Impossible? That’s a really tough standard to meet. When you weaken it to “effectively impossible” and further “without X”, you need to quantify those better before you can estimate. If you mean “one in a billion chance”, that’s about as likely as something that happens to 7-8 living humans today. If you only mean “one in a thousand”, I’d argue that the “impossible” label stops being applicable.
Then you get into the definitions of self-sustaining. Honestly, it probably_IS_ possible to create a long-term minimal-import colony, with a self-sustaining population and self-expanding territory and facilities, but not fully self-sustaining on all resources—some amount of Earth and interplanetary shipments (using earth-created equipment) would be required. And ongoing research and knowledge from the rest of humanity.
Oh, and the non-tech difficulties—there probably isn’t enough human desire to live with the constraints that such a colony would require for very long. It probably won’t happen because not enough people want to devote their lives to it.
Impossible? That’s a really tough standard to meet. When you weaken it to “effectively impossible” and further “without X”, you need to quantify those better before you can estimate. If you mean “one in a billion chance”, that’s about as likely as something that happens to 7-8 living humans today. If you only mean “one in a thousand”, I’d argue that the “impossible” label stops being applicable.
Then you get into the definitions of self-sustaining. Honestly, it probably_IS_ possible to create a long-term minimal-import colony, with a self-sustaining population and self-expanding territory and facilities, but not fully self-sustaining on all resources—some amount of Earth and interplanetary shipments (using earth-created equipment) would be required. And ongoing research and knowledge from the rest of humanity.
Oh, and the non-tech difficulties—there probably isn’t enough human desire to live with the constraints that such a colony would require for very long. It probably won’t happen because not enough people want to devote their lives to it.