ITEM OF THE WEEK
THE MARTIAN WAY
I recently ran across an interesting analysis of the supply logistics of a potential Martian colony, and I had an immediate flashback to a memory from my youth…
The Martian Way
Isaac Asimove published a science-fiction short story in the November, 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It was entitled “The Martian Way.” The “asimov.fandom.com” website summarizes its plot this way:
“In a future where Mars is colonized but dependent on water shipments from Earth, political demagogue John Hilder rises to power on Earth by campaigning against the "waste" of water used as reaction mass for spaceships. He eventually cuts off the vital water supply to Mars, threatening the survival of the colony, particularly the "Scavengers"—Martians who make a living recycling space junk.
“In response, a group of Scavengers, led by Ted Long and including the skeptical Mario Esteban Rioz, undertakes a daring mission. A fleet of 25 ships travels to Saturn's rings, where they harvest a massive iceberg roughly a cubic mile in volume. They embed their ships within the ice and use it as reaction mass for the return journey, proving that water is not a scarce resource to be hoarded but abundant in the solar system.
“The mission is a triumphant success. Upon returning to Mars, they land the iceberg in a public demonstration, stunning Hilder's representatives. The Martian leader, Hamish Sankov, then announces that Mars now possesses a water supply hundreds of times greater than Earth's annual shipments and offers to sell water to Earth. The story ends with the Martians securing their independence and looking forward to being the ones who will colonize the rest of the solar system.”
I can readily see in my mind’s eye the smirk on ol’ Issac’s face as he was thinking about the politicians getting their comeuppance so dramatically.
The story was classic early Asimov, and there were a few holes in the plot. Energy for spaceflight was abundant, due to the development of the “proton micropile.” Mars, the Moon, and even Venus(!) had resources, mostly metals, to export to Earth; enough to support colony economies. Water, in large quantities, is spacecraft reaction mass, converted to high-pressure steam. The tankage to hold that water is the “space junk” referred to above.
Read the original story for yourself at: https://dn760000.eu.archive.org/0/items/TheMartianWay/MartianWayByIsaacAsimov1950s_text.pdf
There is a lot of talk today about establishing a base on the Moon and then, perhaps, one on Mars. The economics and logistics involved are formidable. While Helium-3 may prove to have value as a lunar export, there is not enough water at the lunar south pole to support any sort of colony or the fuel the transportation of Helium-3 back to Earth, especially if a significant human presence is required.
As for Mars, the same basic benefits, potentially as large as those generated by NASA’s Mercury/Gemini/Apollo effort in the ‘60s, make getting there an attractive goal, but establishing a permanent presence is another matter entirely!
Omar Bradley: “Amateurs Discuss Tactics; Professionals Discuss Logistics”
I ran across a summary on the Science Daily website that triggered my flashback to Asimov’s story. Find it here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260805082504.htm. The material there comes from an article in Universe Today, written by Mark Thompson, here: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/mining-the-solar-system-to-build-a-new-world.
The citation of the full paper in the Science Daily summary is: Serena Suriano, Shamil Biktimirov, Dmitry Pritykin, Anton Ivanov. Asteroid Mining to Sustain a Mars Colony: A Logistics Point of View. arXiv, 20 Apr 2026 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2604.18664. The authors are based at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.
Logistics dominate any contemplation of humans living off Earth for an extended period. Five basic human needs would need to be addressed: air to breathe, water to drink, metals and other construction material, power, and food. We could likely channel our inner Mark Watney to provide at least some food, and perhaps the martian soil could be cracked to provide oxygen, and perhaps nuclear reactors could provide power (not on a forever basis), but water and metals require sourcing elsewhere. [Sending people back home is also a HUGE problem, not considered in the analysis!]
The Science Daily article sets up the problem eloquently:
“Establishing a colony on Mars would involve far more than solving difficult engineering challenges. It would also require a reliable system for moving supplies, equipment, and raw materials across the Solar System.
“Logistics may not sound especially exciting, but it could determine whether humans ever become a multiplanetary species or remain permanently tied to Earth.
“A settlement on Mars would need more than food, water, and oxygen. It would require enormous amounts of metal, including structural steel for habitats, aluminum for machinery, and iron for tools. Equipment would also wear down, break, and eventually need to be replaced.
