admin A team of social and computer scientists from George Mason University discovered, through simulation, that 22 people is the minimum number needed to start a human colony on Mars. The team has published a paper describing their simulation on the preprint server arXiv.
As people around the world consider the possibility of one day sending humans to Mars and then establishing colonies, scientists are looking for ways to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving these goals. this target. One factor to consider is how many people could support a colony on Mars and what types of people would be needed the team said.
To find a possible answer, the team created a simulation model of a colony on Mars, specifically focusing on the number of people needed to create a viable colony as well as the characteristics point most likely to contribute to the success of that colony.To achieve this goal, they used data from previous efforts, such as questionnaires filled out by teams on the International Space Station or by people living in tight spaces in the Arctic for many months. They also tried to take into account known personality traits such as stress resilience, social skills, and neuroticism levels.
The research team ran five simulations, each of which modeled 28 Earth years of colony life, while changing factors between runs, such as the number of people in a Mars colony. They found that 22 was the bare minimum number of people. They also found that people with agreeable personalities were, unsurprisingly, more likely not only to survive such a mission, but to thrive, allowing the colony to persist. On the other hand, they found that people with neurotic personalities were more likely to fail their mission and to die earlier than others, putting the success of the mission as a whole at risk.
