Minimum occupation
A French computer scientist developed a complex series of equations to predict the fewest number of Mars colonists necessary to establish a successful and self-sustaining community on the Red Planet.
The number it reached, just 110 intrepid explorers, who could fit into a pair of SpaceX spacecraft, if they can actually carry 100 passengers each, seems surprisingly low considering the countless challenges of establishing a permanent presence on a new planet by first time. hour. But Universe today He reports that researcher Jean-Marc Salotti of the Bordeaux National Polytechnic Institute focused on a key metric: how colonists would cooperate to achieve their shared survival.
Workers’ Commune
Mathematics in Salotti’s research, which was published this month in the journal Scientific reports, it gets a little complex. But the bottom line is a simple graph showing that once the settlement has 110 people, they can successfully work together on tasks that benefit the group as a whole, such as building facilities that harvest clean water, rather than fending for themselves.
“If each settler were completely isolated and could not be shared,” writes Salotti in the research, “each individual would have to do all the activities and the total time requirement would be obtained by multiplying by the number of individuals.”
Small step
Of course, there are many challenges that must be resolved before we can settle Mars. But Salotti argues in his research that setting models like these could help space agencies create data-driven plans for the effort.
“Our method allows for simple comparisons, opening the debate on the best strategy for survival and the best place to succeed,” he wrote.
READ MORE: The minimum number of Martian settlers? 110[[[[Universe today]
More about the Mars solution: Reality check: it would take thousands of years to colonize Mars
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