> Zubrin believes that half a million to a million people will be needed to start substantial terraforming. Why? Suppose they need 250 (solar?) energy producti

> Zubrin believes that half a million to a million people will be needed to start substantial terraforming. Why? Suppose they need 250 (solar?) energy production facilities (and to make it easy on myself, let's ignore things like drilling for carbon etc.) Why would this need half a million people? It's not like you need a town-full of people for every facility. They'll be made basically identical, so you might need a few observation/emergency staff at each of them constantly, and larger crews for periodic maintenance, construction, some R&D, etc. etc. How does this become half a million? https://nautil.us/issue/100/outsiders/should-we-terraform-mars-lets-recap https://nautil.us/issue/100/outsiders/should-we-terraform-ma...