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978-1-5090-1613-6/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 1
The Seed Colony Model: An Approach for Colonizing
Space
Timothy J. Disher
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
600 S. Clyde Morris Blvd.
Daytona Beach, FL 32114
503-508-7593
dishert@my.erau.edu
Katlin M. Anglin
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
407-760-1028
Anglink1@my.erau.edu
Emily C. Anania
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
302-507-3414
Ananiae1@my.erau.edu
Jason P. Kring
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
321-948-1504
Jason.kring@erau.edu
Abstract -- As humans reach out to the stars in a variety of ex-
ploration missions beyond Earth, eventually mission architec-
ture will include constructing a permanent habitat and estab-
lishing a colony. Given the complexity of colonizing a planet,
such as Mars, a great deal of research, simulation, and planning
is necessary to identify the optimal model for colonization in or-
der to guide future mission architectures. One such model,
which has received a significant amount of publicity, is that of
the “Mars One” organization and its plan to build a colony one
piece at a time by sending up small groups of people every 2
years. Although critique of this or any model can focus on a
number of predominantly engineering-focused areas, from pro-
pulsion technologies to habitat design, the present paper uses a
human factors perspective to evaluate the Mars One approach.
This critique also presents a more theoretically sound model, the
Seed Colony Model (SCM), and, using existing literature, out-
lines how this approach has advantages for future colonization
missions that highlights the human element.
Specifically, a variety of potential psychosocial issues for a colo-
nization mission are explored. These include territoriality
caused by an individual experiencing ownership of some aspect
of their environment, in-group/out-group mentality due to so-
cial constructs, conflict escalation, the lack of a “finish line,” and
self-selection. All issues are examined in the context of a perma-
nent, sustainable colony. Because human space operations have
been limited to smaller groups and had the capability to return
to Earth in case of medical emergencies, these previous space-
flight missions are not an accurate representation of the social
aspects of a Mars colonization mission. To better represent the
conditions, the current paper focuses on experiences from Ant-
arctic missions, where larger teams spend a winter-over in that
hostile environment with very limited opportunities for re-sup-
ply or extraction.
Although colonization missions are in the distant future, this pa-
per aims to develop the theory to support the need for human-
centric design considerations for these missions. The SCM,
when employed for mission planning, will provide an over-arch-
ing system architecture to improve mission success rates. This
model is designed around the interactions and complexities of a
team, and individual differences in crewmembers, and injects
decades of research in the behavioral sciences into the plan to
send humans to live on another planet.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................ 1
2. PSYCHOSOCIAL ISSUES WITH MARS ONE
COLONOZATION .................................................. 2
3. RECOMMENDATION: SEED COLONY MODEL . 4
4. DISCUSSION ...................................................... 6
5. THE NEW SPACEX PLAN ................................. 6
6. CONCLUSION .................................................... 6
REFERENCES ........................................................ 7
BIOGRAPHY ......................................................... 8
1. INTRODUCTION
In hopes to be an insurance policy from the dangers to our
civilization (e.g., asteroid impact, warfare, disease), space
colonization has been argued to be the only intelligent way to
ensure what humanity has developed over the past few mil-
lennia will not be lost [18]. As NASA’s long-term objective
is to land astronauts on the Mars surface by the 2030s, private
companies and national agencies alike have shown interest in
the eventual colonization of this Martian environment. How-
ever, Mars presents unique challenges, and human space col-
onization is significantly different than human space activity
to date, which involves low-Earth orbit and lunar explora-
tions with small crews for limited periods of time [19].
Despite these significant differences, the rush to settle has
been driven by several high-status space advocates and or-
ganizations such as the Mars One project [19]. Yet, coloniza-
tion will require not only an enormous amount of engineering
and technological advances to keep the future residents alive
(e.g., [6]), but also a deep comprehension of the human com-
ponent.
