Category Archives: Mars Colony

The Expanse has more in common with Game of Thrones than viewers may think, making it the perfect replacement for fans with that Westeros itch.

Long-running TV dramas are notoriously hard to pull off. What begins as a promising pilot or first season can very easily transition into an incredibly long series that simply doesn't capture the magic it did at its inception. From Dexter to Lost,there are countless instances of this. However, the most recent (and possibly most infamous) example is Game of Thrones.

Based off a series of books by George R.R. Martin, the HBO show was beloved by both critics and audiences for its compelling characters and plot. But, as the show progressed to later seasons, the series followed the trend of so many before it, falling short of the incredible standard it had set up for itself. Climaxing in a final season that is universally hated, Game of Thrones left a sour taste in the mouths of viewers who expected it to continue its stellar storytelling into its final outings. Fortunately, a new series has emerged, picking up the mantle as the next great fantasy drama,The Expanse.

RELATED:NYCC: Amazon's The Expanse To Share A First Look At Season 5

Set hundreds of years in the future with a humanity that has achieved massive advancements in space travel, The Expanse follows several perspectives of a cold war between Earth and the newly founded Mars government, as well as rising tensions on the many mining colonies that make up what is known as the Belt. The first season follows three main characters: the leader of a ragtag crew of former transporter ship crewmates, a detective who patrols a seedy space station and a high-ranking politician in the United Nations of Earth.

Everyone's journey develops a different component of the universe the story takes place in. And much like Game of Thrones, there's lots of political drama that is entertaining beyond the unexpected backstabs and battles of wits and unfolds in ways that drastically affects others in the story. What remains extremely satisfying about the expanse is how quickly it connects the dots across its plot points and pushes its characters together. While Game of Thrones certainly accomplished this later on (with varied results), the plot points in early seasons feel much more distant than in The Expanse, where convergence happens by the end of the first season.

Excerpt from:

The Expanse Is Basically Game of Thrones in Space - but Better - CBR - Comic Book Resources

Updated 3 min 11 sec ago

Reuters

July 27, 2020 06:25

SYDNEY: Australias Victoria state on Monday reported the countrys highest daily increase in coronavirus infections, prompting the authorities to warn a six-week lockdown may last longer if people continue to go to work while feeling unwell.The second-most populous state reported 532 new cases of the virus which causes COVID-19, taking the national total to 549, the most new cases in a day since the pandemic arrived.Victoria currently has more than 4,500 active cases after weeks of triple digits daily rises.It reported six more deaths, taking the state toll to 77, almost half the total national death toll. Five of the deaths were in aged care facilities, which have been hit hardest in the state.Australia has avoided the high COVID-19 casualty rates of other countries, but a wave of community transmission in Victoria has prompted a lockdown in Melbourne, the only Australian city to make it mandatory to wear a facemask in public.If youve got a sniffle, a scratchy throat, a headache, fever, then you cant go to work, said Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews in a televised news conference.This is what is driving these numbers up, and the lockdown will not end until people stop going to work with symptoms and instead go and get tested because they have symptoms.Melbourne, home to a fifth of Australias 25 million population, is halfway though a six-week ban on movement other than for work, buying food, giving or receiving health care, or daily exercise. Andrews added that he may announce additional measures later this week.Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the high number of new cases in Victoria showed how transmission of the illness among younger people, who were considered lower risk, could spread to aged care facilities through family members.In Victoria there is still a long way to go, Morrison told reporters.We are still seeing case numbers at elevated levels and ... when you get community-based transmission, it does take some time to get that down. Victoria has had a total of 8,173 cases.Neighbouring New South Wales (NSW) state, the countrys most populous, is also grappling with several virus clusters that have sprung up at a hotel, a Thai restaurant and a club. NSW reported 17 new cases on Monday. NSW has had 3,496 cases in total, about 1,100 active.Australia has recorded a total 14,935 cases and 161 deaths and authorities on Monday warned more lives would be lost as infections continued to rise.The tragedy of COVID-19 is that we know, with the number of new infections that we have seen today, that there will be many further deaths in the days ahead, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd told reporters.More than 16.13 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 644,836 have died, according to a Reuters tally.

