{"id":222,"date":"2020-10-13T18:28:17","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=222"},"modified":"2020-10-13T18:28:17","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:28:17","slug":"mars20","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marshallbrain.com\/mars20","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Elon Musk’s Million-Person Mars Colony – Chapter 20"},"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\u00a0Marshall Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting the process of building experimental Mars colonies \u2013 Mars Colony Simulation 1000A<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Chapter 16 we looked at the idea of building experimental Mars cities on Earth to test out different principles that we would actually use in a real Mars colony. The goal of these experimental cities is simple: We need to prove that a million-person Mars colony can work, before we ship a million people to Mars at gigantic expense. We should concretely demonstrate on Earth that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, we should have an enclosed, self-sufficient, sustainable, one-million-person model city that is working nicely on Earth \u2013 everyone in this experimental city is happy, prosperous, fulfilled, etc. \u2013 before we have any business shipping a million people off to Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is going to take quite a bit of research and experimentation to get the culture and economy right in a colony located on Mars. We can’t simply drop off the one million new inhabitants of Mars with a hand shake and a hearty, “Have a great life!” We must have a detailed plan for how life will work in this colony on a day-to-day basis, so that everyone in the colony benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The obvious side-effect of such research and experimentation is easy to understand. If we can create a self-sufficient, experimental, Mars-analog city on Earth that contains one million people living fantastic lives, then we can create thousands of these cities on Earth. We can move billions of poor and destitute people on Earth out of appalling slums, hovels, ghettos, refugee camps<\/a>, etc., and we can move them into modern, vibrant, luxurious, prosperous cities that they have built themselves. We can eliminate poverty on planet Earth once and for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously the first experimental cities that we build to start this research and experimentation process will not have one million people living in them. After proving things out in much smaller experiments, we will build up to an experimental city of one million people. And here we come to the purpose of this chapter: where do we start? What is the smallest experimental city we can build that would be meaningful, and what can we learn from it? It would also be great if the people living in this first test city can benefit from the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Understanding the goal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n First let’s understand the goal. As described throughout this book and particularly in Chapter 13<\/a>, the one-million-person Mars colony that Elon Musk proposes<\/a> needs to be an independent, self-sustaining, stand-alone instantiation of human civilization located on the surface of Mars. There are two reasons for this, one pragmatic and one based on long-term survival of the human species:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given these two realities for the real Mars colony, we will need to replicate a one-million-person city like this on Earth first. We must prove that it is possible on Earth, and that it will work in a long-term way, before we assume we can do it on Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scaling the big vision way down for the first experimental city on Earth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the big vision is “a completely self-sustaining and independent one-million-person experimental city on Earth, which proves that such a city would be possible on Mars”, then what is the smallest experimental city that we could build on Earth in order to get the experimentation process started? And what might this first experimental city set out to prove? And what can we actually do here in the real world \u2013 that is, what can we actually fund and build and operate near term?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s imagine that the first experimental city on Earth will have a population of 1,000 people. The kinds of things that we want to prove out include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n We will run the experiment for two years, and we will record significant amounts of data from both the colony as a whole and the individual colonists to judge the outcome of this first experimental colony. At a high level, we want to know if this experimental colony is “working” (people are generally happy with the colony’s configuration) or “not working” (people generally despise the system) after two years. And we can also be far more granular in data collection and conclusions. There is a huge amount that we can learn from a 1,000-person colony like the one proposed here. See the last section of this chapter for further details on experimental outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An important consideration here involves what we will and will not try to simulate in the experimental colony. The choices we make will impact the initial and overall cost of the experiment. Here are several examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the basic idea of the experiment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We will plan to have 1,000 people living in this first experimental colony. The people will be chosen from an applicant pool with a general trend toward millenials (i.e. ages 18 to 37 [ref<\/a>]) who demonstrate the ability during the interview and selection process to get along well with other people. Some of these millenials will be generalists, while some will be chosen for specific skills. Some of the specific skills that would be useful to have might include: software developers, IT specialists, software\/hardware administrators, Web designers, EMTs, paramedics, nurses, doctors, carpenters, construction workers, electricians, plumbers, musicians, journalists, film school graduates, actors\/actresses, writers, comedians, entrepreneurs, barbers, hair salonists, masseuses, engineers, project planners, business administrators, and so on. In other words, a wide mix of people with a variety of skills that might be useful to have during a 2-year experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The people chosen for this experimental city will understand that they are simulating a part of a Mars colony over a two-year time frame. Therefore, the implication is that the 1,000 people will be “locked in” to the experimental city, like they would be “locked in” on the surface of Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The people chosen for the experiment will sign a