{"id":140,"date":"2020-10-12T06:57:14","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T06:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=140"},"modified":"2020-10-12T17:55:29","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T17:55:29","slug":"mars13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars13","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – Chapter 13"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

by Marshall Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chapter 13<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How will we make chips on Mars? Pharmaceuticals? Medical devices? “Stuff”? Will Mars be an actual backup plan for humanity?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going to Mars is going to be expensive. And Elon Musk’s plan will be incredibly expensive, because he is talking about having a million people living on Mars. Why might humanity spend a trillion dollars or more to send a million human beings to live on Mars? Yes, it would be adventurous, and cool, and a great challenge. But a trillion dollars is a lot of money, and spending a trillion dollars because it “sounds cool” may be hard to justify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real reason for going to Mars, in the minds of many, is to create a backup plan for humanity. If a huge comet or asteroid were to slam into Earth and erase all life on the planet [ref<\/a>], or if a nuclear holocaust were to destroy all human beings [ref<\/a>], a colony on Mars could keep the human species alive. An independent Mars colony is a way to prevent human extinction in case of some catastrophe on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this is the idea, then it sets a high bar for the Mars colony: The colony on Mars needs to be completely self-contained and self-sufficient. The colony needs to have everything necessary to survive even if Earth were to disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sort of independence is an interesting challenge. First, Mars is not a very hospitable place for human beings, so a lot of technology will be required from the start just to live on Mars. Second, there are many, many, many things on Earth that we would need to export to Mars and recreate on Mars if the colony is to be completely self-sufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How will the Mars Colony make its own Semiconductor chips?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s take an incredibly simple example: Will the Mars colonists have smart phones and laptop computers on Mars? The answer is obvious \u2013 of course they will. It would be silly to create a new colony on Mars, but then to take the colony back to the stone age by leaving smart phones and laptops out of the picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where will these laptops and smart phones on Mars come from? One way to get them is to manufacture laptops and smart phones on Earth and ship them to Mars. Presumably we need a million smart phones on Mars, and they will need to be replaced every two years or so. Same thing with laptops. Will we manufacture these devices on Earth and ship a million of them every two years (plus backups to cover breakage, failures, etc.)? This seems unlikely \u2013 it will be extremely expensive to ship things to Mars and it will take six months. And if we do it this way, we have violated our backup plan. The Mars colony would be dependent on Earth for technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That only leaves one alternative: we need to manufacture laptops and smart phones on Mars. But this is not a trivial problem. Have you ever looked inside a modern laptop? Try watching these two videos for an introduction to the complexity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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