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TWITTER POLL: Arab world should invest in space exploration - Arab News

On a mission to become the youngest person ever in space and one of the first people on Mars, Alyssa Carson discusses her astronaut training to date.

What does it take to become an astronaut? I was fortunate enough to get some insights from one in training recently when I interviewed Alyssa Carson, also known by her Twitter handle NASA Blueberry, after she spoke at Collision From Home.

Now 18 years old, Carson has dreamed of visiting space since she was young. I got really fascinated with space and, more specifically, being an astronaut. I always thought it would be super cool and super fascinating, she said.

The idea of being able float around in space while doing science or whatever it might be really interests me. And the more I learned about space, the more interested I got in actually becoming an astronaut.

October 2016 marked a huge milestone in Carsons mission. She graduated from theAdvanced Possum Space Academy, a programme at Florida Tech for high school and undergraduate students covering atmospheric science, noctilucent cloud science, mission simulations, spaceflight and spacesuit operations, to name a few of its subjects. This made Carson the youngest person to be accepted into the programme and subsequently graduate from it, as well as certified to travel to space as an astronaut trainee.

Before that, she had taken part in countless initiatives in preparation for the day she would become ready for space. She attended Space Camp seven times and was the first person to attend all three NASA Space Camps in the world. She was selected as a Mars One ambassador, becoming one of seven people representing the mission to establish a human colony on Mars in 2030.

Its very important to talk about your dreams and tell people what youre interested in ALYSSA CARSON

With such an array of achievements, it should come as no surprise that time management has been one of her biggest challenges.

A huge challenge has really just been time management, trying to do as much as I can to pursue my dream but, at the same time, just kind of being in school and travelling as much as I do, she said. But also going to college and actually getting my degree, which is the important part.

So my life has kind of always been just a little bit of a juggle, whether thats staying in school, travelling for speaking, doing some sort of training or even just relaxing.

Achieving so much at such a young age has been a lot of hard work and keeping up, she added. I mean, especially doing as much as I have done but younger than youre supposed to, there have been a few academic challenges. Im not necessarily the most genius person in math and science, so its just been a lot of hard work and keeping up with everything you actually have to learn.

Its not every day you get to speak with a future astronaut, so I was eager to ask Carson about the things she had learned in her training so far. A lot of it, she explained, has been about pushing herself and continuing to grow.

I think a good example was when I did some water survival training, she said. So, basically, I was in a spacesuit and I had to pull myself onto a life raft.

And Ive always been, I guess, slightly lacking in upper-body strength, so this was not an easy task. Getting onto a life raft is hard enough, let alone with the extra weight of a spacesuit! And we also had this giant oxygen bottle on our leg. So it was about really pushing myself and being able to pull through.

Another challenge in her water survival training was stepping from a platform high off the ground: I feel like when I was younger, I would have really thought about it for a moment. But now I really just kind of push myself.

I was like: you know what, its gonna happen. So I just kind of did it. I looked down and completely walked off and did it probably faster than anybody else just because I was gung ho to get it over with. So Ive definitely grown in terms of being able to push myself to new levels.

Carson was surprised by her own fortitude when it came to her training, but also by the kind of skills she would need to pick up for the rigorous selection process.

As far as skills in general for becoming an astronaut, so many different skills apply, she explained. If you listen to some astronauts, theyll talk about the interview that they went through in the selection process. And sometimes theyll get asked a question like: how do you change a car tyre? Do you know how to use this type of wrench?

And some of those simple motor and fixing skills, you know, they want you to have some of those as well. So thats also pretty surprising, because its something that most people wouldnt really think of as something you need to learn to become an astronaut.

Whats next for Carson? Shes passionate about contributing to the science industry, she told me, and has chosen to major in astrobiology.

With astrobiology, I really have the opportunity to study anywhere from little bacteria to entire solar systems, she said. So the variety is really there for me to kind of pick and choose what Ill be interested in.

Her curiosity about Mars has by no means been quelled either and shes looking forward to potential missions. Im excited to possibly be able to study, like, are there any bacteria in this water that we found on Mars? And learning more about the atmosphere, the soil, the resources trying to learn as much as we can that will be of benefit.