social contract<\/a> for the experiment and will receive extensive training and socialization together (for example, four weeks) at the beginning of the experiment, so that they understand how the experimental city works and what is expected of them. See Chapter 11<\/a> for details on the social contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The people living in the experimental city will all have equal standing, and their day-to-day tasks within the colony will be determined by a task-allocation software system (See Chapters 4<\/a> through 8 for a description). There will also be an open source operating manual for the colony that provides instructions, procedures and training for all of the tasks being performed (See Chapter 17<\/a>), as well as the legal system (See Chapter 11<\/a>). Governance will be provided by software and\/or human\/software hybrids(See Chapter 15<\/a>). A big part of this first experimental city will be the debugging and refinement of these software systems and the operating manual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There will be no cars in this experimental colony. Bicycles are likely to be the most advanced vehicles because of the small size of the colony, along with a small number of small trucks for moving bulk and heavy objects. (See Chapter 14<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n There will not be a direct connection to the Internet in this experimental city, in order to simulate the time delay that comes from the distance between Mars and Earth. There will be no direct phone, Skype or Facetime calls for the colonists to the rest of the world (because these forms of communication will be impossible on Mars). Everything coming from “the Internet” (including text messages, any web pages requested, videos, etc.) will arrive after a one-hour delay. Colonists in this experimental city will be able to create their own private copies of typical Earth internet services like Facebook, YouTube, eBay, etc. for use within the colony. Arriving colonists will be able to bring in digital copies of anything they like at the beginning of the experiment: things like movies, music, e-books, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People will be able to bring a small number\/amount of personal items. For example musical instruments, photography and videography equipment, games, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you look at the crew of the International Space Station, their low-G environment requires consistent exercise to maintain bone strength and overall health. NASA programs in two hours per day of exercise for each ISS astronaut [ref<\/a>]. Mars gravity is lower than Earth gravity, so we can assume that colonists on Mars will also have specific exercise requirements. To simulate the exercise requirement in this experimental colony, a minimum of 60 minutes of exercise (in some form) will be required each day for each colonist. At the end of the 2-year experiment, colonists should be in the best shape of their lives. Some colonists may wish to do regular weigh-ins to monitor body weight and prevent obesity and\/or lose weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The colonists will be responsible for all housing (and other buildings) construction and maintenance, all food preparation and service, some food production, some product production as makes sense within the scale of a 1,000-person colony, communication and Web infrastructure, and so on. Everything else will be purchased and brought in from the outside, with very close tracking of every item flowing into or out of the city. The idea will be to know exactly what the consumption patterns and consumption levels are for every item used by the colony. This will help to understand the manufacturing and support needs of larger experimental colonies in later experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are the housing options for this experiment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Let’s assume, for this first experiment, that we are going to avoid anything radical in terms of housing. For example, we are not going to tunnel into the Earth and build an underground habitat for 1,000 people in this phase, nor will we be 3-D printing a super-futuristic carbon fiber city, or anything like that. Underground housing might be an interesting option for later experiments, especially in a desert environment, but we will stay more traditional for now. If this is the case, then one of the biggest concerns is cost. The total cost of this experiment hinges on the cost of the housing to a great degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One possibility is to house 1,000 people in a single high-density building, or a small number of these buildings. From the top, the building(s) might be shaped like an L, or a plus sign (+), or an asterisk (*), with individual rooms lining each “arm” and core services in the center hub. Here is a typical L configuration: This is actually the dorm building I lived in at Rennesslaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY when I was in college. This is the floor plan for the second floor, and it represents an extremely inexpensive housing option. When I went to RPI, the area marked “Lounge” was a single central restroom for the floor \u2013 the restrooms seen on each leg in this diagram are a more modern modification (the two restrooms shown were normal rooms when I lived in this building). You can see that the majority of these rooms are “doubles” with 188 square feet for a pair of people. Rooms 213 and 215 are “singles”, with 114 square feet for a single person. It is easy to imagine all of the double rooms in this floor plan being converted to pairs of single rooms instead of double rooms to give everyone in the colony a private room. It is easy to imagine several elevators in the center. It is easy to imagine the single rooms being smaller, say 70 square feet (measuring 7×10 feet), as is the case at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica (see Chapter 7<\/a> for details), or slightly larger (e.g 140 square feet measuring 14×10 feet) per single room. It is easy to imagine these buildings with slightly longer arms, in a plus (+) configuration with 125 people per floor and a pair of four-story buildings housing all 1,000 colonists for the experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One advantage seen here is the cost and floor space efficiency that arises from the lack of any kitchen facilities, as well as the use of communal restrooms. See the next section for details on this efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This would likely be the least expensive option for housing (see\u00a0Chapter 7<\/a>\u00a0for a discussion), but also the least flexible. The buildings could be built in place, perhaps one arm at a time, or using a modular approach like that seen in this video or similar, using either steel or wood for the modules:<\/p>\n\n\n\nChapter 20<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Floor plan for Crockett Hall at RPI [ref<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n