesting point. I don’t know how much radiation gets through the Martian atmosphere compared to Earth. I wonder.
Colonizing is for peoples who have cultural confidence and a unified will to do it? Balderdash! The British colonized Australia with convicts. The confidence and the colonists don’t have to be the same people.
Jared, I have the math in a spreadsheet where do I send it?
Response: Excellent. Please forward to thehumanracetothefuture@gmail.com.
Very interesting. But the colonisation of the Solar System cannot follow the same model as the spread of humanity across the Earth. Look at how Europeans colonised distant continents or how the Polynesian culture spread across the Pacific. Both depended on a “go out and find something” model in which small groups of adventurers struck out into the unknown and hoped for the best. They knew that if they found land they would almost certainly be able to find food and water, and they didn’t even have to think about their oxygen supply. Even then, many of them died in the attempt. But it was reasonable for them to assume that finding land was the hard part.
Space travel is not like that. We know exactly where the destination is, but if we send out colonists and hope for the best they will almost certainly die. They would depend on experimental technologies to supply all their food, water and air, and those technologies would almost certainly fail disastrously many times before they were perfected, as all new technologies do. Would you want to bet your life on the equivalent of a beta version of Windows 1.0? Interplanetary spaceships also cost vastly more in real terms than a sailing ship or a Hawaiian double-hulled canoe, and it is doubtful that 21st century technological societies will be as forgiving of disastrous expeditions as their forebears. In the old days unsuccessful colonists would disappear without a trace but a Martian Darien Scheme would die on YouTube.
So there are only two practical approaches to interplanetary colonisation, the “Prefab” and the “Caveman”. In the prefabrication approach, the colony is built before the colonists arrive. Robots would build and test all the infrastructure needed to keep people alive, so the inevitable failures of the early experiments would not involve any fatalities. Before any real humans arrived there would be the Martian equivalent of crash test dummies roaming around the habitation modules for months or years to ensure that the conditions never became too extreme for human life. Mars City One would be built and rebuilt until all its critical systems were thoroughly debugged, and only then would it be inhabited.
In the caveman approach, the focus would be on developing techniques by which human colonists could extract what they needed from the environment without robot assistance. It would focus on the use of human muscle power and the simplest possible chemical processes to extract air, water and building materials from whatever minerals could be easily mined. There would always be sunlight, so once you’ve got air and water you can start experimenting with different ways of growing food. The colony would need a considerable amount of support from Earth while it was developing all these techniques, but once they were up and running it would be self-sufficient in all the basics. However the colony really would need to start out in a natural or artificial cave to be protected from radiation and meteorites, and would only move onto the surface when it had the means to produce its own building materials.
But sending a bunch of idealistic volunteers on a one-way trip to Mars would be a suicide mission. It would be madness to take part and unethical to support it in any way.
Response: Interesting analysis. I think it would be more feasible to resupply the colony on occasion (your caveman scenario) than have return trips. Not sure if the robotics scenario is feasible without a singularity, and in that case, “anything” is possible.
Antarctica can not be opened for settlement because of the Antarctic Treaty System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System), which prohibits just about all useful development of the continent. There would be no economic incentive to go there, and land can not be claimed there, as Antarctica is supposed to be held in trust for all Mankind. Whether this is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing, is for the reader to decide, but given international relations, it is not going to change, as none of the signatories is going to sit by while someone else makes a profit there (and why else GO there?)
“Would you volunteer, or not?“
…will weed be legal on this new mars?
Response: everything they bring, including plants, needs to give plenty of bang for the buck. There is simply no space or resources to waste on anything else. Therefore weed will not be brought, because it is too weak, too mild. Sorry.
Interesting considering that I’m outlining a fictional story of a 21-member expedition to Mars and with 14 females and 7 males. You could probably do ok if the people were genetically screened beforehand and/or genetical treatment was available to repair any defects. Who knows, Mars could become the leading edge in genetics!
As for Antarctica, there probably would be some brave libertarian souls on the continent but it’s under the control of various nations tho Marie Byrd Land is technically still unclaimed but several nations have reserved the right to file claims. It is pretty well off-limits except to scientists and a few tourists tho there have been children born there. Exploitation of the coal, iron ore, and other minerals is banned until 2048.
