why do we need 30 women?

From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Fri Mar 26 1999 - 19:13:55 MST


> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote: ... -you can create [a Mars colony]
> from scratch in a century or two starting with, say, 30
> or 40 young, healthy, genetically diverse women and
> a big dewar of sperm....

Altho it presents some extreme difficulties, could we
not start a Mars society with a single woman and
a bunch of ethnically diverse frozen embryos? Could
not the single crosser of interplanetary space have
her birth canal surgically enlarged before launch
in order to facilitate giving birth by herself after self
implanting an embryo some time after it starts looking
like she will survive on the surface? It appears to me
that all the mission requirements scale to the size of the
astronaut. Our best bet might be a single very small
woman, perhaps one with no legs, whose weight
might be 30 kilos or less. spike



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