A million? In 20 years?
My very first thought is: how is he going to feed that many people? It will be cost prohibitive to send food to mars from earth on a regular basis, so he’ll have to grow it.
Where will he grow the food? Not enough atmosphere to till fields, and food for 1 million people will need a lot of land. In the ag programs I work on, a family of five can barely feed itself on 1/4 to 1/2 hectare land with efficient intercropping. Conservatively that means they’ll need at least 100,000 hectares of land, in a pressurized environment, sufficiently shielded from cosmic rays in order to grow sufficient plant food. Not including animal protein.
But wait; Martian soil is not suited to grow earth crops. (Or any earth plant.) So he’ll have to, somehow, habilitate 100,000 hectares of soil to bring it to a sufficient state to begin growing plants for human consumption.
And then, there’s the bees. 80% of the plants we eat require pollination. How will he get all those bees to Mars safely? Can you imagine sharing a spaceship full of bees for two years?! O_o
And don’t get me started on the water needs. Even if we assume a ludicrously low 5 liters of water per day per person, that’s 5 million liters of water that needs to be sourced, filtered and treated, and stored to enable minimum daily consumption needs. Not including the water the crops will need (though I am assuming a system of efficient drip irrigation, so much less water than used in typical surface agriculture).
Not to mention 1,000,000 beds. Plates, tableware (even 1 million pairs of chopsticks will weigh a literal ton), and other living amenities. How will he got the millions of tons of materials to Mars….?
20 years doesn’t sound…. Realistic….
