{"id":241,"date":"2020-10-13T19:03:14","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=241"},"modified":"2020-10-13T19:04:14","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T19:04:14","slug":"mars22","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars22","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – Chapter 22"},"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 22<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How much land will the Mars colony need?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s imagine that we really are going to build a one-million-person colony on Mars, just like Elon Musk has proposed<\/a>. As described in Chapter 13<\/a> and Chapter 20<\/a>, this colony will need to be independent and self-contained. Even if planet Earth were to be destroyed, the Mars colony needs to be able to survive on its own. Given this context, in this chapter the question we will explore is this: How much land does this colony need on Mars? And the corollary question then follows: If we are going to build a complete-duplicate experimental city on Earth<\/a> to make sure that such a city is possible on Mars, how big will the experimental city on Earth need to be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First we should ask: How many people will live in the Mars colony? Elon Musk has indicated that one million people is the number, but is this number correct? The colony on Mars will need to be able to produce\/manufacture all of the goods we take for granted on Earth today: microprocessors and other chips, laptops, tablets, smart phones, consoles, TVs, appliances, vehicles (and everything associated with vehicles like body panels, tires, windshields, seats, wiring harnesses, motors, batteries, electronics, etc.), farm equipment, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, medical imaging, etc. And then all of the super mundane stuff like toilet paper, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, tape, diapers, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is one million people enough people to pull all of this off? After reading Chapter 13<\/a>, it may not be. Duplicating all of the technology on Earth is a big undertaking. Maybe the Mars colony actually needs two million people in order to have all of the knowledge, experience and hands needed to replicate modern civilization. Keep in mind that we need enough people (engineers, scientists, researchers, technicians, machinists, machine operators, factory workers, etc.), along with the necessary redundancy of knowledge, along with the educational load of training up all of their replacements… This is going to be a very large group of people if we plan to duplicate all of the manufacturing capabilities on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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