As someone who has already spent so much of her life learning about space, Carson also had plenty of advice to share with others. When I asked her what shed love other girls and women to know about becoming an astronaut, she said: My advice would be really just start with thinking about yourself, thinking about what youre interested in, because there are so many different paths to becoming an astronaut.

And thats really the cool part about it, that you can study almost anything and then eventually apply and have a chance of getting selected. So really, just start by figuring out what career path youre interested in.

You know, I ended up choosing to go down more of a scientist path. You can also be a pilot. You can also study medicine. But there are other opportunities.

The bare minimum required for astronauts, she added, is getting your masters degree and some work experience. But see if you can find some way to build on that.

Lets say youre interested in robotics and maybe building your own robot. Have that on your rsum. Its kind of the same as any job application: you want to meet the bare minimum, but you want to have something that helps you stick out.

But while youre doing all these add-ons, its very important to talk about your dreams and tell people what youre interested in because you never really know where the opportunities are going to come from.

Someone could know someone who knows someone who can help you out. So, really, just continue to speak about your dreams and really go for it and follow them.

Read more from the original source:

Alyssa Carson: The teenager on a mission to Mars - Siliconrepublic.com

TOKYO -- Final preparations for the launch from Japan of the United Arab Emirates' first Mars mission were underway Monday, but there was a chance of a delay because of bad weather, a Japanese rocket provider said.

The liftoff of the UAE's Mars orbiter named Amal, or Hope, on a Japanese H-IIA rocket is scheduled for early Wednesday from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan, in what would be the Arab world's first interplanetary mission.

A final decision will be made Tuesday before the roll out of the rocket, said Keiji Suzuki, launch site director for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

A seasonal rain front was expected to cause intermittent lightning and rain over the next few days, he said.

"But this thunder is not expected to be severe or lasting, and our assessment is that there will be a chance for a launch," Suzuki told an online briefing Monday from Tanegashima. "We will make a careful decision based on data."

Heavy rain has continued for more than a week in large areas of Japan, triggering mudslides and floods and killing more than 70 people, most of them on the southern main island of Kyushu.

Hope is set to reach Mars in February 2021, the year the UAE celebrates 50 years since its formation. A successful Hope mission would be a major step for the oil-dependent economy seeking a future in space.

Hope carries three instruments to study the upper atmosphere and monitor climate change and is scheduled to circle the red planet for at least two years.

Emirates Mars Mission Project Director Omran Sharaf, who joined Monday's briefing from Dubai, said the mission is not just a repeat of what other countries have done. It will provide a complete view of the Martian atmosphere during different seasons for the first time, he said.

Two other Mars missions are planned in coming days by the U.S. and China. Japan has its own Martian moon mission planned in 2024.

Read more:

Bad weather may delay 1st UAE Mars mission on Japan rocket - CTV News

TORONTO -- While this summer may be a more subdued one for Earthlings, itll be a different story elsewhere in our solar system.

The population of Mars is on the verge of tripling as three new Mars missions from three different countries are set to launch within the next month, with two new rovers coming to the planet.

Curiosity is about to get some company.

Although Mars has been an object of fascination for years for humans millions of kilometres away on Earth, it is still a planet of vast mystery, and has been only marginally explored.

The Curiosity Rover, a NASA project, has called Mars home since 2012. Over the last few months, scientists have been commanding Curiosity from the comfort of their sofas at home instead of their offices at NASA.

The rover has been alone on the planet ever since Opportunity which was sent to Mars with the Spirit rover in 2003 stopped responding in 2018 following a massive dust storm that swept over the rovers location on Mars. Opportunitys mission was officially deemed complete in 2019 after months of NASA attempting to reconnect and revive the rover.

On July 30, NASA is sending Curiosity a new friend: their fifth Mars rover since the start of the program, called Perseverance.

Perseverances main mission is to look for signs of past life on Mars by studying the geology and taking rock and soil samples to be analyzed on Earth later. Previous explorations including work done by Opportunity have shown evidence that there was once water on Mars surface.

As water is one of the main building blocks of life as we know it, further evidence that Mars didnt always used to be a dry, rocky wasteland could open up our understanding of how life could exist outside of our planet.

NASA has been sending rockets and landing craft to Mars for decades. But Americas martian monopoly is being challenged by China and the United Arab Emirates this summer, with both aiming to join the outer space elite.