Antarctica is also actually colder than the equatorial bands of Mars and about 98% is under about a mile of ice. Don’t forget that the sun doesn’t shine for six months which would make it tough on greenhouses without artificial lighting. So it is, in several ways, even tougher than Mars. But I’m sure that with an LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor) or two that it could survive as colony or for a few hardly souls … As with most things, it would just take a good bundle of money to finance it.
Response: yes, I agree that Antarctica is tougher than Mars in certain ways (esp. being dark for months at a time). Good luck with your story.
Holding back unrestrained human population growth, is exactly what we should NOT do on a Mars colony. We need to let human birthrates go natural and free. Encourage naturally high birthrates worldwide, traditionally large families globally, especially on Mars. Let people enjoy having their precious darling babies, and let baby booms enjoy being naturally “contagious.” Pregnancy is a very healthy condition that spreads human life, and when everybody around is having “baby after baby,” it’s all the easier for reproductive yearnings to awaken, and relax and let the babies happen as they happen. A more pro-life and pronatalist society, is a more comfortable and friendly society to live in or raise children in.
Is a village of 20 people, really economically viable on Mars? Can modern technology long function, with so few people? Reducing the ghastly death curbs, and welcoming the traditional natural high birthrates, would seem to be the “ideal,” as human population was never designed to be “stable,” but to grow and grow. Teeming supercities of 15 million or more, would be far more desirable, than the pidly small crews of spaceships forming tiny villages, at so that the human race can greatly expand in size, for the greater good of the populous many. Can we transport 15 million people to Mars? Perhaps eventually, but not conceivably anytime soon without radical new technologies accelerated along by Earth’s natural population growth. All the more reason why natural and “wild” baby booms should be eagerly encouraged upon Mars. And upon Earth as well. Earth is no longer “empty” like Mars is now, but it’s not hard to imagine how the world and people can ADAPT to population and grow denser and denser upon the Earth, if or as needed, to find or make place for everybody and all our progeny.
Contraceptives are unnatural, awkward, and have side effects. Contraceptives directly pollute the body. If “environmentalists” were for real, they would oppose things that directly pollute the body. Reject the bizarre body piecing and ugly tattoos. Discourage smoking nasty cancer sticks, and discourage the unnatural life-hindering contraceptives. Even nature tells us that the human seed is supposed to spurt naturally, unhindered, into the husband’s wife, to where a baby may be conceived if her body is ready to reproduce or God allows. Regardless of family or rising population size. Contraceptives aim to prevent or deny the natural spread of human life. And yet more and more people would be glad to live, even if that means being born into “crowded” conditions, and so we should encourage the natural spread of human life. Contraceptives have urged immoral and responsible behavior. When sex=babies, people took their natural reproductive marital relations more seriously.
Our “modern” materialistic way of thinking, not only rebels against God’s ways and the natural order and God’s commandments, such as Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, but it’s like being in “The Matrix” of deception. I have sometimes suspected that it’s maybe not so simple as “cause before effect.” What if a certain effect is needed, and it causes the cause that brings it? For example, we are entering a new world of enlightenment, with the end of the times and the glorious return of Jesus as Lord of Lords and King of Kings. World population seems “high” because our systems and infrastructure are corrupted and inefficient. World population these days tends to “explode” “wildly” “out of control, not because it is “out of control” as some population phobics opine or try to deceive, but rather because world population is way too low for the newer paradigms and efficiencies soon to come. Let the baby booms persist, and naturally intensify as the number of women of childbearing age rises, and spread globally, even spread “wildly” throughout the galaxy, should mankind ever be so fortunate as to grow beyond the confines of Earth. We should stop resisting what must be, and I suspect that if people could relax and go along with what must be, or God’s will, then we might be much happier.