2
Because human behavior is often affected by the actions and
emotions of others as well as the impact of the situation itself,
it is imperative to understand the negative consequences of
space colonization from a psychosocial perspective. Unfortu-
nately, empirical research on the social psychology of perma-
nent colonization is essentially non-existent, and research on
extreme environments is typically limited to individuals or
small teams. Nevertheless, evidence suggests humanity is
not ready for such a leap, but people are still eager to get to
Mars. Thus, this paper identifies key psychosocial issues that
will occur during the current space colonization plan pre-
sented by Mars One as well as propose an alternative design,
ensuring that the settlers can surpass these hurdles once tech-
nology has been advanced enough for missions to commence.
2. PSYCHOSOCIAL ISSUES WITH MARS ONE
COLONOZATION
Focused on creating a permanent settlement in the Martian
environment, Mars One has already started choosing individ-
uals for a one-way trip to colonize the planet in the 2020s.
Mars One’s current model for colonization, perhaps the best
publicized, involves a slowly growing colony. This private
organization expects to have a series of launches with four
individuals each mission, occurring roughly every 2 years.
These launches will send individuals on a one-way journey
to live out the rest of their lives in the prepared area, resulting
in a slowly increasing colony designed to be self-sustaining
[9].
In a mission to colonize an extreme environment, an off-nom-
inal event can easily result in loss of equipment, life, or cause
a catastrophic mission failure. The Mars One mission has
been criticized for a variety of technical reasons that could
result in this outcome (e.g., [6]), yet the social difficulties that
it will create have not been thoroughly explored. The Mars
One plan was analyzed to identify possible psychosocial
causes of off-nominal events. The factors in this paper were
chosen based on their potential for disaster in a colonization
mission, as well as their relationship to anecdotal findings of
Antarctic research missions. Following the review of exist-
ing literature, this paper identifies five main causes of an un-
successful Mars One colonization from a psychosocial per-
spective: territoriality, in-group/out-group, conflict escala-
tion, lack of a “finish line,” and self-selection.
Territoriality
When individuals are living or working in an environment,
they tend to develop some sense of ownership of various as-
pects of their surroundings [5]. This psychological owner-
ship, known as territoriality, can be applied to many areas,
from the environment (e.g., living quarters, workspaces) to a
task or assignment (e.g., being in charge of rover mainte-
nance or getting to choose the music on a certain night each
week). When competing needs arise, invoking a threat to this
ownership, potential issues can grow. Territoriality has also
been introduced as a group construct, where the group will
identify a space or task as “theirs” [16]. Territoriality leads
to an increase in motivation, especially if the person had some
part in creating the territory [2]. Additionally, individuals
tend to care for and nurture what they feel ownership of, so
this territoriality seems to be based on a psychological need,
meaning it needs to be aided instead of removed from colo-
nists.
In reference to the Mars One colonization, these conflicts will
arise when a new group arrives to Mars. Those living on the
planet will have already developed a routine, after living in
the same environment with the same people for many
months. The same can be said of the new set of four people
to arrive, who will also have months in physical isolation with
only themselves. Both groups will develop ownership of cer-
tain spaces and tasks, and then be abruptly forced together.
Suddenly, common spaces will see an influx of users, forcing
those already on-site to adjust ingrained habits. These habits
can be as simple as sitting in the same spot every day for a
meal, to as dynamic as changing housing arrangements.
Tasks will also be a cause of territoriality as the population
grows. Because Mars One aims to become self-sustaining,
the number of individuals with the same expertise will in-
crease. For example: as the population increases, the need for
physicians will increase as well. This goes for most roles in a
society – demand is higher as the population grows. Because
of this, existing experts in the community may feel threatened
by or territorial toward the newcomers.
In-group/Out-group Mentality
As groups form, they also develop a sense of an in-group and
out-group mentality. This mentality, which can be as simple
as having a perception of belonging to one group, can lead to
discrimination that favors the individuals’ identified in-group
[21]. This discrimination can escalate to much more extreme
conflict, where individuals actively work in opposition of
their out-group. A classic example of this mentality is ex-
plained by Sherif [17], who divided up boys at a summer
camp into two groups and tasked them with cohesion-induc-
ing tasks, such as making a team flag. As time went on, these
groups displayed this in-group and out-group mentality,
showing a clear preference for their own team (in-group) and
bullying kids who were on the other team (out-group).