Like the Americans, China is landing a rover on Mars this summer, called Tianwen-1, according to a press release from the China National Space Administration.

Although not many details of the mission have been released, the rover is set to launch sometime in July, and is Chinas first Mars exploration mission.

The United Arab Emirates are not landing a rover on the planet, but are instead launching a mission to orbit Mars and observe from space.

The Hope Probe will circle the planet for two years studying weather and atmosphere, and will be the first of the three missions to launch this summer: a countdown on the UAE Space Agency website shows that the mission is launching next week, on July 15.

The mission is aiming to understand the climate dynamics of Mars, the structure of Mars atmosphere and why hydrogen and oxygen are escaping from the upper atmosphere into space.

So why are so many missions to Mars launching in the same month?

Because there is a unique window of opportunity right now. This is when Earth and Mars are closest together something that only happens every two years.

Although these three missions are being operated by different countries, and have different goals, they all serve as important stepping stones towards the ultimate quest: achieving a human expedition to Mars by the end of the century.

Read this article:

Here are the three missions to Mars that are happening this month - CTV News

To wit, Kowal put a lot of not only herself, but the other women in her life, into the Lady Astronauts. One of the things that I had realized in writing The Calculating Stars, she told me during Den of Geek and TorCons Books & Brunch panel (see panel highlights in video player), was that part of what was making it work was that I was putting in my own experiences of sexism, but shifting the context. She gifted The Calculating Stars protagonist Elma York with elements of her Southern upbringing and particular insecurities, but also saved some for Nicole.

I am relentlessly, if you will, ambitious, Kowal said of Nicoles defining trait, yet also acknowledged the timeless challenge presented to cis women: Having to constantly walk that line between being acceptably pretty but not too pretty; being forceful but not too forceful, because if you are, then youre a bitch. If I am as direct as one of my male colleagues, it reads totally different. She also drew inspiration from female role models in childhood: My mom was an arts administrator until she retired, so watching her do that dance was really, really informative. She did all of these fundraising things, and I would see her doing those; so that was really informative for Nicole.

Its not unlike how Ilana C. Myer approached the fantasy world for her Harp and Ring Sequence: Sure, she had the option to eradicate sexism from this secondary world that was already so different from our own in terms of magic and underworld creatures. But instead, she gave her female poets and ladies-in-waiting obstacles instantly recognizable to contemporary readers: barred from the same education as their male peers, dismissed for their supposed delicacy or valued only for their sexuality, actively sabotaged and rarely given the opportunity to find mentors or even peers like them.

Sometimes we may be trying to envision a better world, Myer wrote on Den of Geek. And sometimes we are searching for a way to bear the realities of this one.

Despite existing in an alternate past, Nicole nonetheless bears the realities of a woman of her time, much of which parallels our 1960s: A product of Swiss finishing school and some other, less orthodox schools of training, she can flatter her way through a room of dignitaries and sweet-talk her way into an investigation. Yet all that people see is a pretty, middle-aged woman in an evening gown and red lipstick, to be trotted out at appropriate times on the arm of her governor husbanda bauble in his presidential campaign, rather than his equal in strategy and power. While she holds the honor of being among the first class of Lady Astronauts, she is also dismissed by her superiors as old hat and not up to the demands of the next phase of the IACs program.

See more here:

Space Outside, Sexism Inside: Mary Robinette Kowals The Relentless Moon - Den of Geek

Minimum Occupancy

A French computer scientist developed a complex series of equations to predict the smallest number of Mars settlers needed to establish a successful, self-sustainable community on the Red Planet.

The number he arrived at just 110 intrepid explorers, who could all fit in a pair of SpaceX Starships, if they can actually carry 100 passengers each seems shockingly low considering the countless challenges of establishing a permanent presence on a new planet for the first time. But Universe Today reports that the researcher, Jean-Marc Salotti, of Bordeaux Institut National Polytechnique, focused on one key metric: how cooperatively the settlers would work toward their shared survival.

The math in Salottis research, which was published this month in the journal Scientific Reports, gets a bit complex. But the end result is a simple graph showing that once the settlement has 110 people, they can successfully work together on tasks that benefit the group at large like building facilities that harvest drinking water instead of fending for themselves.