I’m glad people dream about going to Mars, but I really don’t think we need to rush it too much. Technology is not ready, and as the movie Total Recall warned, it could be very dangerous to colonize a new world (Mars) with today’s corrupt governments to mess everything up. Hasn’t it occurred to anybody, that unless space travel technologies expand far beyond what we are starting to have, it would take months to reach Mars, in cramped spaceships. And to colonize another world, we would especially want to send the fertile breeders. As many as we could reasonably squeeze onto the spaceships. Such people can’t reasonably go for more than a few days without sex, especially if already married, so would they have to have their sex, on crowded spaceships with little or no privacy? I believe it more moral to enjoy sex without actual privacy, than to hinder the natural spread of human life. (I’ve heard that babies were conceived on the Mayflower, a cramped pioneer-time ship, with no place of privacy. Perhaps they did the deed, very quietly at night, while they “hoped” others nearby were asleep, or while they let it appear that they were asleep.) Wherever husband and wife would normally sleep together, in a tent on a campground, in a motel room or RV, in a guest bedroom while visiting family or friends, in refugee camps, in a 1-room hut, they should be welcome to enjoy their natural reproductive relations. And pregnancies should be encouraged upon spaceships, because growing families are great motivation to do the work, and because the colonies should be encouraged to grow aggressively, so that more people may come alive and benefit. See, that’s a reason why not to be too much in a rush to send people to Mars. We just aren’t ready, in so many ways. Unlike Star Trek, today’s imaginable spaceships aren’t anywhere near family-friendly enough. It’s too expensive and inefficient to transport people to even the closest practical planet, Mars. It’s far easier to cram several planet’s worth of people upon this planet, where we already have so many burgeoning billions, than to make any other worlds habitable. Perhaps someday? I at least like people exploring the idea of colonizing other worlds, lest this increasingly “crowded” planet start feeling a bit too cramped. Thinking “outside the box” is far healthier than being gullible and easily manipulated by power-mad anti-people leaders with an evil New World Order agenda, that stands in the way of the paradigm shift that needs to soon occur.
I want to comment on a few issues, people have raised. Or clarify a few points.
No, going to Mars, shouldn’t be but a “one-way” trip. I don’t agree with the runaway government welfare and endless government subsidies, as that is but really slavery, taxing people and making them to work, against their will, for other people’s benefit. So migrating to Mars, could tend to be an option for rich adventurers, those who can somehow purchase a ticket. Hopefully, the cost of the trip could soon somehow be reduced. If you want to encourage people to go and volunteer to go, they MUST have the option of returning to Earth, if they so choose, or can afford the return trip. Now it may be practically be a one-way trip, but it should not be due to imposed restrictions, but rather, people would acclimate to the one-third normal gravity, and find they are then “too heavy” on Earth. And the cost of returning, may be too high for some, who could barely afford to go, or went as part of a job deal.
Migrating to Mars, does not, at least not at first, make any “dent” in Earth’s growing human population size anyway, so there’s another reason why to allow people to return if they want. It’s more about spreading humans beyond “having all our eggs in one basket,” and encouraging humanity to start spreading from planet to planet, if that sci-fi idea prove someday to be possible. All the more to encourage people to go ahead and enjoy “outgrowing” the planet, if that someday could occur.
I don’t like the idea of sending more women than men, and sending a protected sperm bank. That’s hardly traditional nor family-friendly, nor should we be trying to be “mad scientists” or trying to play God. I see no reason why the traditional procreation that God designed, can’t still work. Surely we aren’t talking of just sending 20 people to inbreed, but 20 and another 20, quite many spaceships, if we can send any at all? Or 25 or 100s per spaceship. Spaceships could even be programmed to return to Earth, even without any crew, to pick up load after load of additional people, and to also get the cost of a ticket down to a more affordable level, so that most everybody adventuresome enough, might have the option of escaping their backward corrupt countries and going to someplace “new,” so much in need of more colonists to get the colonies growing to a good start. I wonder why not just suggest polygamy, rather than sperm banks? But I think the traditional 1 man-1 woman marriages/families would work just fine. But we can’t just send but a single “Adam and Eve,” because the genetic material of humans, is more corrupted and faded than it was “in the beginning.”
As encouraging breeding would be important to get the colonies going, as I assume they want the “modern” technology infrastructures that pretty much still require massive populations, they may especially want to encourage young, even teenage married couples, who haven’t yet had their children, but soon should be conceiving large families, to go first. It’s more efficient to transport children, soon to be born, than children already born, as the children won’t need life support and resources, until they are already there on the colony. Even pregnant bulging bellies, don’t take up near the space, as children already born. Pregnant mothers may often actually make it to Mars, before the baby comes out of their bodies.
Until Star Trek “gravity plating” can be invented, gravity can be simulated, by spinning the spaceship, and the floor would be the outer wall ring of the spaceship. As in the movie, 2001 and/or 2010. Such unwieldy spaceships probably couldn’t land on a planet, but would be reached by “shuttlecraft” which can land.
