Mars Colonists Will Take Cues From The Wild West

Image Credits: JAXA, Time-Life, NASA

Taking pages from the history of the American frontier, a pair of scientists has proposed sending a small group of humans to Mars to live there for the rest of their lives to establish a permanent colony. Call it Adam & Eve II.

My Discovery News colleague Irene Klotz reported on this idea by Dirk Schulze-Makuch and Paul Davies who published their concept in the Journal of Cosmology.This is not a new idea. It was proposed nearly 60 years ago by rocket pioneer Werner Von Braun. He laid out the architecture for an ambitions one-way Mars mission using an entire fleet of spaceships. Another space engineer, Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin, has been the most published advocate of Mars colonization.

But once a Mars habitat is established what happens next? Some parallels can be drawn to the colonization of the New World.

A small settlement of pioneers will set up farms under huge inflatable domes to grow their own food and become somewhat self-sufficient. But they will have to keep an umbilical cord to Earth for needed technology, medical supplies, and many other items that cannot be manufactured on Mars.

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