Only 22 people are needed to create a colony on Mars, an optimistic new study suggests. However, not everyone agrees, and some experts think many more people would be needed to create a lasting human presence on the Red Planet.
In the study, which was uploaded to the pre-print database arXiv on Aug. 11 and has not been peer-reviewed, researchers used a computer program, known as an agent-based model (ABM), to predict how many people would be needed to sustain a colony on Mars. ABMs simulate how well groups react to challenging scenarios based on their personality types.
