{"id":104,"date":"2020-10-12T04:19:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T04:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=104"},"modified":"2020-10-12T17:44:35","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T17:44:35","slug":"mars7","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars7","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – Chapters 7 to 9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – The greatest thought experiment of all time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Marshall Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 7<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How Will Housing Work for the Mars Colony?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where are the one million people in Elon Musk’s new Mars colony going to live? What will their housing look like out of the thousands of options possible [ref<\/a>]? It is a hugely important question for the colony because housing is the “most expensive” thing that most normal people do on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Earth today, housing has become a major problem. We have already seen that, on Earth, about a billion people are forced to live in slums:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtu.be\/Q67gldZ1P_8\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This article from McKinsey [ref<\/a>] reports:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Decent, affordable housing is fundamental to the health and well-being of people and to the smooth functioning of economies. Yet around the world, in developing and advanced economies alike, cities are struggling to meet that need. If current trends in urbanization and income growth persist, by 2025 the number of urban households that live in substandard housing\u2014or are so financially stretched by housing costs that they forego other essentials, such as healthcare\u2014could grow to 440 million, from 330 million. This could mean that the global affordable housing gap would affect one in three urban dwellers, about 1.6 billion people.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the United States, the cost of housing has risen substantially over the last few decades. In 1950, an average house cost about 2X the average household income. Today it is more like 4X, and in urban areas it can be much worse. Rents are rising too, to the point where living in a city as a “normal person” is becoming difficult. As this article [ref<\/a>] points out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Now, America faces a rather dire housing predicament: buying and renting are both unaffordable. Or, as WSJ put it last month, “households are stuck between homes they can\u2019t qualify for and rents they can\u2019t afford.”<\/p>

We\u2019ve seen evidence of this across the country with perhaps the most telling statistic coming courtesy of The National Low Income Housing Coalition who recently noted that in no state can a minimum wage worker afford a one bedroom apartment.<\/p>

In this context, Bloomberg is out with a list of 13 cities where single-family rents have risen by double-digits in just the last 12 months. Note that in Iowa, rents have risen more than 20% over the past year alone.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The entire housing equation is growing extremely uncomfortable across planet Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Mars, the expectation is that every Mars colonists will have roomy, safe, high-quality housing. Housing, perhaps more than anything else, will define the “quality of life” for the Mars colonists. We have to solve the housing problem if the Mars colony is going to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of thought experiments, several questions that immediately come to mind with housing include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n