When Elon Musk announced that he wanted to plant a colony of 80,000 people on Mars in his lifetime, a few thoughts went through my head in (roughly) this order:
- That’s an awfully long supply chain if things go wrong
- Somebody is going to be responsible for administering the whole thing
- That has to be the toughest job in history
- They’ll need to be solar-class experts in many areas, or able to learn them in a hurry
- There ought to be a handbook for this sort of thing

Obviously, it would more closely resemble a library, rather than a “For Dummies” type book.
Equally obviously, there would be a large team responsible, with many kinds of experts engaged in their own particular specialties.
Somebody would ultimately be responsible though.
Call them the CEO. Or the First Mayor of Mars. That person will need to have at least some understanding of each of the different subject areas of their team. Continue reading