What’s the Bare Minimum Number of People for a Mars Habitat?

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• Worx@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I saw a documentary about this - you actually only need one person as long as they like eating potatoes

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  • BestTestInTheWest@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Are you talking about pirate Mark Watney?

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    • tmjaea@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Space pirate!

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  • Absolutemehperson@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    PO-TA-TOES

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  • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    An old volleyball will do in a pinch. But not for too long

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    • Sygheil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Wilson?

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  • Dozzi92@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Literally my calling.

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• revs@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  “In the end, they determined that a minimum colony population of 22 agents was ideal to maintain a feasible Mars mining colony over the long-term.”

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  • RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Until one of them is The Thing.

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    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I always confused “The Thing” with the character from Fantastic Four. And never understood why people were afraid of a rock person who shouts “It’s clobbering time!”

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  • lath@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You can get it down to 21 if you call Black Jack.

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• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Presumably some of them would have to be female, making a Mars colony settled entirely by muskies unviable.

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  • AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Unviable, but maybe still a net benefit for the rest of us

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• Minarble@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Does that include the mad eco terrorist/saviour stow away who kick starts terra forming Mars then founds his own colony on the South Pole?

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  • cyd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yes, but that’s four different people. One eco-terrorist, one stowaway, one terraforming fanatic, and one founder of a weird sex cult.

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    • Minarble@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Only if your not good at multitasking…

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    • Noodle07@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Only one sex cult?

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  • Muffi@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No Mars colony without a Coyote

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• aeternum@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  We can't even look after earth. Why are we trying to colonise another planet??

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  • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Because we’re going for mass effect instead of star trek

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    • DakkaDok@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Only if we find a convenient Mass Relay. Otherwise it’s The Expanse for us.

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    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Hell yeah space sex with sexy alien sexy sex sex

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  • muntedcrocodile@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I hate to be a hater but this is quite possibly the most depressing outlook on life there is. Its like saying “we cant even be proper hunter gathers. Why are me trying this farming thing”. Is it not in human nature to climb one mountain just to look to the next?

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  • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    🤑

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  • GiddyGap@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    We can’t even look after earth.

    You seem to have answered your own question.

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    • Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There is nothing short of the moon falling to the Earth that can make Mars a more viable place for humans than the Earth.

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  • supercriticalcheese@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Well that’s a reason.

    At the moment with current technology, colonising other planets in the solar system is unsustainable without a lot of effort from earth so I doubt anything will come out of it in the near term.

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• NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You want a colony consisting only of fanatics? Then 22 may be the number. It’s going to be 22 very different types, and every one of them has to decide every day that this is going to last long…

  If you want a colony consisting of normal people that lasts for long, then you need thousands. Humans need a lot diversity before they can be normal and stay healthy.

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  • AEsheron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I recall a similar study years ago. They concluded 32 was minimal viable, assuming a strict breeding regiment over several generations, with 8 men and 24 women. They also concluded about 500 would be the smallest particular size, given people aren’t robots and losing even a couple people before leaving the breeding pool would be very bad. Interesting we’ve got it down to even fewer now, theoretically.

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    • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Antarctica like outpost that would be able to cycle people in and out, and not establishing a full on colony.

      Thank you for pointing out this detail of possibly returning!

      We might be able to travel to Mars in a few years. But it will take many more years before anybody can travel back from there.

      Mars has a gravity similar to earth. In order to leave the planet we need to launch rockets from there, about the same size as we launch from earth. And therefore we need to build lots of stuff there and operate it properly.

      The first ‘colonists’ will have to go with the expectation of never returning.

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  • ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Considering humanity was knocked down to about 1200 people about 800,000 years ago and we survived without any technology to speak of, let alone genetic testing that would help determine maximum diversity, I’d say you might not have the right of it.

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    • ahornsirup@artemis.camp ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That assumes that everyone will be willing to have children with just about anyone, regardless of their personal opinion of them, and regardless of whether or not they even want children to begin with. You can't selectively breed humans without massive human rights violations.

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    • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      many things were very different then.

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  • wahming@monyet.cc ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Read the article. It’s not about building a local population on Mars that will populate the planet, it’s about the bare minimum to operate an outpost with regular supply drops from earth and replacement personnel in case of fatalities.

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• Sygheil@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  They need Ice Cube incase there is a ghost on mars

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• Chickenstalker@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  No colonising please. Leave that nonsense to the Age of Sail. By all means, have a science outpost but no permanent and growing settlements, no terraforming, no farming, no mining. We have our own planet and other worlds are not our “manifest destiny to conquer”. We must be the Watchers, not the Contangion. Humanity should go to the stars to explore but not to destroy it in our image. Create any permanent settlements on Mars and wars and misery will soon follow.

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  • Nelsonat0r@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You can’t stop it. Not only because of the resources but also as a way of continuing our existence. It’s just a matter of time.

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  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Your ideas are honorable, but imperialists are ruling the world.

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  • calavera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Watcher of what? It’s a dead planet

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    • PerCarita@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Humans could be about to ruin whatever was supposed to survive on Mars in a couple million of years. We’ve disrupted our own planet, and are about to destroy another one. And honestly, we’re not all that great as a species.

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• HollandJim@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m happy just putting Musk there.

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  • lando55@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Musk comes from Uranus though

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