In Mars One, each group of new people could be quickly cat-
egorized as an out-group by those already living on Mars,
leading to the potential for conflicts between each group. Alt-
hough new groups can form as time goes on, the territoriality
of the group that is already living on Mars increases this in-
group and out-group mentality and can have a major impact
on developing a sense of community among the whole team.
Although the study explained by Sherif [17] was able to over-
come the divisions of the boys by forcing cooperation among
the groups and unify them through what could be considered
additive survival tasks (i.e., having more people to work on
finding the leak meant less work to ensure their well-being),
3
this will not work for the Mars One colonization mission. In-
stead, more people will increase the strain on the extremely
limited resources. Individuals may feel threatened by addi-
tional groups, especially when new groups drastically in-
crease the population size in the early stages.
Unfortunately there also is always the possibility that an in-
dividual will be in some way ostracized from the group. For
example, during an Antarctic mission that involved a smaller
number of people living in the research station, one individ-
ual would avoid some of their daily tasks because they did
not like any work that involved going outside. This caused
conflict and led to that person becoming the sole member of
the out-group. Eventually, psychologists had to be contacted,
and the individual was moved to a larger research station with
more variability in roles [20]. This also has implications for
Mars One, since the first few groups may not have a lot of
room for variety of personnel beyond the required survival
needs.
Conflict Escalation
When groups of individuals are together for a long amount of
time and in close proximity, conflicts will often occur. As
discussed by Stuster [20], even simple conflicts will often es-
calade to severe proportions, especially in extreme environ-
ments. For example, the aforementioned individual who
avoided daily tasks eventually became ostracized because of
it, and there have been numerous recorded instances where
issues such as personal hygiene become a major conflict over
time (e.g., an individual who would put soup in the same cup
every day and never washed it [20]).
This conflict escalation will be evident during the Mars One
mission. No human relationship is perfect, and so there will
be issues that will arise as individuals are trapped in close
proximity with each other. Although society on Earth has
plenty of ways for people who have conflicts over time to
avoid others, from not spending time around the person to
social media un-friending and filing for divorce, none of
these capabilities will be present on Mars.
Lack of a “Finish Line”
Another common trend found in extreme environment re-
search and anecdotal evidence is known as the third-quarter
phenomena, where the third quarter of an expedition involves
more frequent characteristics such as emotional outbursts and
aggressiveness [22] [3] (See Figure 1). The timeline of this
effect is consistent across missions of different lengths as
well as present in space-analog missions (e.g., Mars500
mission; [22]). Although these levels tend to go back to about
the baseline after the third quarter as the group approaches
the “finish line” of their mission, the third-quarter phenom-
ena can have major consequences for the cohesion of a group.
This problem is theoretically heightened in the case of Mars
One where there is no end-goal, and individuals are faced
with living out the rest of their lives on Mars with no possible
return to their previous reality. Without the “finish line,” the
return to baseline seen in other extreme environments may
not occur.
Because there are no empirical data to determine the effects
of the one-way mission on a group of colonists, an illustration
could be drawn from individuals who live out their lives in
exile. Alfandary [1] identifies an individual suffering with
longitudinal psychological and physical symptoms due to
exile years prior to seeking help. Although self-inflicted, the
journey to live on Mars with no return can be classified as
Figure 1: Third quarter spike in Total Mood Disturbance [22]
Figure 1: Third quarter spike in Total Mood
Disturbance (Wang et al., 2014)
4
exile. Alfandary’s patient eventually recovered with psycho-
logical help, but without it, he may have continued his down-
ward spiral, showing that there is potential for issues in a
long-term mission.
Self-Selection Issues
Another interesting aspect of the Mars One program is that
their aim is to fund the program using TV exposure [11].