You said you didn’t know how much radiation got through Mars’ atmosphere compared to Earth. The answer is “all of it.” The atmosphere is mostly irrelevant; Mars has no magnetic field, and thus no protection from solar and cosmic radiation. There’s a reason it’s barren.
The only way humans will colonize worlds that aren’t practically copies of Earth is by modifying themselves into beings that can survive in their new planet’s environment.
Reply to Mike:
For humans to “modify themselves into beings that can survive in their new planet’s environment,” sounds to me, like “playing God.” One of the reasons I advocate that humans not use any “birth control” and multiply naturally, is because the history of the development of contraceptives, is very evil and related to Nazi eugenics, which ought to be largely discredited by now. For humans to “modify themselves” in the way you suggest, sounds like mad scientists monkeying around trying to change the genetic code of humans. Now what humans are even remotely qualified to be doing such modifications?
If Mars isn’t adequately shielded, can’t dome cities or community buildings, be shielded artificially? But that also brings up, that the cost of living space per square foot, may be absurdly high compared to Earth, a reason I suggested humans just go on multiplying naturally upon Earth, populating denser and denser, and/or spreading out where we can, as may come to be needed, and not rush to hastily to Mars.
I agree with “modification” and ADAPTING, but more so through artificial and external means that don’t tamper with God’s design of the human body, also a reason I believe only in population ACCOMODATION, not imposing of “control” of natural birthrates.
So the air isn’t breathable on Mars? That doesn’t mean that people can’t live there. It merely means that people, if they ever go there, will need to wear oxygen concentrators, breathing machines, spacesuits, or something. On Earth, if it’s too cold, you put on a coat. Almost the same idea. There’s ways to ADAPT using technology.
a wild solution to the gravity problem? if anyone finds a hole in it, please share…
you don’t necessarily have to live on mars…
phoebus, or diemos, put you on the same block, and you can crash it on the weekends.
while they aren’t exactly perfect spheres, they do have a structure that is workable, particularily in regards to their diameters.
phobos, 3.45 mile radius.
deimos, 3.9 mile radius.
in theory, one could build a highspeed rail, spanning the 21.67 mile circumference of phobos. my math on centripetal force is weak, but i’m working with the idea that the ‘train’ would have to travel 522 mph, as a tangential speed.
i defer the suggested speed to someone more qualified– probably half the people who posted above.
the 38% gravity of mars kinda has me scared.
sorry, phobus is 6.9 mile radius.
deimos’ radius is correct, though…
555 mph is the ‘target’ speed.
Reply to mark:
The 38% gravity, doesn’t present a problem, living on Mars, I think, but rather, for returning to Earth. It would allow the human body to become too weak to stand properly on Earth. until one acclimates to Earth again? Wouldn’t it make it easier to stand, or help compensate for a heavy spacesuit?
It sure would be nice to have a means of producing “artificial gravity.” Designing spaceships as spinning habitat rings, is so costly and awkward.
Plus, if “artificial gravity” or “gravity plating” was invented, why not add it to Mars community buildings and habitats, so as to enjoy 95% Earth gravity on Mars? Or should it be set at exactly 100%? Maybe reduced to 50% at night, to make one’s mattress feel more comfortable?
Know why astronauts “hop” on the moon? Is it because the gravity is so low? No, that’s not why. It’s a defect in the design of their spacesuits. Normal atmospheric pressure is 14 pounds/square inch. I think the spacesuits are pressured to only 4 pounds/square inch. Some pressure is needed to prevent one’s blood from boiling, and to allow breathing. “Thin” air can be compensated by increasing the oxygen percentage. Problem is, even 4 pounds per square inch, is a lot of pressure which seriously reduces the flexibility of the space suit. Thus, the astronauts legs are stiff. Thus it takes less effort to hop than to walk.
The new idea is to custom design “skin tight” spacesuits, that then should be more flexible? Or can reliable, air-tight joints be added into spacesuits? Maybe let people travel in bulky pods, like in the movie, 2001? Then one doesn’t have to flex their joints, when outside, to move around.
Perhaps there never will be any way to make colonizing Mars practical? Earth was designed for humans. Other planets weren’t? But I would like to see humans explore and colonize Mars, IN THE MOVIES at least.
And why would we even want to go to Mars, other than to escape our corrupt governments? And why would any Mars government, be any better?
