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Colonization

Establishing permanent, self-sustaining settlements on Earth will be very challenging and, for the foreseeable future, does not seem to be feasible.

Energy Needs

An offworld habitat will have high energy needs, as it will probably require intensive agriculture and energy-intensive recycling of air, water, and material. Furthermore, electrical options such as synthetic fuels must substitute for the lack of fossil fuels. Estimate of energy needs are as follows.

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Power figures are given in electrical (not primary) energy observed or modeled for various locations. Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Food

Self-sufficiency in food is necessary for any off-world settlement to be sustainable. The tools for achieving this will be similar to those for high-intensity agriculture on Earth to conserve land, and requiring few sources, such as hydroponics 7. A bioengineered potato is a likely candidate for such a food 8.

Conservation

As larger numbers of people and quantity of industry move off-world, contemporary principles of planetary protection will not be viable, and new principles of conservation will be needed. One approach, at the beginning of the settlement process on Mars or on other planetary bodies, is to establish planetary parks, or areas that are to kept free of settlement and industrialization, in a process analogous to zoning 9.

Governance

Analogous to the current Antarctic Treaty, which establishes an Antarctic secretariat, a Mars secretariat to adjudicate disputes between separate Martian settlements will reduce the risk of conflict between them 9. Colonization parties could remain under the jurisdiction of terrestrial host nations and claim exclusive economic rights over plots of land while remaining consistent with the non-appropriation principle of the Outer Space Treaty 10.

References

  1. BP. "Statistical Review of World Energy 2021". 2021. ↩

  2. Heidmann, R. "A Mars Colony - A Tentative Technical Analysis". Planete Mars. August 2015. ↩

  3. Koster, J. N. "Solar Power Satellite Demonstration System for Lunar and Planetary Exploration". 50th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting Including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition. November 2012. ↩

  4. NASA. "About the Space Station Solar Arrays". August 2017. ↩

  5. Power Engineering International. "Powering a Moon village". March 2021. ↩

  6. Soilleux, R. J., Gunn, S. D. "Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLSS) for Large Orbital Habitats: Ventilation for Heat and Water Transport and Management". National Space Society Space Settlement Journal 3. November 2017. ↩

  7. Nabi, S., Fayaz, N., Rather, S. A., Mir, A. A. "Hydroponics: Environmentally sustainable practice in the agricultural system". The Pharma Innovation Journal; SP-11(7): 207-212. 2022. ↩

  8. Liu, Y., Xie, G., Yang, Q., Ren, M. "Biotechnological development of plants for space agriculture". Nature Communications 12: 5998. October 2021. ↩

  9. Safronov, D. "A Legal Framework for Mars Colonization". 2019. ↩ ↩2

  10. Bruhns, S., Haqq-Misra, J. "A pragmatic approach to sovereignty on Mars". Space Policy 38, pp. 57-63. November 2016. ↩