While publicity caters to the historical nature of a small group
of four being the hopeful first people to live on Mars as well
as one individual getting the equivalent of the historic first
step of Neil Armstrong, there may be an issue of participants
being those that in some way want to be famous. Maltby [8]
found that individual characteristics were determinant of
fame-seeking behavior, and there are positive correlations be-
tween different sub-items on the Fame Interest scale and the
personality factors neuroticism and extraversion.
If participants are not chosen from the general population
attracted by Mars One’s mission plan, the other specific
population that can be logically expected to contribute
humans to this mission are the various national groups of
astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts, and others that make up
the corps of trained and dedicated space explorers. These
populations provide their own unique composition, with
work by Musson, Sandal, and Helmreich [14] finding that
compared to the normative values taken from a large number
of students, successful astronaut applicants had a
significantly higher level of extroversion.
Because extant research has found that performance in an ex-
treme environment is lower for those with higher levels of
extraversion and neuroticism [15], the people self-selecting
for some level of fame would be problematic for this kind of
mission. This means the Mars One mission strategies could
result in interest from individuals who may not be the best
choice for an isolated and extreme environment. Addition-
ally astronauts themselves, although significantly less neu-
rotic, still demonstrate a higher level of extraversion than a
normative population. This suggests that although astronauts
can be considered better candidates than fame-seekers, they
still may not be the ideal choice for performance in the ex-
treme environment of a place such as Mars.
3. RECOMMENDATION: SEED COLONY MODEL
To address potential catastrophic mission failures of a colo-
nization mission to Mars due to psychosocial issues, the Seed
Colony Model (SCM) should be implemented. The term
"seed colony" is one that has long been referenced in science
fiction literature and is used to refer to a colony that will, like
a seed, eventually grow into something much larger. Some-
times, this can refer to a colony of people, whereas for other
examples the name implies a double meaning -- a sort of
sperm and egg bank sent into space. In case more rapid
growth is needed, or no way of supplementing the gene pool
exists, the latter definition is a possibility, but for this paper
the assumption will be that the colony is made up of fully
developed humans. The word "seed" is especially important
because a seed has a lot of versatility. It has most of what it
needs to start growing internally, as long as some environ-
mental needs are met such as water and soil. In the SCM, this
should also be true: the colony spacecraft should transport all
of the necessary resources to grow wherever it is planted.
This includes personnel, food production, manufacturing,
health services, etc. This means that the ideal seed colony
will not rely on supply drops or pre-constructed infrastructure
to operate, instead bringing the means to construct infrastruc-
ture and all required supplies with it.
Although both Mars One colonization and SCM aim to min-
imize the potential mission risks and create a self-sustaining
colony on another planet, the future colonists’ journey to
Mars will be substantially different. Specifically, the SCM
will alleviate the psychosocial issues apparent in the Mars
One colonization.
Addressing Territoriality
One of the main differences between the proposal of Mars
One and the SCM is that in the latter all equipment and per-
sonnel would arrive together. Because the seed colony itself
should, like a seed, be planted at a single time, the colonists
would have a higher sense of autonomy. For example, if they
wanted to, they could potentially change their target zone and
set up a colony in a different location. Even though the team
would most likely end up in the studied and pre-decided lo-
cation, it still would give participants more of a feeling of
control over their new environment. There would not be the
created ownership by one group spending a longer period of
time at the base. In addition, if individuals already have all of
the components of their future home with them instead of set
up previously, they would also be able to better fulfill their
psychological need by having more of a hand in actually
building their habitat [2]. This further differentiates it from
Mars One, which has each group constructing the habitat in
preparation for the next group to arrive [9], leading to even
more territoriality for those preceding groups.