If each settler was completely isolated and no sharing was possible, Salotti writes in the research, each individual would have to perform all activities and the total time requirement would be obtained by a multiplication by the number of individuals.

Of course, there are many challenges that need to be solved before we can settle Mars. But Salotti argues in his research that establishing models like these could help space agencies create data-driven plans for the endeavor.

Our method allows simple comparisons, opening the debate for the best strategy for survival and the best place to succeed, he wrote.

READ MORE: The Bare Minimum Number of Martian Settlers? 110 [Universe Today]

More on settling Mars: Reality Check: It Would Take Thousands of Years To Colonize Mars

Read the original:

According to New Equations, a Mars Colony Would Need This Many People - Futurism

So you want to colonize Mars, huh? Well Mars is a long ways away, and in order for a colony to function that far from Earthly support, things have to be thought out very carefully. Including how many people are needed to make it work.

A new study pegs the minimum number of settlers at 110.

The new study is titled "Minimum Number of Settlers for Survival on Another Planet." The author is Jean-Marc Salotti, a Professor at Bordeaux Institut National Polytechnique. His paper is published inScientific Reports.

Obviously, there's a lot to think about when it comes to having any kind of sustained presence on another planet. How will people organize themselves? What equipment will they bring? How will they extract in-situ resources? What kind of skills are needed?

These questions have been addressed before, of course, and in this report Salotti says that: "The use ofin situresourcesand different social organizations have been proposed, but there is still a poor understanding of the problem's variables."

This study mostly focuses on one question: how many people will it take? Salotti writes: "I show here that a mathematical model can be used to determine the minimum number of settlers and the way of life for survival on another planet, using Mars as the example.

A lot of thought has gone into colonizing Mars. SpaceX says their proposedinterplanetary spacecraftcould carry 100 people to Mars. Elon Musk has talked about building a fleet of them, so that there's a constant flow of resources to Mars. But is that realistic?

Illustration of SpaceX's Interplanetary Transit System. (SpaceX)

"However," Salotti writes, "this is an optimistic estimate of the capability, the feasibility of the reusability remains uncertain and the qualification of the vehicle for landing on Mars and relaunch from Mars could be very difficult and take several decades."

A similar dynamic hovers over other parts of the Mars colony discussion. Many researchers have thought aboutin-situ resource utilization, for instance.

Gases could be extracted from the atmosphere, and minerals from the soil. In-situ resource extraction could provide organic compounds, iron, and even glass.

Even if we grant the feasibility of these ideas, "the complexity of the implementation is poorly understood and the number of items that would remain to be sent each year would still represent a tremendous challenge," writes Salotti.

The problem of a colony is bewilderingly complex.

Illustration of Mars colony. (NASA)

Salotti worked on a mathematical model that he thinks could serve as a good starting point for thinking about a self-sustaining colony.

Central to his idea is what he calls the sharing factor, "which allows some reduction of time requirements per individual if, for example, the activity concerns the construction of an object that can be shared by several individuals."

The starting point of the settlement is critical to the rest of the work. What resources will be in place? If there's a large amount of resources and technological tools in the beginning, that will affect the rest of the calculations. But in some ways, the starting point might not be as critical, for two factors.

The complexity, expense, and feasibility of interplanetary travel is one. And the lifetime of the equipment that settlers start with is another. Every piece of equipment has a lifetime.

"For the sake of simplicity," Salotti writes, "it is assumed here that the initial amount of resources and tools sent from Earth will be rather limited and as a consequence will not have much impact on survival." In essence, building a model that relies on easy re-supply from Earth wouldn't be that helpful.

So, granting that the initial state of the colony is viable, Salotti moves on to two variables which will have a huge effect on survival:

What Salotti is working up to here is an equation. Things like resource availability and production capacity are variables in that equation.

But Salotti's idea always circles back to the concept of the "sharing factor."

Imagine an isolated individual in a colonizing situation on Mars. They would have to perform all task themselves. They would need to build and/or maintain their own systems to acquire drinking water, oxygen, and to generate power. There wouldn't be enough time in each day. The burden on a single person would be enormous.

But in a larger colony, their technology for things like getting drinking water, oxygen, and for generating power is used by more people. That creates more demand, but it also spreads out the burden.

