A Practical Strategy for Colonizing Mars
By Tory Bruno
Technological advances in space launch have moved space exploration forward and made huge advancements in the understanding of our planet and the solar system. Most recently, United Launch Alliance (ULA) sent NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars to fly the first helicopter on another planet and to look for signs of ancient life, independent of our own precious blue marble. Our twentieth mission to the Red Planet, this is the most exciting and potentially civilization changing mission so far.
As NASA works to reach its recently declared goal of landing astronauts on Mars, there is increasing interest and speculation over whether humans might someday colonize the Red Planet. Particularly, whether we can establish a civilization on Mars as a safeguard and cosmic insurance policy for the human species, protecting us during periods of natural disaster, uncertainty, or other catastrophes.
Certain notable people have suggested that we can, and should, establish a colony of one million people on Mars by 2050 in order to achieve this end. Let’s explore why this may not be the most realistic approach, and how we can actually achieve a permanent Martian colony.
The Math of a Million People on Mars by 2050
Establishing any successful colony on Mars will be an expensive, time-consuming, and difficult task, to put it lightly. This becomes even more daunting when working against an arbitrary and unrealistic target of creating a colony of one million humans on the Red Planet less than three decades from today. Although we have placed over twenty robotic missions in Mars orbit and on the Martian surface, not a single human being has yet to place their foot in the red dust of this planet. In terms of human exploration, we would be starting from scratch with limited knowledge of the Martian environment or how to keep people alive there on a permanent basis.
Just getting to Mars is no easy feat: one can only go there every two years when Earth is just catching up to Mars in its orbit. During that planetary alignment, chemical rockets would have only about a month of time to launch the seven to nine month journey to the Red Planet. This provides us with just 14 launch opportunities between now and 2050.
Let’s do the math. Launching one million people to Mars by 2050 would equate to 72,000 people transported to the planet at each of the 14 launchable years, during a window that is only one month long. We would be moving a modestly sized city’s worth of people off planet in a month, each and every two years. Wow.
Given that theoretical heavy launch vehicles, intended for Mars, are currently targeted to carry only 100 people to the Red Planet, and that they are planned to begin this task years from now, a massive acceleration would be required to hit the one million target by 2050.
For the sake of argument, let us presume that we can speed up the launch vehicle’s development, and increase its capacity to hold a minimum of 1,000 people per launch, a far cry from Apollo’s 3, Artemis’ 6, and the current plan of 100 people.
This would mean that we’ll need at least 72 launches of people in each of the 14 launch years. At 30 days of window for each of these years, we must launch these 1,000 people two to three times each day. This is an extremely high volume. The logistics alone of this city sized set of astronauts is more than daunting. It would encompass finding volunteers willing to undertake the danger and hardship, screening them, training them to live on a hostile world, getting them staged at a launch site, housing and feeding them, and then getting thousands of them onto the rockets each day. This alone, is a challenge rivaling the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II.
In addition to getting the people to Mars, we must also construct a habitable colony, another massively difficult task given that we have yet to launch even a single crewed mission to the planet! Before the 72,000 people depart for Mars during each window, we must also send many tons of food, water, and construction materials to support them. The one thing we undeniably cannot do is create more launch opportunities or practically extend the 30-day launch window in this timeframe. Therefore, these logistical support launches mean that we must either greatly increase the passenger count above 1,000 per rocket, or push the launch tempo to something approaching hourly, starting immediately, on a rocket, from a launch facility, neither of which yet exist.
This is altogether impractical, both suggesting absurd risks with human life, while simultaneously defying both physics and simple math. So, let me go out on a limb here and make a prediction: There will not be a colony of one million people living on Mars in 2050…
A Practical Plan to Colonize Mars
Instead of focusing on arbitrary deadlines to colonize a planet we have yet to directly explore, we should instead develop a practical timeline for a new, trillion-dollar-per-year cislunar econosphere that could be realistically and successfully developed within the same timeframe. This would help pave the way toward an achievable and permanent human presence on Mars by providing the massive new wealth required to create a Mars colony and establishing much of the technical know-how to pull it off.
As I’ve explained, establishing a colony on Mars is no easy feat. It will require billions and billions of dollars in funding for space launch vehicles, logistical operations, and the development of technology and infrastructure systems on Mars that can sustain a civilization. This will not happen without substantial economic wherewithal.
It’s also important to understand that, as ludicrously hard as it might be, transportation will not be the limiting factor. The development of necessary technologies and infrastructure systems that will generate the required resources from Mars itself, which are needed to sustain a human colony there, will govern when and how many people can inhabit the Red Planet at any moment in the future.
A successful human civilization requires access to self-sustaining, in situ resources. It would be impractical, expensive, and generally pointless to support a large colony of humans on Mars if they primarily relied on resources regularly sent from Earth to keep them alive. If all we aimed to accomplish is the creation of a real estate relief valve, then we should put that on the Moon where it would be much cheaper, easier, and safer.
Realistically, it would only make sense to establish a large human colony on Mars for two reasons: to increase our species’ longevity and to develop a wider economic opportunity set. The latter is essential for the successful execution of the former.
To begin a practical sequence of Martian colonization, we must undertake trailblazing research and innovation on how to permanently live off-world. This effort would require a large team of NASA-sponsored researchers, as well as commercial prospecting and infrastructure personnel to begin developing the technology required to support a permanent, self-sufficient, and financially independent colony.
Researchers would then be deployed to Mars to understand the details of its environment, test new technologies, and execute a plan for development of the eventual Martian Colony. When ready, a small group of protocolonists would split off and attempt a semi-separate colonial effort. Over time, and with success, this group would be grown to approximately 100 people in order to understand the needs of scalability. This experimental colony would be unlikely to have the capabilities to be entirely self-sufficient on Mars. They would require regular shipments of food, water, energy, maintenance materials and tools, as well as the logistics necessary to live and construct expanded infrastructure on the Red Planet. These resources would need to be provided from Earth on two-year cycles.
As new team members arrive on Mars and others return to Earth, the transition of the protocolony to true self-sufficiency would begin. The mature exploitation of sufficient ISRU to feed and sustain themselves will be the true measure of success. The permanent research facility and its logistics support system would continue to act as a safety net for this nascent colony, lest we risk a Marian version of the Roanoke Colony…
For the alpha colony to support and add additional members, it must become practically self-sustaining. This milestone is met once the colony can forego two or more cycles of resource support from Earth so that its in-situ resources reliably support the colony. Each colonial population expansion would most likely also rely on some one-off resource and support shipments from Earth to help it add the initial infrastructure for growth.
Even as the colony continues to grow, however, it will likely continue rely on certain resources sourced from Earth indefinitely. For example; complex pharmaceuticals, specialized chemical processing, exotic alloys, and manufactured products will ensure the colony is well equipped to establish a healthy and productive society on Mars. Eventually, this would create a solar system version of Earth’s economic globalization, with regular trade occurring between the Red Planet’s colony and Earth. It need not become entirely self-sufficient, no more than any single nation on Earth exists (or ever has existed) completely without trade.
Given the time requirements to achieve each of these steps, a century will pass before a Martian colony could truly become humanity’s lifeboat.
The discussion surrounding a human future in space doesn’t have to be one or the other; Mars or the Moon. Instead, it should focus on both cislunar economic development and human research and habitation of Mars. Now is the time to invest in research and technologies that will help us better understand Mars’ ecosystem and resources, so that one day, after several crewed and exploratory missions to the planet, we can chart a feasible and effective roadmap towards colonization.
Or, we just start dropping a city’s worth of people every two years on a desolate, airless red planet, a 140 million miles from Earth, and see what happens…
