Scientists Reveal How Many People You'd Need to Colonize Mars
Scientists Reveal How Many People You'd Need to Colonize Mars

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Scientists Reveal How Many People You'd Need to Colonize Mars

Scientists Reveal How Many People You'd Need to Colonize Mars
Scientists Reveal How Many People You'd Need to Colonize Mars
"Long enough to establish a human presence" is a very fuzzy goalpost. Very limited usefulness even as a mere operational definition.
You need a minimum of 50 to avoid inbreeding issues and 500 to minimize genetic drift in a population.
It sounds like they're just looking for enough people to build a pied a terre though.
It's not about colonization, but a initial base not collapsing within 28 years. And collapse is here defined that the population doesn't go under 10, because that is the safest lover limit to run a mars colony. It doesn't include more arrivals in that time so no extra colonists. Nor does it consider things as inbreeding.