The effort it takes to build and maintain all those systems is now spread out among more people. That, in essence, is Salotti's sharing factor.

It gets better.

As the number of people increases, there's room for more specialization. Imagine a colony of only 10 people. How many of them would need to be able to repair and maintain the drinking water system? Or the oxygen system?

Those systems cannot be allowed to fail, so there would be pressure for a large percent of those people to be able to operate and understand those systems.

Artist's impression of SpaceX's proposed Mars Base Alpha. (SpaceX)

Salotti writes: "If each settler was completely isolated and no sharing was possible, each individual would have to perform all activities and the total time requirement would be obtained by a multiplication by the number of individuals."

But if there are one hundred people, how many people need to understand those systems? Not everyone. So that allows others to specialize in something else.

"A greater number of individuals makes it possible to be more efficient through specialization and to implement other industries allowing the use of more efficient tools."

Salotti argues that this sharing factor can be calculated, and estimated with different mathematical functions. Math-interested people can check that part of the paper out for themselves.

(Salotti, Scientific Reports, 2020)

Above: Figure from the study showing that annual working time capacity is greater than the annual working time requirement if the initial number of individuals is greater than 110.

There are some constraints and starting points for the sharing factor, of course. "The sharing factor depends on the needs, the processes, the resources and environmental conditions, which may be different depending on the planet," Salotti writes.

This leads us to Salotti's description of "survival domains." Salotti outlines five domains that need to be considered in these calculations:

These are mostly self-explanatory, but human factors refers to things like raising and education children, and some amount of cultural activities like sports, games, perhaps music.

The five survival domains that need to be considered. (Salotti, Scientific Reports, 2020)

Now Salotti turns to Mars, the primary planet when it comes to this kind of futuristic figuring, and the planet that Salotti addresses in his paper.

Salotti doesn't start from scratch when it comes to Mars. There's already been a lot of scientific thinking into building a sustained human presence on that planet.

"The specific utilization of Martian resources for life support, agriculture and industrial production has been studied in different workshops and published in reports and books," Salotti explains.

Obviously, this is a complex problem, and some assumptions have to be made in order to think about it. For any solution to have merit, those assumptions have to be honest. No place for science fiction here.

The basic assumption Salottti uses is that for whatever reason, the flow of supplies from Earth has been interrupted, and the colony must sustain itself.

He borrows a scenario from a contest organized by theMars Society, where participants were asked to define a realistic scenario for setting Mars.

Working time requirement for one (left) and 110 individuals (right). (Salotti, Scientific Reports, 2020)

Basically, Salotti's equation comes down to time. How much time is required for survival vs. how much time is available. For Salotti, the effective number of people required to balance the time equation is 110 on Mars.

"It is based on the comparison between the required working time to fulfil all the needs for survival and the working time capacity of the individuals," he writes in the conclusion.

Naturally work of this nature makes some assumptions, which are spelled out in the paper.

"This is obviously a rough estimate with numerous assumptions and uncertainties," he writes. But that doesn't diminish its usefulness.

If there's ever going to be a human colony on Mars, at some point in the future, then we need to develop working models to guide our thinking and our planning. We have a lot of sci-fi talk, and flowery announcements from people with large Twitter followings, but that's not real work.

"To our knowledge, it is nevertheless the first quantitative assessment of the minimum number of individuals for survival based on engineering constraints," Salotti says.

"Our method allows simple comparisons, opening the debate for the best strategy for survival and the best place to succeed," he concludes.

Let the debate begin.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

The rest is here:

This Is How Many People You'd Need to Colonize Mars, According to Science - ScienceAlert

TORONTO -- A new study has determined that only 110 people are needed to help build a functioning and self-sustaining human colony on Mars.

The study, conducted by Prof. Jean-Marc Salotti of France's Bordeaux Institute National Polytechnique, found that this number of humans could be enough to create the tools and supplies needed to establish a civilization on the red planet.

"For survival on Mars, some assumptions are made for the organization of the settlers and engineering issue. The minimum number of settlers has been calculated and the result is 110 individuals," Salotti said in the study.

The study, published June 16 in the scientific journal Nature, found that having 110 people on Mars is the ideal number of people to use resources on the planet without depleting supplies.

