We could feed one million people living in colonies on Mars

With bugs, algae and other resource-efficient foods we could feed one million people on Mars within a century of arriving there. Scientists even invented a martian diet.

Cannon and colleagues modeled the food needs of a human population on Mars that grows to one million over about a hundred Earth years through a combination of immigration and reproduction. Though the settlement would need to import a lot of food at the start, it could transition to an entirely Martian-grown diet in about a century with the right food choices, they found.

The major limiting factor is space — or rather, the ability to create spaces suitable for growing food. On Earth, the amount of available arable land restricts our ability to grow food, whether plants, animals or something else. On Mars, we’d have to create these spaces — enclosed, pressurized and heated structures. For efficiency’s sake, a Martian society would need to choose food sources that are high in nutrients and calories relative to the space they need to grow.

Traditionally farmed animal products and certain plants need a lot of resources and may be impractical on Mars, Cannon says. But that doesn’t necessarily mean sacrificing variety in Martian diets. His team’s models include three main categories of food sources: plant-based foods, edible insects and “cellular agriculture” — protein-rich foods like algae and lab-grown meats, dairy and eggs that we can grow from cells.

This includes eating plants like beans, tomato and potato, as well as GMO products modified to include more nutrients and grow more sustainably. A number of companies today make insect-based products — whether that’s whole crickets or powdered insects to use as flour — that aspiring Martians can sample as well.

“.... it’s perfectly doable.”

Never said it wasn’t doable, for what it’s worth. But the removing of 1 million people isn’t going to make any real difference here.

There are 131.4 million births per year against the 55.3 million people who die each year. Which means that there is an excess of 76.1M people born faster than die. That rate is around 209K a day which means the million will be made up in less than a week. Hardly seems to be worth the effort as they will be back into the same problem and more by the following week they have now, and worse because the outpost on Mars requires tweaking we won’t be able to do while starving to death or killing each other trying not to. Gives being a cockroach a future, doesn’t it?

If they had considered this 50 years ago, and already had farms on Mars, the moon, or any other planet that could be sustainable, it might have worked. But that canoe is downstream without the paddle. And they tried to load too many in it and it has sunk.

rwood

In my comment, I was joking in reference to the free classic short story behind the link.

The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51233

If you read it, you’ll see why I didn’t simply spoil the story by explaining the joke. It’s worth the read and says a few things about society and politics today. Look for the parts about Venus.

Some folks believe that they would want to go to Mars. I lived at a high elevation in a semi-arid place for quite a while and am well educated in small power plants (solar and other), alternative heating systems and health maintenance. Going to Mars for real for colonization and efforts to permanently establish residence would be a terrible mistake except for people who like cancer and other health problems.

As for the human population on earth, it will be naturally corrected. There’s no use in mankind to trying to intervene. The political struggles to move equatorial populations to the north are hilarious and antithetical.

As for the hoax about anthropomorphic climate change, that is not only unethical. It’s a tactical error. The crooked punks in academia publish hysteria to continue their racket for grants.

The extended solar minimum will not kill us all. Some of us have ancestors who were in the northeastern U.S. long before it was the U.S. They did fine with farming.

The magnetic field shift will not kill us all, either. The more rapid movement and weak spots have been appearing for quite a few years with the consequent methane leaks, weak protection against rays and other effects.

We’re already in it. Anyone in a panic about the natural changes in progress should build bedrooms with facilities under three feet of soil and/or concrete and clam down. The structures will also make good fallout shelters when needed (due to the hippie anti-defense foolishness in popular fiction and politics for so long, making the U.S.A. look like it wants to be attacked by expansionist enemy nations).

Or look at it this way. The natural climate changes that we can’t do anything substantive about will decrease the global population. So would a sizable epidemic...or asteroid strike...or nuclear exchange followed by the inevitable mother of all conventional wars. Problem solved.

“..or nuclear exchange followed by the inevitable mother of all conventional wars.”

Most likely this one. And this can go two ways: either they use nuclear which will destroy most everything to eat or growing place anyway, or they have that conventional war using weapons that do about the same thing only on a slower pace like NBC. (And they will play with each other’s toys)

This is not going to be a matter of whoever has the most toys at the end wins. All the toys will be broken. And we will dispose of ourselves. And before anyone reading this says we have the constraint not to, there is a list of countries now called rogue. Think they got that status from being smart?

rwood

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