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vogelbek
Guest
I've been thinking about the best (most practical and reliable) method of ensuring a sufficiently large genetic sample of humans survives on an extra-terran colony. When the time comes to colonize Mars (or any other location), it seems logical to me that bringing a large genetic stock is beneficial in the long term, but bringing dozens or hundreds of people would make for an exceedingly difficult short term. How do you transport, house and feed 50 people within a sustainable budget?<br /><br />So the assumption that I'm making is that a crew between 5 and 10 astronauts/colonists would probably be a manageable size (I haven't done any trade studies or anything, but it would be interesting to read about). That’s not a very large breeding stock, especially if traditional monogamous social models are used.<br /><br />So, I see a few options:<br />1) Have a balanced crew, hope for the best with their social/sexual models, and bring more colonists along later on.<br />2) Have a paired crew, that are authorized to have some number ( />2 to grow the population) of children, and bring on more colonists later.<br />3) Have a paired crew authorized to have 1 child together, and use artificial insemination/embryo implantation to up the genetic stock.<br />4) Have a strictly female crew and bring a complete set of frozen embryos to bear to term.<br /><br />In looking at these options, I see option 3 being the most PR acceptable, but option 4 as being the best from a practical standpoint.<br /><br />As I see it, there is essentially no point in bringing along male colonists for the first generation. Males cannot bear young, and realistically don’t provide a useful purpose for reproduction when frozen sperm and embryos are available.<br /><br />Furthermore, colonization of another planet is probably fairly gender neutral for other applications than reproduction. Any arguments about higher physical strength or ability is probably bogus, as using astronauts to do physical labor is not an effici