Salotti came up with this figure using a mathematical model to determine "the feasibility of survival on another planet." According to the study, the model was based on the relation between the time requirements for implementing enterprises necessary for long-term survival and the available time of the settlers.

The study assumed that the number of resources the settlers could bring from Earth would be limited and survival on Mars would primarily rely on "available local resources," such as gas, liquid, or a mineral, in addition to human "production capacity."

"The minimum number of individuals for survival depends on their capacity to produce essential objects and consumables using local resources," Salotti said. "The initial state of the settlement is very important because large quantities of resources and modern tools may help a lot in developing industries and achieving a viable state."

Salotti explained that the settlers would have to live in an oxygen-filled dome where they would build their own agricultural industry to sustain life on the planet.

In order for the settlers to survive, the study said their capacity to work must be more than the amount of time required to build tools. Their survival would also depend on organization within the group, and their capacity to share, which would help settlers become more efficient in dividing up work, according to Salotti.

However, he cautioned that the small community would still come with risks.

The study reported that the civilization could collapse due to infertility, inbreeding, sudden deaths, accident, random events, fighting between individuals, lack of resources and loss of efficiency.

"This is especially true at the beginning of the settlement, as any accident could dramatically reduce the production capacity. In order to mitigate the risks, it will therefore be important to start with large amounts of resources and spare parts," Salotti said.

The study also accounted for possible situations where support from Earth may suddenly be cut off due to reasons such as war, or if the settlement declared independence and tried to survive as its own regime.

While the calculation is hypothetical, Salotti said the study marks the "first quantitative assessment of the minimum number of individuals for survival based on engineering constraints." He added that his work suggests that human habitation of a new planet may be easier than previously thought.

The study's findings coincide with SpaceX's current plans regarding human missions into space.

Earlier this month SpaceX became the first private company to send people into orbit as one of the first steps in U.S. tech billionaire Elon Musks goal to start a civilization on Mars.

More here:

How many humans are needed to start a colony on Mars? - CTV News

So you want to colonize Mars, huh? Well Mars is a long ways away, and in order for a colony to function that far from Earthly support, things have to be thought out very carefully. Including how many people are needed to make it work.

A new study pegs the minimum number of settlers at 110.

The new study is titled Minimum Number of Settlers for Survival on Another Planet. The author is Jean-Marc Salotti, a Professor at Bordeaux Institut National Polytechnique. His paper is published in Nature: Scientific Reports.

Obviously, theres a lot to think about when it comes to having any kind of sustained presence on another planet. How will people organize themselves? What equipment will they bring? How will they extract in-situ resources? What kind of skills are needed?

These questions have been addressed before, of course, and in this report Salotti says that The use ofin situresources and different social organizations have been proposed, but there is still a poor understanding of the problems variables.

This study mostly focuses on one question: how many people will it take? Salotti writes: I show here that a mathematical model can be used to determine the minimum number of settlers and the way of life for survival on another planet, using Mars as the example.

A lot of thought has gone into colonizing Mars. SpaceX says their proposed interplanetary spacecraft could carry 100 people to Mars. Musk has talked about building a fleet of them, so that theres a constant flow of resources to Mars. But is that realistic? However, Salotti writes, this is an optimistic estimate of the capability, the feasibility of the reusability remains uncertain and the qualification of the vehicle for landing on Mars and relaunch from Mars could be very difficult and take several decades.

A similar dynamic hovers over other parts of the Mars colony discussion. Many researchers have thought about in-situ resource utilization, for instance. Gases could be extracted from the atmosphere, and minerals from the soil. In-situ resource extraction could provide organic compounds, iron, and even glass. Even if we grant the feasibility of these ideas, the complexity of the implementation is poorly understood and the number of items that would remain to be sent each year would still represent a tremendous challenge, writes Salotti.

The problem of a colony is bewilderingly complex.

Salotti worked on a mathematical model that he thinks could serve as a good starting point for thinking about a self-sustaining colony. Central to his idea is what he calls the sharing factor, which allows some reduction of time requirements per individual if, for example, the activity concerns the construction of an object that can be shared by several individuals.

The starting point of the settlement is critical to the rest of the work. What resources will be in place? If theres a large amount of resources and technological tools in the beginning, that will affect the rest of the calculations. But in some ways, the starting point might not be as critical, for two factors.

