Richard Branson 'Determined To Start a Population On Mars'

RocketAcademy writes "British billionaire Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company is backing the development of SpaceShip Two, has told CBS News he is 'determined to start a population on Mars.' He said, 'I think over the next 20 years, we will take literally hundreds of thousands of people to space and that will give us the financial resources to do even bigger things. That will give us the resources then to put satellites into space at a fraction of the price, which can be incredibly useful for thousands of different reasons.' Branson isn't the only billionaire interested in the Red Planet. Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), wants to put humans on Mars in the next 12 to 15 years."

Comments

Re:Must he be the father?

[sexconker]

I'd be a little nervous about the teratogenic potential of the radiation you'd run into on the way; but (all joking aside) a plan like 'colonize mars' is really starting to get into the territory where somewhat... unconventional choices in order to save space/life support/etc. might start to be come eminently sensible.

Barring truly impressive recycling/life support systems, for instance, you could ship a hell of a lot of sperm specimens in cryo for the same payload cost that a single man and supplies to last the trip would occupy, with the additional advantage of far more genetic diversity than any single father could provide. Sooner or later, because of the finite shelf life of cryopreserved sperm cells, you'd need to re introduce males into your population; but it would seem somewhat inefficient to have any for the first generation, possibly even the first several generations...

Except you wouldn't get any work done without men. Especially not any work that involves manual labor or operating machinery, such as building a colony.

Furthermore, if your goal is to repopulate (why else are you sending sperm?) then you must already have a dome or whatever with sufficient infrastructure to support the increased population. Might as well send people with those supplies to continue development. The trip would cost mote, but those people are ready to work the instant they arrive. Sperm will put a woman out of colony building work for several months at least, and will in the best case scenario yield a child which is a net loss on the output of the colony as a whole, as well as the output per capita.

You don't breed on an unterraformed planet until you can do it, and sustain it, locally.