PORTLAND (CBS Seattle) – Thinking about colonizing another planet? Bring about 40,000 friends with you to maximize your chances of success, reports Space.com.
An Oregon anthropologist pegs that number as the ideal population to send to other worlds. Cameron Smith with Portland State University says such a large group would possess the genetic diversity needed to give a settlement the best chance of survival during a long space voyage and beyond.
Some scientists have estimated a successful human colony could be achieved with just several hundred people.
“Do you want to just squeak by, with barely what you can get? Or do you want to go in good health?” Smith told NASA’s Future In-Space Operations working group earlier this month. “I would suggest, go with something that gives you a good margin for the case of disaster.”
Assuming an interstellar voyage of about 150 years, Smith created computer models based on population and genetic studies to come up with the best way to ensure success.
He concluded 40,000 to be a “safe and well-considered figure.” 23,000 of the starting population should be men and women of reproductive age.
“This number would maintain good health over five generations despite (a) increased inbreeding resulting from a relatively small human population, (b) depressed genetic diversity due to the founder effect, (c) demographic change through time and (d) expectation of at least one severe population catastrophe over the five-generation voyage,” Smith wrote.
Anything over that number would be overkill, he wrote. Anything much lower would risk catastrophic failure.
“Almost no natural populations of vertebrates dip below around five to 7,000 individuals,” said Smith. ” There are genetic reasons for this. And when they do go below this, sometimes they survive, but many times they go into what’s called a demographic or extinction vortex.”
The study was published in Acta Astronautica.
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