In order to get back into the swing of things, I'll be writing about something a bit on the far-reaching conceptual side tonight. So, what's trending in our future? Well, you can get a brand-spanking new human colony, fresh from Terra, delivered to any suitable exo-planet, and it can be done with as little as 40,000 humans! Yup, you heard that right folks, just 40,000 humans!
Well now that we got the sales pitch out of the way, that's really what's being talked about right now. Colonization of alien planets. From the moon to Mars and beyond, it's been the hot topic of discussion in the astronomer community lately. A recent article that we'll be discussing in this post can be found by clicking here from Space.com
A recent set of data which was presented by Cameron Smith, an anthropologist at the Portland State University in Oregon, hypothesizes that it would take 40,000 people to successfully survive a 150 year voyage through the Cosmos to a new planet for colonization, or as Smith puts it; "over [a] five-generation voyage". Of these 40,000 "23,000 would be men and women of reproductive age" Smith includes in his study. Of course, with such a large amount of people, one would think you would need a large ship to contain all of these people. Smith acknowledges this, but he "stressed that it makes sense".
There is also a suggested option of "sending frozen sperm and eggs on the voyage with a limited number of human "tenders"". Although Smith didn't seriously consider this option in his new paper, this could be a viable option to sort of do a voyage at a lower risk than the proposed 40,000. Of course, this would most likely alter human psyches in ways that are irreversible and cause unknown changes to these voyagers that are more likely than not unwanted.
In all of this, I'm siding more with the lower risk option of a smaller crew. If something were to go catastrophically wrong, it would be a lesser of a loss. Once we become more confident and stable with our newer starship technology, then we should move forward with a larger initial colony crew. You know, the song "Rocket Man" by Elton John comes to mind with the line "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids". Well, maybe it wasn't back then, but we've come a long way in understanding what's around us. I think we're ready to take that step. Sorry Mr. John, but we'll have to go against your ideas. Hope you come to visit us at least once though!
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