The complexity, expense, and feasibility of interplanetary travel is one. And the lifetime of the equipment that settlers start with is another. Every piece of equipment has a lifetime.

For the sake of simplicity, Salotti writes, it is assumed here that the initial amount of resources and tools sent from Earth will be rather limited and as a consequence will not have much impact on survival. In essence, building a model that relies on easy re-supply from Earth wouldnt be that helpful.

So, granting that the initial state of the colony is viable, Salotti moves on to two variables which will have a huge effect on survival:

What Salotti is working up to here is an equation. Things like resource availability and production capacity are variables in that equation.

But Salottis idea always circles back to the concept of the sharing factor.

Imagine an isolated individual in a colonizing situation on Mars. They would have to perform all task themselves. They would need to build and or maintain their own systems to acquire drinking water, oxygen, and to generate power. There wouldnt be enough time in each day. The burden on a single person would be enormous.

But in a larger colony, their technology for things like getting drinking water, oxygen, and for generating power is used by more people. That creates more demand, but it also spreads out the burden. The effort it takes to build and maintain all those systems is now spread out among more people. That, in essence, is Salottis sharing factor.

It gets better.

As the number of people increases, theres room for more specialization. Imagine a colony of only 10 people. How many of them would need to be able to repair and maintain the drinking water system? Or the oxygen system? Those systems cannot be allowed to fail, so there would be pressure for a large percent of those people to be able to operate and understand those systems.

Salotti writes: If each settler was completely isolated and no sharing was possible, each individual would have to perform all activities and the total time requirement would be obtained by a multiplication by the number of individuals.

But if there are one hundred people, how many people need to understand those systems? Not everyone. So that allows others to specialize in something else.

a greater number of individuals makes it possible to be more efficient through specialization and to implement other industries allowing the use of more efficient tools.

Salotti argues that this sharing factor can be calculated, and estimated with different mathematical functions. Math-interested people can check that part of the paper out for themselves.

There are some constraints and starting points for the sharing factor, of course. The sharing factor depends on the needs, the processes, the resources and environmental conditions, which may be different depending on the planet, Salotti writes.

This leads us to Salottis description of survival domains. Salotti outlines five domains that need to be considered in these calculations:

These are mostly self-explanatory, but human factors refers to things like raising and education children, and some amount of cultural activities like sports, games, perhaps music.

Now Salotti turns to Mars, the primary planet when it comes to this kind of futuristic figuring, and the planet that Salotti addresses in his paper.

Salotti doesnt start from scratch when it comes to Mars. Theres already been a lot of scientific thinking into building a sustained human presence on that planet. The specific utilization of Martian resources for life support, agriculture and industrial production has been studied in different workshops and published in reports and books, Salotti explains.

Obviously, this is a complex problem, and some assumptions have to be made in order to think about it. For any solution to have merit, those assumptions have to be honest. No place for science fiction here.

The basic assumption Salottti uses is that for whatever reason, the flow of supplies from Earth has been interrupted, and the colony must sustain itself. He borrows a scenario from a contest organized by the Mars Society, where participants were asked to define a realistic scenario for setting Mars.

Basically, Salottis equation comes down to time. How much time is required for survival vs. how much time is available. For Salotti, the effective number of people required to balance the time equation is 110 on Mars. It is based on the comparison between the required working time to fulfil all the needs for survival and the working time capacity of the individuals, he writes in the conclusion.

Naturally work of this nature makes some assumptions, which are spelled out in the paper. This is obviously a rough estimate with numerous assumptions and uncertainties, he writes. But that doesnt diminish its usefulness.

If theres ever going to be a human colony on Mars, at some point in the future, then we need to develop working models to guide our thinking and our planning. We have a lot of sci-fi talk, and flowery announcements from people with large Twitter followings, but thats not real work. To our knowledge, it is nevertheless the first quantitative assessment of the minimum number of individuals for survival based on engineering constraints, Salotti says.

Our method allows simple comparisons, opening the debate for the best strategy for survival and the best place to succeed, he concludes.

Let the debate begin.

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The Bare Minimum Number of Martian Settlers? 110 - Universe Today