# Becoming Multiplanetary — Space Colonization

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Category: Future
Slides: 13
Updated: 2026-05-17T20:55:57.638Z
Tags: catalog, future, space, colonization

## Summary

Mars · 2036 Briefing Becoming Multiplanetary. A sober tour of where humans go next — the Moon, Mars, and the very long road beyond. What is plausible. What is decades away. What is fantasy that still drives engineering today. Key sections include: Becoming Multiplanetary.; Why leave Earth at all?; Why not , honestly.; The Moon, first.; Industry on the gray plains.; Mars: realistic, not easy.; The surface wants you dead.; Live off the land.; How you actually get there.; The body, off-world..

## Slide Outline

1. Becoming Multiplanetary.
2. Why leave Earth at all?
3. Why not , honestly.
4. The Moon, first.
5. Industry on the gray plains.
6. Mars: realistic, not easy.
7. The surface wants you dead.
8. Live off the land.
9. How you actually get there.
10. The body, off-world.
11. Asteroids, cylinders, and the very long road.
12. What is plausible, by when.
13. Keep going.

## Slide Transcript

### Slide 1: Becoming
Multiplanetary.

- Mars · 2036 Briefing
- A sober tour of where humans go next — the Moon, Mars, and the very long road beyond. What is plausible. What is decades away. What is fantasy that still drives engineering today.
- 13 Slides
- Use ← →
- A catalog briefing · 2026

### Slide 2: Why leave Earth at all?

- Slide 02 · The Case For
- Three honest answers, ranked from cosmic to civic.
- 1. Backup civilization
- Asteroids, supervolcanoes, engineered pathogens, runaway climate. A second self-sufficient biosphere is an insurance policy on the species.
- 2. Frontier expansion
- Resources, scientific surface area, new economies. Most of the matter and energy in the solar system is not on Earth.
- 3. Forcing function
- Closed-loop life support, robotics, materials, medicine — solving "live off Earth" forces breakthroughs that flow back home.

### Slide 3: Why not, honestly.

- Slide 03 · The Case Against
- Skepticism is not the enemy of ambition — it is its calibration.
- Cost
- A self-sustaining off-world settlement is a multi-trillion-dollar, multi-decade undertaking — even with reusable launch.
- Biology
- Microgravity wrecks bones and eyes. Cosmic rays damage DNA. We have never gestated a mammal off Earth.
- Ethics
- Who owns Mars? Who decides the laws? What about contamination — forward and back?
- Opportunity cost
- The same trillions could harden Earth: climate, pandemics, education. The choice is not free.

### Slide 4: The Moon, first.

- Slide 04 · Stepping Stone
- Three days, not nine months. A natural proving ground for everything Mars demands — at one-fiftieth the travel time.
- Delta-v: ~6 km/s from low-Earth orbit to lunar surface — tractable.
- Water ice at permanently shadowed polar craters.
- Artemis program targeting crewed surface return this decade.
- Real-time comms — 1.3-second light delay vs. minutes to Mars.

### Slide 5: Industry on the gray plains.

- Slide 05 · Lunar Economy
- The Moon is not a destination — it is an industrial site that happens to be in the sky.
- Regolith oxygen
- Lunar soil is ~45% oxygen by mass. Molten regolith electrolysis turns dirt into breathable air and rocket oxidizer.
- Fuel depots
- Cislunar propellant from polar ice. Refuel above Earth's gravity well — every onward mission gets cheaper.
- Far-side telescopes
- Radio-quiet, vacuum, stable surface. The far side is the best radio-astronomy site in the inner solar system.

### Slide 6: Mars: realistic,
not easy.

- Slide 06 · The Next Step
- A 6–9 month transfer along a Hohmann ellipse. Launch windows open every ~26 months when Earth and Mars align.
- Earth–Mars: ~225 million km at closest approach.
- Comm latency: 4 to 24 minutes one-way.
- Solar day (sol): 24h 39m — almost Earth-like.
- Year: 687 Earth days.

### Slide 7: The surface wants you dead.

- Slide 07 · Hostile by Default
- Mars looks like a desert. It is not. Every parameter is wrong.
- 38% gravity
- Long-term effects on bone, muscle, fluid balance — unknown. We have only microgravity data.
- 1% atmosphere
- Mostly CO₂. Pressure ~6 mbar — your blood would boil unsuited. Useless for breathing, useful for ISRU.
- Radiation
- No magnetosphere, thin air. Surface dose ~50× Earth. Habitats need regolith shielding or buried structures.
- Perchlorates
- Soil laced with toxic chlorine compounds. Inhalation, agriculture, water all need careful remediation.

