The Bare Minimum Number of Martian Settlers? 110!

[Macavity]

No, not factorial 110 (maybe). lol, But some interesting ideas:
https://www.universetoday.com/146721/the-bare-minimum-number-of-martian-settlers-110/

🤔 Perhaps linked to that (inbuilt human) Number (around 100) re.
the size of the medieval village... maximum "people you [can] know"
fairly well? (i.e. Not Facebook Friends!)? Maybe even "Big Science"
collaborations? Not sure how *anyone* could "know" N-thousand
scientists/engineers/technicians/programmers/etc. these days?!? 🤣

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by Macavity

[Drifter]

Sorry to be pessimistic, but no sensible intelligent person sees any ‘profit’ or ‘quality of life’ putting themselves on such an inhospitable piece of solar driftwood like Mars ...

These environments barely sustain a working robotic machine for 15 years.
Just walk into any desert region on Earth and see countless examples where human colonisation has failed - in an atmosphere/environment far more conducive to supporting organic/human life - Colony failure even though human support + resources were easy to ship in from barely a few miles away ... 

The novelty and ‘pleasure’ of Colonising Mars will wear off long before they grow their first sustainable vegetable.
Duped Colonialists will soon realise they signed up and won a one-way ticket to live in a ‘potentially stir-crazy Hellhole’. 
Only ‘kamikaze’ scientists with no friends/family/affection for Planet Earth - would volunteer for a Project NASA might be forced to cancel when a new President took office!

The cost to sustain a Martian Colony to survive, at such a distance from our Earth is astronomical - and a complete waste of money - because promises of huge mineral wealth from Mars are just a pipe dream that will NEVER deliver payback.

What most realists see here is just glossy speculative sci-fi videos/articles that make Colonisation look easy - PR designed to suck in gullible ‘Prospectors/Investors’ .... possibly dupe the public tax-payers to fund yet another Fool’s Gold project with no hope of a ‘return’.... Cern Mk2!?
.... it’s all very interesting ... but like the Dragon’s Den ... tax-payers should never be investing - Very little return.

The Public doesn’t mind globalists like Elon Musk/Bezos/Branson etc spending their own money - on their ‘space vanity projects’ - that will invariably never pay investors back. 

Even if the Rover vehicle had discovered Mars was made of Cocaine - with gold bars/cut diamonds stacked up ready to ship at the Mars 1 Bezos Interplanetary SpacePort ... the logistics and costs of shipping all those treasures to Earth, back into the safe hands of investors, would be so enormous ... Profit would be pretty much  = Zero £/$
[If the tax-payer found out where their ‘investment’ was landing - the rush to collect their ‘returns’ could cause chaos ... and if a cargo spaceship crashes in my back garden .... nobody but me will be shovelling the ‘snow’ off MY roof]😁

If globalists/scientists want to play at ‘Space Colonisation and Interplanetary Mining’ ... surely they should spend the next  500 years practicing and perfecting that on the Moon first??🤔 - before biting off more than they can chew trying to do it on inhospitable planets like Mars, surely 500x harder to survive on ... and hardly in the backyard.

 

Edited November 17, 2020 by Drifter
Pruning

[Ouroboros]

I pretty much agree with you @Drifter.   I’d like anyway to see a moratorium on humans going there at all until robotic probes have determined with certainty whether or not life exists on Mars.   Inevitably once humans go there they will contaminate the planet. If life were then found after human visitation, and it turns out to be similar to earth based life, there will always be a doubt over whether it was indigenous life, with independent origins, or whether humans took it with them.  Some people will argue that we may have already contaminated Mars with bacteria carried there by robotic probes. But at least there’s some chance that the hygienic laboratory conditions in which the probes were constructed and the harsh environment during the journey have minimised the risk. 

[Drifter]

As suggested in my thread “Is Mars teeming with life?” ... do you think the dark deposits around many Martian geysers are supporting the growth of primitive bacteria, Ouroborus?

Should we be too concerned about contaminating these relatively dead planets we are visiting? Seeding them with new lifeforms that might make them develop a more significant atmosphere - turn a hostile planet into something a bit more hospitable to humans? .... surely that’s not a bad idea, is it?

Let’s speculate that highly advanced extra-terrestrial civilisations could have ‘seeded’ Earth to become the Eden of today ... maybe we can return the ‘gesture’ and develop genetically modified primitive lifeforms that might survive the extremes of the current Martian climate.

 

[Ouroboros]

I think it’s an extremely bad idea from a scientific point of view to contaminate any non-terrestrial body.  One of the most significant scientific questions of our time is whether life (if discovered) formed on Mars independently to that on earth.  If we contaminate Mars (assuming it’s not already too late) we may not be able to provide a definitive answer to that question. 
 

In the long run I agree with you. Once the answer is known one way or the other we might sensibly go ahead and try and seed life or even terraform suitable planets or moons. 

Edited November 2, 2020 by Ouroboros

[Tiny Clanger]

I recommend reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Martians trilogy ( starts with Red Mars, then  Green Mars then Blue Mars) which may be sci fi, but has a good basis in fact .They  were written around 30 years ago, and our information about the Martian surface may have moved on (it's at least a decade since I read the novels) but they portray an entirely believable political struggle between the 'terraform it as far as possible' faction and the ecology minded .

[Paul M]

It's a pipe dream. But I'm certain humans will step on the surface of Mars within a couple of decades. It will serve no purpose long term. I doubt they'll stay even if they survive the initial explorations.

I always say that the only thing we ever learned from history is that we never learn from history. All the wrongs we have done here on Earth will be replicated wherever we go. It's in our DNA. Do we need to demonstrate for a second time that we are unfit caretakers and spend $Trillions in the process?