How many supply ships would it take to put a colony on Mars?

When you consider that 7000 pounds of food PER person would be required... not including water, fuel and other necessities

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Winterwanderer · 26-30, M

Oh man, there are so many factors that would go into this, you should ask this on Quora though, this is practically a question made for Quora.

MikefromEP · 51-55, M

@Winterwanderer Minimum 6 month trip for each supply ship with a 15% loss of shipments along with life on board makes the resupply a nightmare

Winterwanderer · 26-30, M

Well it also depends on whether they would have built much of the mars colony beforehand, because it would be extremely difficult & cost ineffective to do it all at once, a huge, unnecessary waste of fuel & resources that could be flewn ahead of time.

But I still don't have an answer.

MikefromEP · 51-55, M

@Winterwanderer It would be like watching the movie The Martian, with Matt Damon.. and wondering how he grew potato's using Martian "soil" lol

Winterwanderer · 26-30, M

That's actually not entirely unrealistic, especially if he was treating the soil (or if had brought his own).

MikefromEP · 51-55, M

@Winterwanderer Radiated soil mixed with poop will only go so far. Lack of nutrients makes this impossible. But say for the fact that soil is now brought with a supply ship... this now adds to more flight missions to land it

Winterwanderer · 26-30, M

Yep, a lot of separate flight missions, maybe eventually they'd bring a small team of researchers, but to bring a whole colony, that's a huge overhaul & would require so many resources, I'm not sure how NASA or SpaceX would ever do this