“Regularly shipping all of those materials from Earth would not be a practical long-term solution. Launching a tonne of cargo can cost tens of millions of pounds, while a trip to Mars usually takes between six and nine months, depending on the positions of Earth and Mars in their orbits. That is far too slow and expensive for a dependable hardware supply system.”
The analysis focused on providing metals to a Mars colony, using metallic asteroids as the source! And while the focus was primarily on metallic resources, returning asteroidal water would also be possible, especially since part of the logistics analysis requires visiting a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid first, from which the fuel to go to a metallic asteroid and then back to Mars via Earth is extracted.
The logistics path considered by the EPFL team requires two nodes in the supply chain. It presumes the existence of a depot in low Mars orbit (their starting and ending point), and a depot in the Sun-Earth L2 point (the analysis ignored the fact that the Sun-Earth L2 point is already crowded with the James Webb, Euclid, and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopes, and more on the way, e.g. ESA’s PLATO (2027), ESA/JAXA’s Comet Interceptor (2028/2029), ESA’s ARIEL (2029/2032), JAXA’s LiteBIRD (2032), ESA’s ATHENA (2035), and NASA’s LUVOIR (2039) – the replacement for the HST.
The EPFL team’s rationale for using the Sun-Earth L2 follows.
“Having a depot at the Earth-Sun L2 point can make available metals at times when no launch windows to any of 5 the selected asteroids are available. The L2 point is chosen since it is easily accessible from Earth thanks to their fixed relative position. It is assumed that cargo is delivered to this node from the Earth and can be picked up by a cargo spacecraft from Mars without any delay, which should be introduced, when time is needed to actually mine for metals on an asteroid. Using other libration points can be further considered, however we will confine our study to the Sun-Earth L2, because it comes closer to Mars than Earth-Moon L2 and easier to reach from Earth (to replenish the depot) than Sun-Mars L1. Including the Sun-Earth L2 point into the supply chain also allows us making comparisons of the Mars-based asteroid mining campaigns versus delivery of materials from Earth.”
At Least Some Metals are Available
The Psyche spacecraft recently used Mars to provide a gravitational slingshot to direct it toward its namesake. Asteroid 15 Psyche was discovered in 1852. “Psyche is irregular and potato-like. If the asteroid were sliced in half horizontally at the equator – picture a squished oval – it would measure 173 miles (280 kilometers) across at its widest point and 144 miles (232 kilometers) long. Its surface area is 64,000 square miles (165,800 square kilometers).
“Psyche is dense, estimated at about 212 to 256 pounds per cubic foot (3,400 to 4,100 kilograms per cubic meter). The surface gravity on Psyche is much less than it is on Earth – even less than it is on Earth’s Moon. On Psyche, lifting a car would feel like lifting a large dog.
“Scientists think Psyche may consist of significant amounts of metal from the core of a planetesimal, one of the building blocks of our solar system. The asteroid is most likely a survivor of multiple violent hit-and-run collisions, common when the solar system was forming.
“There are still contradictions in the data, but scientific analysis indicates that Psyche is likely made of a mixture of rock and metal, with metal composing 30% to 60% of its volume. The asteroid’s composition has been determined by radar observations and by the measurements of the asteroid’s thermal inertia (how quickly an object gains or re-radiates heat).”
The quoted material and more can be found here: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/psyche/mission-overview ; the news about the fly-by of Mars can be found here: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260525040421.htm.
Other Considerations
Of necessity, a Mars colony would have to be very small and isolated. Studies of long-term habitation in places like Antarctica and submarines show that human factors can become a serious problem. An even larger problem arises regarding returning Mars personnel to Earth, and while one-way life-long missions would no doubt attract volunteers, we have little/no data on how well even the most dedicated persons would endure such a thing. Adding a requirement to cycle personnel though the depot at Sun Earth L2 would add an expensive item to the consideration. Finally, the analysis is for a mission from the depot in low Mars orbit and back, with no provision for LMO to surface and back allowed for!
Conclusion
I admit the above analysis is rather fanciful, but I hope you can appreciate that a Mars colony could conceivable be sustained without Earth being extensively involved. It’s heartening to see that teams of scientists and engineers are working on the many difficult problems that must be solved to get to Mars, and stay. And, in spite of the obstacles involved and holes in the analysis, I must say that it fired my imagination, once again, about Humanity’s ultimate role off-planet!