Addressing In-group/Out-group
No matter how the colony is designed, having large groups
will typically result in the formation of sub-groups [4] and
too many differences can lead to division. To address this in
a colony, the key therefore is not to eliminate sub-groups
altogether, but instead to limit the amount of divisions, or
“fault lines,” of these sub-groups by having them live through
the entire process together. For example, the "clubs" at Ant-
arctic research stations with different profession de-
mographics (e.g., naval officers, scientists) often see little to
no interaction between these demographics [20]. If that kind
of division exists, it is also likely that gaps will exist among
colonists who are sent years and years apart. Even technology
creates a cultural difference that could occur with a gap of
only a few crews from Mars One. By eliminating fault lines
5
such as length of time on Mars and temporal cultural experi-
ences prior to embarking, a large number of fault lines can be
eliminated.
Another advantage of a large group is the ability to have task
variability. In the book "The Martian" Mark Watney had to
dust off his solar panels frequently to ensure they would give
sufficient power, which is an arduous task that would proba-
bly not have much job satisfaction to offer. With more peo-
ple, a task like this could be divided to minimize requirements
from each individual, lessening the impact of onerous chores.
Additionally, with the individual described previously that
was ostracized because of an unwillingness to work outside
[20], the solution reached was a transfer to a larger station
because with a larger population comes more of an ability for
specialization instead of being involved a little in all aspects
of station life. Therefore, having the large group live through
the entire process together should be considered to help limit
sources of conflict.
Addressing Escalation and "Finish Line"
To address escalation and the "finish line,” the solution can
probably be reduced to something often overlooked, which is
having some kind of therapist or counselor on hand to help
mediate conflicts and emotional needs. This is especially im-
portant because of the time delays that would exist, making it
difficult for any sort of intervention from Earth. This time
delay, coupled with Mission Control most likely becomming
an outgroup to colonists, will mean that intervention from
Earth may not help: people sitting at home in comfortable
chairs trying to tell those working hard and fighting for
survival never results in an effective relationship. The indi-
vidual that Alfandary [1] wrote about did reach a point of be-
ing able to recover from the long-standing issues that
stemmed from his exile, but only after counseling. Counsel-
ing could also be very effective in mitigating conflict escala-
tion by the use of various trained intervention techniques to
stop conflicts early.
Thus, mitigation of escalation and the "finish line" requires
there to be at least one counselor. However, a minimum of
three people is recommended to be present for each counselor
to have one of their own. The presence of these individuals
would work much better with the larger size of the SCM,
because with only the handful present in the initial colony,
dedicating three of them part-time to counseling training
ahead of the mission can take away from other areas. Beyond
counselors, a larger size means that a lot of other expertise
can be included in the initial colony too.
Addressing Self-Selection
The best way to address self-selection from the Mars One
strategy is to change the marketing scheme, however, this
scheme was decided on because of a need to ensure funding.
Mars One does have a psychologist who is evaluating poten-
tial participants [10], so personality may have been suffi-
ciently studied to select-out candidates. Crew selection
should explore using a measure such as the Fame Interest
scale to cover some aspects not already covered by other
evaluations. If individuals are considering the mission to
seek fame, it is critical to control for them and eliminate them
from the program for a smaller colony.
The specific issues concerning self-selection discussed in the
present paper may also be mitigated if the group traveling is
large enough. For example, extroversion has an association
with poor performance in extreme environments [15]; how-
ever, those extreme environments studied are also often fairly
small populations, which is not the type of environment an
extrovert would say they prefer when taking a personality
test. In addition, more people may mean more opportunity to
get social fulfillment for those who are more extroverted. In
Antarctica, for example, the social “clubs” at larger stations
provide much more potential for variation, while smaller sta-
tions may have social space limited to some sitting and din-
ing. With a larger colony, more diversity in common space
would be easier to design in. Although some comforts will
still be left out, at the very least more space would be needed
for meals – a large space that could be made flexible to allow
for social activities.
Other Concerns
The founding of a colony is considered to be the most critical
point when a colony is either slated for success or failure.
