A new study conducted simulations of colonies to determine the ideal number of Martian inhabitants needed to survive a settlement on Mars, and also found that certain personality types should likely stay away from such a mission.
If humans decide to establish a permanent settlement on another planet, we will face many unknowns. New research, published on preprint server arXiv and yet to be peer-reviewed, attempts to limit some of these unknowns by running multiple 28-year simulations to determine what size a colony should be for the best chance of survival.
There have been previous studies trying to answer this question. In 2020, the number of people required to perform all the tasks necessary for the colonists to survive without exceeding their working capacity was determined to be 110. Inspired by this article, the new team made slightly different assumptions about life on the Red Planet. These assumptions included that the colony was already built, that food, air and water could be produced locally, and that energy could also be produced on the planet.
One of the biggest differences was that he modeled that the colony would receive supplies from Earth on a regular basis, assuming it would be more cost-effective to resend material than to send humans to expand the colony’s size.
Agent simulations basically assign attributes to agents (characters) (you can think of the stage where you create your characters in a game like The Sims) and then simulate the colony’s workdays and interactions with other teammates (again, you can think of The Sims, but the usual thing players apply to characters) there will be a version without psychological pressure).
The team writes in the paper that “Each agent is given skills relevant to their civilian and military professional expertise, consistent with NASA’s Human Factors and Behavioral Performance Element research,” and that this NASA research has “capabilities that can be generalized to conditions and crew roles, and a 30-month expedition to Mars.” He continues by explaining that he analyzes the skills that all crew members will need during his trip.
Also, the team tried to take personality into account in the agent simulation and gave them some different personality types. Among these types; Compatible with low competitiveness and aggression; Socials who are outgoing and need social interaction; Reactors with a competitive interpersonal orientation and fixated on tight routines; and Neurotics who were extremely competitive and aggressive, unable to cope with boredom and routine.
Each agent had a health bar that could kill them. The replenishment of new Martians with their own personalities would occur periodically to fill the voids made up of the deceased. The simulations were run for 28 years and there were between 10 and 170 people starting colonies. As a result of the study, they found that the lowest number needed to maintain a colony was 22. This number was much lower than the previous study, which assumed there would be no regular resupply missions.
But what they did not expect was the mortality rate among neurotics.
“The primary phenomenon observed is in Martian population decline,” the team wrote, continuing: “While members of the settlement are equally likely to be affected by lack of settlement resources, habitat accidents, or shipping disasters, Martians with ‘neurotic’ psychology are much more likely to be affected by other psychologies. high rate of death. The settlement population stabilizes when their population reaches a low enough level.”
The team notes that neurotic personalities suffer throughout their lives in the colony and that the colony recovers when there are fewer people with this personality type: “Martians with neurotic psychology and high coping capacity benefit the least from interaction with other Martians and are most punished if their coping capacity is low. Our results show that this effect is the driver of depopulation on Mars and can lead to stable settlement when minimized or eliminated.”
Of course, real human interactions aren’t as simple as these simulations, which simplify things by tending to find trends. Real-life simulations are also made, by trapping residents in fake Martian habitats and simulating all the problems that may come with life on the planet.
The work is located on the preprint server arXiv.
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