January 14, 2022

What factors would you consider in selecting applicants for your Mars colonization team?

Order Instructions

The word ‘society’ evokes images that go beyond the sheer number of people living within a defined territory. Society involves laws and ethics politics, religion, and other relationships between people.

In the module this week we reviewed the Biosphere2 project in southern Arizona where scientists lived in a representation of the spheres of Earth. In the end, Biosphere2 was beset by many problems, both social and scientific. Although much was learned about the relationship between science and society, some would call the project a failure due to social conflicts as well as design flaws

In this discussion, we’ll explore what was learned from Biosphere2 and hypothesize the ideal characteristics needed to successfully colonize another planet.

Learn more about Biosphere2 and similar endeavors

Read Colonizing Mars: Practicing Other Worlds on Earth (Links to an external site.)

If preferred, you can download the PDF (Links to an external site.) (read pp. 13-20).

Step Into the Role…

Today, societies of Earth are in a race to colonize Mars. For this discussion forum, assume you oversee a colonization project, a one-way trip to Mars in which the selected participants will have to survive in an unforgiving environment, very different from that of Earth. There have been 200,000 applicants and it is your responsibility to select an appropriate mix of individuals to form this new society on Mars.