I would consider moving to Mars, if there was better individual freedom than on Earth. Other than that, what possible reason could there be to go?
” Therefore weed will not be brought,”
Not that I am a proponent but weed is a very good source for hemp and hemp would be vital to a new colony. The uses include food, paper (don’t laugh, paper is the only known “memory storage” system that has lasted for centuries) cloth, and medicine.
…and it truly does grow like a “weed,” a plus in a limited resource environment that would value hardiness in plants.
What about booze? In my experience mankind will ALWAYS make booze wherever it finds itself.
Heck, the Puritans packed more beer than water in the Mayflower.
Responsibly planning for this colony would have to take that into consideration, otherwise the new “dry” colonists will find that “Bob the boozer” has been diverting limited resource (hemp?) to run his still and has a number of secret customers among the “wet” colonists.
Hmmm, this begs the question; will the colonists grow opium poppies (papaver somniferum)?
The drug is invaluable for everything from pain relief to end of life care and is the only (and best) plant based pain reliever that I am aware of.
And I wonder what Martian radiation would do to seed stock?
And I’ve just introduced temptation (and Satan) into your new “Garden of Eden”
P.S.
Here’s a graph of the Martian radiation experiment. Ironically, solar flares destroyed the instrument. I’m rethinking about volunteering!!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/MARIEdoserates.nasa.png
Mars needs just two laws and no government.
1) Valid contracts will be enforced by the community.
2) Harm to others will be punished by the community.
Contract for services replaces any need for taxes. Free riders are tolerated but can expect little or no services which the community as a whole will understand and enforce.
By setting up a registry and allowing any individual to make a single one sq. km. claim (for a token fee) the value of that real estate will pay their entire cost of transporting themselves and enough supplies (about half a martian year) to provide them a lifetime income.
It doesn’t require that everyone landing on mars agree to these terms, but those that do get the benefits. It doesn’t require a legal framework here on earth because martians can make their own valid legal framework themselves and enforce it themselves. This is historically how it’s always been done in virgin territory.
Suppose a single colonist prepares a hectare of land with a habitat and one to three of Zubrin’s 50m hobby farms (each farm supplies food for three) as well as connection to another colonists private utility that provides water and power. The next arriving colonist can purchase that hectare for a few percent over their travel costs and claim their own one sq. km. as well. So if it $50m per person to the surface of mars, it cost $51m to save the time and effort and material cost to have a residence ready to inhabit on their arrival. Those selling prepared hectares have a steady income for life.
Colonists could branch out to other economic activities but one sq. km. claims are all that are needed to allow growth much faster than one percent per year.
Mars is not too great a challenge and we can afford it now (once pioneers have shown the way in ISRU.) We have no idea how this will benefit mankind in the future. But we could easily imagine the difference in economics of a solar system filled with humanity verses one forever stuck on earth.
Without clinical solutions to the litany of negative health impacts of reduced gravity, human settlement of Mars is going to be long in coming. But the pursuit of the idea is of extremely great value in terms of its potential technological improvements for the terrestrial civilization and much more accessible, in terms of development participation, to the global public than the usual obsessions of the aerospace industry. For too long the question of living in space has taken a back seat to getting there.
But our expectations diverge from reality. There is often a presumption that Mars is an easier prospect for settlement rooted in the fanciful impressions of it created by our media culture. Very long-term, it may have an advantage as a subject of colonization in its broader resource spectrum and size, but in fact, there’s very little difference between the likely initial settlement approaches used for the Moon and for Mars. And in terms of the science value of initial activity returned to Earth on which initial settlement would be based (there is no commercial justification today) they are also about the same. The core habitation challenges are the same and the technology, architecture, and prospective lifestyles are likely to be quite similar with the Moon having the advantage of much easier accessibility and much lower communications latency. As long as we are stuck without that clinical solution to allow permanent settlement, Mars’ superior prospects for colonization don’t really matter and the Moon proves superior as the sandbox for development of what is going to be largely the same settlement technology.