Therefore, it is most beneficial to understand the psychoso-
cial risks at the onset of this journey. However, the psycho-
social perspective has been neglected, especially in regards
to the infamous Mars One colonization. Because survival is
on the line and aspects of maintaining it have not become fa-
miliar and routine, sending everyone at once would increase
the performance as Littlepage [7] found with an increase in
team size. Therefore, the SCM should perform better than an
initial group of only four, because an increase in performance
can be translated into an increase in chance of survival.
Because of a pre-built site, the gradual colonization method
can verify functionality of the habitat at each step of the pro-
cess before adding more people to live in them. The ideal
SCM, however, would require those systems to work upon
initial installation. If no pre-built infrastructure is used in or-
der to support crew autonomy, construction of the initial hab-
itat would need to be fairly simple, so that work can be
quickly completed while colonists are living in their landing
craft. This would minimize time spent in a more compact
habitat. On the technical and financial sides, having the crew
build their own habitat would have significant advantage over
designing autonomous or semi-autonomous robots for assem-
bling facilities.
One important question is the initial size of the colony. Re-
search by Moore [12] looked into growth of groups, and can
assist with some perspective. Moore found that the most vi-
able method for colonization is one known as the string of
pearls, which on Earth can be illustrated as colonizing along
a river. Each new colony is close enough to the previous one
6
for contact, but is itself surrounded by new territory other
than down the river. To achieve populations that would
maintain a steady number, 100 people per colony were used
in simulation, so when planning for a SCM mission, at least
100 people should be sent for each new colony, otherwise
there is an increased risk of the colony dying out. This trans-
lates into approximately 50 years of 4-person Mars One mis-
sions, which means that by the time 100 people have been
sent, there is a very real possibility that earlier settlers will
have died of age-related issues.
4. DISCUSSION
The various social issues reviewed in this paper are the most
noteworthy ones based on a review of the Mars One strategy,
and provide a good starting point to make sure that the needs
of participants are never left out. In essence, the argument of
this paper is to make sure colony missions are larger and at
once, instead of small and gradual groups. This method of
colonization should lead to a much more successful mission
by mitigating territoriality, harmful in-group/out-group men-
tality, conflict escalation, the unknown of no “finish line,”
and issues caused by personalities prone to self-selection.
This is not to say that only one colony should be sent to Mars,
only that each launch group should be given their own new
home and have the ability to sustain their population.
It is noteworthy that other than a few aspects of personality –
that may be overcome by the SCM’s size – this paper does
not address individual variations such as culture, ethnicity,
religion, gender, and sexuality. This is purposeful, because a
colonization mission will likely be a collaboration between
multiple different space agencies with a variety of people in-
volved. This means that a colony will be multi-national and
multi-gendered. These personal differences may result in a
basis for the inevitable sub-groups, but because all groups
would set out as one single unit working to survive together,
the potential for conflict between them will be minimized.
This leaves the sub-groups as more of a self-imposed social
construct instead of a construct imposed by the nature of the
mission.
Another important take-away to consider is that because of
the unique nature of a colonization mission, a specific pool
of candidates should be created that does not automatically
accept individuals accepted by astronaut, cosmonaut, and tai-
konaut programs. Although this paper only touches on one
difference between astronauts and ideal candidates for
longer-term extreme environment missions, there are poten-
tially many others. Research should be done to explore these
potential differences and develop a specialized selection se-
lection process before a colonization mission is finalized.
5. THE NEW SPACEX PLAN
Elon Musk [13], an entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX has
recently discussed his goals for an eventual Mars colony. The
presentation did not go into depth into the human element,
but some recommendations to the mission architecture can be
made by applying the SCM.
One major point in the SpaceX plan is to drastically increase
the number of people able to colonize Mars. This massive
number of people should help to mitigate the mentioned self-
selection issues, and in the long run the population should
normalize to where specialty populations, such as discussed
astronauts, will no longer be a concern. However, similar to
the Mars One plan, this colony will be effected by the same
time frame of when launches occur, so selection should still
identify a colony-suitable population for the first “Mars colo-
nial fleet” that Musk [13] described.
