2016/10/09
Reference #1, Pages 1-2
Dr. Dartnell set up his book with the premise of loss of civilization.
The situation of a group of people trying to build a sustainable community on Mars is worth considering, in light of the stated intention of NASA (in recent years) to mount a campaign to land people on Mars, and the recently outlined concept of Elon Musk to build a capability to transport thousands of people to Mars starting as soon as ten years from now.
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The world as we know it has ended. The crucial question is: now what?
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As I have pondered economics with Adam Smith over the past year, and the state of our existing (somewhat spotty) "civilization", it has become more and more clear to me that the challenge of transplanting some recognizable version of our Earth-based "civilization" to Mars will require more than a few thousand people.
I am beginning to wonder of 100,000 people is enough to support a level of actively practiced knowledge that exists on Earth today. The question was expressed in the remarks of a gentleman who was born in Scotland, who lives today in the United States, and who just shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry with two other researchers of nanometer sized molecular machines. This gentleman took the opportunity to warn his former countrymen of the folly of their decision to leave the European Union. The perspective he brought to his remarks was his having recruited talented researchers from all over the world, and especially from the European Union, to help with the myriad details of the research he was leading.
I think that Adam Smith would recognized this as an example of the Division of Labor carried out to a degree unimaginable in his time. The global community has achieved the ability to support people who are able to dedicate their lives the accumulation of knowledge not seen before. However, it is not just the fact of a single individual the community can support in this way, but the sheer numbers that have been marshaled to tackle complex problems on this order.
Germany of the late 1900's was wealthy enough, and populous enough, to support a small cadre of what I will call "world class" researchers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... on_in_1900According to the reference above, Germany had a population of approximately 56 million in 1900, and Austria/Hungary a population of approximately 51 million (and change).
While this is no more than a very rough estimate, and taking into account that the culture of a country is a major factor in the success of its citizens, I note that approximately 100 million people were available as a resource pool at the time Albert Einstein and his peers were growing up.
The size of a population which would be needed in the future to create conditions favorable for intellectual achievement at this level may well be smaller than 100 million, because much of the labor needed to sustain the society will (presumably) be carried out by automation.
Never-the-less, I am having difficulty imagining how a society of even as many as 100,000 people could produce and support people able to achieve at an Earthly "world class" level.
To build on Dr. Dartnell's question, what would it take to re-create in a population on Mars the conditions that would be favorable to participation in research at the level demonstrated by the recent Nobel laureates?
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