The idea of the one-way trip has garnered a lot of gravitas in the past couple of years. It’s a fun mental exercise and there probably are scenarios where it would work. Assuming one can get there in relatively healthy shape, If you’re a middle-aged scientist whose likely remaining life span is roughly equal to the amount of time the long-term exposure to reduced gravity will take to catch up with you, you have the opportunity of spending the last half of your life doing your best work and clocking-out on your own terms. And anyone who thinks living in the equivalent of the Kansas City Subtropolis for decades with books, movies, and video games your only recreation is itself a hardship obviously didn’t grow up in the American suburbs. For a lot of people that would be a very good ‘deal’ –especially when you consider all the hassles of contemporary terrestrial life you get to off-load like money, taxes, mortgages, child care, politics, marketing, bosses, creeping cultural militarism, class exploitation, etc. It may be a little tough for some to learn to live in a ‘tribal’ situation with limited privacy, but one would most certainly have to cultivate such functional communities before leaving.
But the idea is fundamentally unrealistic in that the presumed savings of the one-way trip don’t actually exist. This is based on the notion that the cost of a mission to Mars is based primarily on the cost-per-pound to orbit and the use of an all-inclusive spacecraft compelled to be man-rated no matter what percentage of its payload is cargo. But the critical costs are not in deployment or the value of spacecraft and the cargo they carry but rather in development, which for man-rated systems remains the same whether they make a one-way or round trip. The primary expenses of space missions and launch systems is human labor on Earth before deployment. This cost is amortized over a certain series of deployments. How does a one-way trip save any of that up-front labor cost?
The key to reducing the costs of space settlement is reducing labor inherent to development and systems logistics and reducing the need for systems reliability through transport specialization and reduction of payload values. Rockets aren’t generic. Their costs are keyed to the value and criticality of payloads they are designed to carry. Launch costs today are high because rockets are designed to deliver high-tech Faberge Eggs to orbit, an individual satellite collectivizing the equivalent 20-year amortized value of a whole industrial plant. When you’re transporting the Mona Lisa, you aren’t so concerned about the cost-efficiency of the truck. But in the industrial world, a 2/3 acceptable yield is the norm because the value of materials relative to end goods is small. The materials costs of space systems and life support supplies is very small –generally much smaller than launch systems themselves. And so a means of building value at the destination instead of launching it from the start would facilitate economy in transport by allowing for a much reduced minimum reliability serving a much reduced inherent payload value. This obviously excludes the man-rated transit systems, which need to be specialized to that role, but leverages their economy by facilitating lowest-cost pre-deployment of support systems and supplies.
And it’s on that premise that the most logical strategy to settlement is based on tele/robotic pre-settlement as it facilitates deployment by low-rel transportation systems, compels a mass production infrastructure, builds value at the destination, and reduces costs of later human deployment by minimizing the scale and complexity of man-rated systems and maximizing the inherent safety of manned missions sent to pre-deployed and pre-supplied facilities.
Lots of good replies and thoughtfulness here. My initial thoughts are these: An initial colony group of twenty people would be likely be viable for a short time only. That is fewer people than an infantry platoon in the US Army, and they don’t have the responsiblity to be everything from day laborer to surgeon. I agree with the proposition that robotics would do the prepatory work before the initial group of colonist arrive. There is no telling what the state of robotic manufacturing will be in ten years from now (likely the earliest this all could happen) but I assume some sort of 3D printing and prototyping would be the primary means of getting spares, building supplies, and whatever else might be needed. Robotic mining, quarrying, refining and whatnot should also provide a good-sized pile of raw materials for that manufacturing.
I assume that the initial group would land to find the micronuke power plant up and running with an enormous pile of whatever will be used to construct the habitat-stone or concrete if an adequate supply of water is available. Some sort of shielding material would be a great idea as well; the Martian cosmic rays sound harsh. The initial group of 20 would likely build habitat, life support facilities, and assist the robotics with manufacturing more of what is needed. Without a good supply of water this whole colony is of course a non-issue. The logistics chain is simply to long to provide water in the volume needed for its myriad uses for life support, manufacturing, and low-G hot tubs.
I agree with the poster that said a way back would be a necessary capability. Even if a significant time commitment (say ten years) on-planet were required before return was permitted I don’t see a reasonable way around that. Suicide missions are for guys wearing bomb vests and Hollywood action movies. Besides, if ten years after the founding of a Martian colony we still haven’t found an acceptable way to make round trips to Mars then we’ve failed anyway. All the talk of political systems and population pressures are vastly premature. The colony would be a government subsidized boondoggle for decades at the very least before (if ever) the new Martians could support themselves much less produce economic surplus.
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