The larger population, as well as ships being planned to return
to Earth, means that conflict escalation and the “finish line”
issues may also be eliminated. This is because individuals
will be able to change social groups if needed, or even return
to Earth. With the larger population, the suggestion still
stands, however, to include several individuals trained as
counselors to ensure conflicts and mental illness can be dealt
with effectively.
In terms of actually colonizing the planet, the string of pearls
method of colonization should be adhered to, where each new
“Mars colonial fleet” establishes its own, new colony site
roughly along a line or geological feature. This will help with
issues created from territoriality and in-group/out-group
mentality because each fleet group will be moving into their
own space. The best case would be if each fleet includes all
necessary structural components, and so can nurture their
need for territoriality by allowing them to select their final
landing site – perhaps from a list of pre-selected areas – and
have more of a hand in actually constructing their new home.
The million-person number Musk [13] used as his goal for
the colony is over-kill in terms of a sustainable colony based
on Moore’s [12] work. However, a larger number in this kind
of situation is definitely not bad. Though based on the SCM,
with the right technology present, even a single “Mars colo-
nial fleet” should be sufficient to create a sustained popula-
tion – assuming that care is given to ensure necessary skill-
sets and professions are present, processes are automated, and
parts are standardized.
6. CONCLUSION
Future research needs to be conducted to explore the viability
and necessity of the SCM. A study that would be particularly
interesting would be to use participants living in an analogue
for an extended time and have a new group sent in to join
them mid-mission. There is also a lot of room for research
on complex, aggregate teams in extreme environments, such
as the group from a SCM mission, data that can then be com-
pared to existing small team data to see if any kind of differ-
ences occur. Researchers should also work to develop inter-
ventions specifically for extreme environment issues, and
with them develop training programs for colonists to try to
7
reach an optimum number of at least somewhat trained coun-
selors.
This paper was written because mankind is approaching a
point at which our population may overcome the capacity of
Earth to sustain us. As we near that time, more thought must
be given to ensure mankind’s permanent spread beyond
Earth, to places such as the Moon, Mars, asteroid belts, and
eventually out to live under the light of other stars. Without
a doubt we will eventually reach this stage, but before we do,
we need to understand how to best go about such a mission.
The Seed Colony Model presents an alternative strategy to
commonly publicized colonization approaches, in order to
better meet the needs of those individuals who are a part of a
mission to live permanently off of Earth.
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BIOGRAPHY
Timothy J Disher recieved a B.S. in
aerospace engineering and a B.A. in
psychology from the University of
Alabama in Huntsville. He is
currently pursuing his Masters and
Ph.D. in human factors at Embry-
Riddle Aeronautical University. In
addition to academics, he has been
serving as project manager of
MEERS, where ERAU personnel are
actively creating a space habitat analog out of an airstream
trailer. His primary career goal is to contribute to the
development of space habitation technology using a human-
centric approach.
Katlin Anglin is a doctoral
candidate in Human Factors at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University. She is a Research
Assistant in the Game-Based
Education and Advanced Research
Studies (GEARS) Lab and project
lead for the ERAU collaboration
in NASA Extreme Environment
Mission Operations (NEEMO)
project. Her research interests include training, leadership,
and performance in extreme work environments.
Emily Anania received a B.S. in
Psychology from the University of
Delaware. She is currently a
doctoral student in Human Factors
at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University. She is a Research
Assistant in the Game-Based
Education and Advanced Research
Studies (GEARS) Lab and is a part
of the ERAU collaboration with
NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO)
project. Her research interests include team composition,
adaptation, and performance in extreme work environments.
Jason Kring is an Associate
Professor in Human Factors at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University (ERAU). He has over 16
years of research and teaching
experience in the areas of human
factors, spaceflight, and ,human
performance in extreme
environments. He is a member of the
Game-based Education and
Advanced Research Simulations (GEARS) Lab at ERAU and
leads the lab’s Small Team and Analog Research (STAR)
group.
