Mars bass connections
Duke University
Duke University
oing to Mars used to be an idea that belonged only to science fiction. Today, people have already begun planning to go to Mars, including official missions by government agencies like NASA and ambitious ventures by private entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Musk envisions a city of 100,000 people on Mars, and Duke students could be in that cohort. Motivations for going to Mars include advancing scientific knowledge, extracting valuable resources and reducing the risk of life being wiped out by a catastrophe on Earth.
Attention has focused on the science and technology of Mars exploration and settlement, but the success of missions to Mars will also depend on the social and organizational systems developed by settlers. Risks include physiological harms from travel to and living on Mars, clashes among settlers and missions with conflicting motives, failing social and legal systems and disruptions of the ecosystems of Mars or the Earth. This cacophony of missions, ambitions, benefits, risks and tradeoffs demands an interdisciplinary analysis.
Our team of students and faculty worked together to develop a series of risk-based decision scenarios of the settlement of Mars, which includes associated contexts, histories, decisions and outcomes. We have developed and published analyses and recommendations on key elements of settling Mars, drawing on tools from multiple disciplines.
We have examined how national motivations to settle Mars might be accommodated with international agreements, national government settlements, private sector settlements and other initiatives. As part of our project, we have interacted with guest speakers from a variety of organizations, including other universities, government agencies, private enterprises and nonprofit organizations. Throughout our mission, we have simulated scenarios through the eyes of various stakeholder groups, such as US federal government agencies (e.g. NASA and military), private enterprise such as SpaceX or Blue Origin, scientists, astronauts, refugees, and future generations.
We encourage you to explore our unique approach and findings, from our research and publications, to our visionary scenario-based methodology, and finally through a simulation-based game where you set the course for Mars settlement!
DeCIPHER (“Decisions on Complex Interdisciplinary Problems of Health and Environmental Risk”)is a series of Bass Connections projects at Duke University designed to improve the holistic understanding of health and environmental risks. Each annual DeCIPHER team develops a comprehensive profile of a salient risk topic, which includes associated contexts, histories, decisions, and outcomes. The project team explores lessons from experience, new ways to think about the topic, and ways to address other risks as well. Understanding how and why past, current, and future risk scenarios unfold as they do—or could be better handled—is critical to our ability to address future risks successfully. By integrating a broad array of perspectives and methodologies for investigating factors that shape decisions about health and environmental risks, we aim to provide team members with a comprehensive view and varied toolbox of methods for evaluating risks and solutions.
Our mission began with extensive background research. Our team defined four major themes that involved:
the lifestyle and community of a Martian settlement,
the management of the environment and use of resources,
how the people on Mars interact with each other and with those back on Earth,
and how the people on Mars should govern themselves.
These four major themes are Life & Community, Environment & Ecology, International Relations, and Governance.
Within each of these themes, our research team formulated focus groups in order to explore specific questions from various stakeholder perspectives related to each module. Read below to learn about what we discovered.
Living on Mars will require novel approaches to living situations. What should those be like? Should we live in domes, or in tunnels underground, or in satellites orbiting the planet, or somewhere else? How will these living situations affect group dynamics, mental health, and the development of norms? How will they affect the planet itself?
Knowing that human activity on Mars will affect the planet, how should we balance the competing interests of environmental preservation, scientific discovery, settler wellbeing, financial viability, and more? What measures, if any, should be taken to avoid contaminating Mars with terrestrial-based organisms? Should terraforming be considered as a long-term strategy for making Mars more habitable for humans?
The settlement of Mars will engage various state actors with potentially conflicting interests. Already, governments are building up military strategies and assets for space, such as the United States Space Force. How will the long-studied norms of international relations play out on Mars? Will settlement be mostly peaceful or could conflicts escalate, and what are the stakes? Could nationalism spill over into settler dynamics? What can be done to preserve peace and promote cooperation?
A Martian settlement will need a system of governance. How should that be structured? Should they implement a democratic, majority-ruled institution? Or should power be more centralized? What factors are most important to making these determinations, and how might they change over time? Should there be certain inalienable rights, and if so, what should they include? Stepping back, who should get to make these decisions? Are there lessons or models to be drawn from governmental systems on Earth?
We have developed an interactive game for you to explore the challenges of settling Mars:
You are tasked with creating the first human settlement on Mars. You must select the first group of settlers to go to Mars, choose where to live/the settlement habitats, and the governmental structure of your settlement.
Explore these questions in-depth as you build the first human settlement on Mars, and determine the fate of our species and the Solar System!
