{"id":215,"date":"2020-10-13T18:14:50","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=215"},"modified":"2020-10-13T18:15:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:15:18","slug":"mars19","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars19","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – Chapter 19"},"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 19<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How will children work on Mars? Who gets to have children? What is the colony’s stance toward children?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The million-person Mars colony proposed by Elon Musk represents a blank sheet of paper, and it is therefore fertile ground for thought experiments. The Mars colony allows us to consider completely new ways of organizing a society, an economy, a government, and our way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One area where this ground is most fertile is in the area of children. The reason for this fertility around children is because human beings have been having children in the same way for tens of thousands of years. And human beings have babies pretty much the same way all mammals<\/a> have been having babies for tens of millions of years. Which goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. A man and a woman have sex.<\/li>
  2. About 5% of the time in the case of humans [ref<\/a>], sex results in a viable pregnancy (assuming no contraceptives).<\/li>
  3. The pregnancy results in a new baby \u2013 a new human life.<\/li>
  4. Parents deal with the child once it arrives as best they can.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    It’s that simple. At least in the United States, any fertile woman:<\/p>\n\n\n\n