### Slide 8: Live off the land.

- Slide 08 · ISRU
- In-Situ Resource Utilization. The plan is not "ship everything from Earth" — that plan does not close. The plan is to make what you need where you are.
- Air: Sabatier reaction — CO₂ + H₂ → CH₄ + H₂O. Methane fuel and water in one step.
- Water: Subsurface ice extraction; perchlorate filtering.
- Oxygen: MOXIE-class CO₂ electrolysis (already demonstrated by Perseverance).
- Bricks: Sintered or microwave-fused regolith.

### Slide 9: How you actually get there.

- Slide 09 · Architecture
- A Mars settlement program needs three things: a heavy lifter, a transit habitat, and a surface base concept that grows.
- SpaceX Starship: ~100–150 t to LEO, fully reusable, methane-fueled — the architecture currently most likely to deliver.
- Mars Base Alpha: initial cluster of pressurized Starships, ISRU plant, solar arrays.
- NASA Moon-to-Mars: Gateway, Orion, Artemis Base Camp as a stepping path.
- Mass-to-Mars problem: a city of one million needs ~10 million tons of cargo.

### Slide 10: The body, off-world.

- Slide 10 · Biology
- Engineering is not the bottleneck. We are.
- Bone & muscle
- Astronauts lose ~1–2% of bone density per month in microgravity. Mars gravity (38%) is unstudied long-term — likely better, but unknown.
- Radiation
- Round-trip Mars dose ~0.66 Sv — roughly a 5% lifetime cancer risk increase. Solar flares can be acutely lethal without shielding.
- Reproduction
- No mammal has been conceived, gestated, and born off Earth. A self-sustaining colony cannot avoid this question forever.
- Terraforming dreams
- Warming Mars enough for liquid water at the surface: centuries to millennia, even with optimistic methods. Worth thinking about. Not a near-term plan.

### Slide 11: Asteroids, cylinders,
and the very long road.

- Slide 11 · Beyond
- Once you live off Earth, the solar system is a kit of parts.
- Asteroid mining
- Metallic near-Earth asteroids hold platinum-group metals at concentrations that dwarf any Earth ore body.
- O'Neill cylinders
- Rotating habitats at Earth–Moon Lagrange points. Spin gravity, full sunlight, no gravity well — possibly easier than a planet.
- Outer planets
- Europa, Titan, Enceladus — exotic chemistry, possible biospheres, brutal distances and cold.
- Interstellar
- Proxima b is 4.24 ly away. With current tech: ~75,000 years. With a 0.1c starshot: 42 years — to send grams.
- Generation ships
- Self-contained ecosystems crewed by descendants. Engineering, sociology, ethics — all unsolved.
- Dyson swarms
- End-game: capture meaningful fractions of a star's output. Civilization energy budget × 10⁹.

### Slide 12: What is plausible, by when.

- Slide 12 · Honest Timeline
- Calibrated, not cynical. Calibrated, not hyped.
- 2030s · Lunar return, semi-permanent base
- Artemis crewed surface stays, polar water prospecting, early ISRU demos. Plausible.
- 2040s · First crewed Mars landing
- Short surface stay, sample return, ISRU pilot plant. Aggressive but credible.
- 2050s+ · Persistent Mars settlement
- Hundreds to low thousands. Not yet self-sufficient. Earth resupply still required.
- 2100+ · Self-sustaining off-world city
- The actual goal. Maybe Mars, maybe O'Neill cylinders. Likely both, in some order.
- Centuries · Interstellar
- Probes possible this century. Crewed missions: a civilization-scale project, not a startup roadmap.

### Slide 13: Keep going.

- Slide 13 · Further Reading
- A starting kit — books, a documentary search, and a pair of YouTube queries that will keep you busy for months.
- Books
- The Case for Mars — Robert Zubrin
- A City on Mars — Kelly & Zach Weinersmith (the skeptical view)
- The High Frontier — Gerard K. O'Neill
- Packing for Mars — Mary Roach
- How to Make a Spaceship — Julian Guthrie
- YouTube searches
- Mars colonization & SpaceX →
- Artemis Moon program →
- Channels worth a search
- Everyday Astronaut
- Scott Manley
- Isaac Arthur (futurism)
- PBS Space Time
- END · BECOMING MULTIPLANETARY
- Use ← → or click to navigate.


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