Assuming a group of 25 astronauts, 12 men and 13 women...

Is that only for species that don't do selective breeding though? Like pigs and other shit?

Eh, be honest I dont know and have no training or education.

But even with careful selective breeding and punnet squares, 25 humans just don't sound like enough for shit to work.

Apparently it's calculated at 160 after a quick Google search.

Assuming by some statistical fluke that you didn't get Space Gravel Fucked.

I don't know maybe you were on the opposite side of the moon, living half a mile in the rock at the bottom of a canyon and God really likes you for some reason.

Your next issue is how self sustaining is the moon base.

Lets assume that it was built at the bottom of a hole at the pole because water ice and you have all the water and therefore fuel you need for the next few thousand yeras at least to sya nothing of Helium 3. In fact lets not say anything about Helium 3 because I'm an idiot and don't know how viable that is.

So lets assume that the survivors on this God forsaken rock are sufficiently diverse genetically. One person from each major genetic group. Massively unlikely but why not. There we go. There is enough variation to potentially keep the human race in perpetuity.

Then we need to know how technologically advanced they are. Are we talking 3D printers? Sierra Madre vending machines? Star Trek replicators? At some point you are going to have to get spare parts to keep the base working. Mechanical failure will kill you. If you can't make perfect replica parts and remove the old parts and install the new ones without disrupting the running of the base then you die.

Also moon dust is fucking lethal. It's like hay fever and then some.

And what then? If Earth is a floating debris pile begging process of coalescing then you have nowhere you can go to bat the few spaces you live in for the next half a billion years at least assuming a few microbes survived. Which isn't a guarantee.

So yes. If technologically advanced enough humanity could survive for a time, and it might be quite a long time, like a fish trapped in a bucket waiting at any moment for something to kill it.

I have no adequate picture for this so have a moon Nazi.

Nice moon nazi

Nothing. Even if they could survive, there simply isn't enough genetic diversity there to keep humanity going for more than a handful of generations. I don't give a fuck which 25 people you pick, if humanity is ever reduced to that few individuals, we're already extinct.

Thank you

I recommend watching a film called Iron Sky. It has Moon Nazis.

It boils down largely to tech levels.
You could probably build a self sufficient base/collection of bases with current tech levels, but not with as few as 25 people.

Maybe in a few hundred years.

Frozen sploog in jars.

Or frozen embryos or something maybe. 25 hosts but each child they have not actually being genetically related to anyone on the base.

Of course that puts greater importance on the female members of the mission and why the fuck would they even have frozen sploog unless they were expecting the apocalypse?

More likely they keep the original astronauts on ice and harvest eggs and sperm whenever they need to re-vitalize the failing gene-pool in generations to come.

How long until some guy kills one of the other crewman over da puss thus dooming all of humanity?

>More likely they keep the original astronauts on ice and harvest eggs and sperm whenever they need to re-vitalize the failing gene-pool in generations to come.

Genes do not work that way!

>why the fuck would they even have frozen sploog unless they were expecting the apocalypse?
This was my thought.
The tech level has to be pretty high to take a population of just 25 back to sustainable levels, in the cold depths of space, without prior planning.

Given the problem of containing a human indefinitely and the effects this has I give it 6 to 24 months. Dude might be placid as fuck until Chaddius Thundercock takes what isn't his. Then it's a matter of time.

He might be all cool about it at first but it will eat at him. This a contained situation. He can't go for a long walk to the horizon. He can't got a few towns over and start a new life.

Next thing Thaddius Thudercock has a drill bit stuck in his eye and that pales in comparison health wise to the problem of being tossed out the door sans helmet.

I would probably be in the 12 to 14 months range but that's because I'm shit at dealing with things.

Assuming the depression doesn't come first. Then we have problems of suicide and trying to mercy kill the whole base.

So already there are major problems.

One how big is the station and how technologically advanced? The space station needs constant resupplies and wouldn't last 100 years.

Two as stated before I do not think there is enough genetic diversity to keep everyone alive.

Three space is dangerous with radiation, vacuum, low or no gravity, all of this will slowly kill you.

Now lets assume it is 50 people with some sufficiently advanced technology to 3D print anything they needed. The station was also advanced and incredibly well shielded. Also assuming you have some way to mine asteroids or space debris. Along with some embryos for more genetic diversity, you may have a shot. But still it would be a very bad odds stacked against the cosmonauts

Lets say you get 12 good generations out of the original stock.

Once you reach the end of that it's just inbreeding into extinction.

So you recreate the original parings that created the second generation.

Now you can go for another 11 generations before you have to do this again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Eventually the first generation donations will harvested to depletion.

Then you have to harvest the best of the 2nd generation candidates that you better have been taking over these centuries. Then you have 10 generation long cycles.

Hopefully you kept more 2nd gen samples than the original 25. Possibly you could keep this up on 2nd gen for many thousands of years before you inevitably have to resort to 3rd gen stock

Once you get to 3rd gen stock you are down to 9 reliably good generations.

And so on and so forth.

You could telescope you generations out for hundreds of thousands of years maybe so long as the samples storage stays fresh and working.

Mechanical failure on the base will kill you first. Or Spaced shit.

This all relies on a sufficiently advanced ethnology and initial start up equipment.

Oh and this, the human psyche may break down. Bottomline is you need to account for immediate threats such as resources, immediate dangerous of space(debris, solar flares, etc). Then long term problems the constant exposure to radiation, human psyche breaking down, and genetic diversity to continue the human race.

"Seveneves" by Stephenson answers a similar question. It's a pretty good book, ditto for the science behind it.

Are there other stations? I mean any that are in Earth Orbit are pretty much fucked from gravitational crappery and asteroid bullshit, but are there any around the Moon? Mars? Out in the Asteroid Belt?

If there's even a couple of more stations and they can reach each other that -could- solve the genetic diversity issues, but you're left with all sorts of fun trying to deal with Orbital Mechanics and Debris, not to mention that most stations won't be designed to actively travel.

Hell, that sounds like a few sessions of RP right there

No. You're not adding any new genetic diversity, you're just pouring the same genes into the pool, over and over again. That doesn't work, dude.

It's more like hitting the reset button on the pool every 10 generations.

Presumably the moment the Earth decided to shatter into pieces the orbital mechanics for the remaining pieces and the moon would all be essentially fucked.

If we're talking about our current level of tech + an extra moon base that currently doesn't exist it's basically just "they're fucked, probably will off themselves within half of a year if mechanical failure doesn't get them".

By the time you have the genetic engineering expertise to "harvest" genes in that fashion you'd probably be better served just modifying genes. To get "the best" you're implying that said astronauts understand sufficiently which genetic sequences are mapped to which expressions, which expressions are most desirable for their current situation, and which sequences will have which side effects.

Ensuring that the next couple generations survive with sufficient food, nutrients, and proper emotional care knowing that they're the key to humanity's survival is also a completely different issue on top of the genetic part.

Fair point.

Although if you're going to start selecting for traits beneficial for moons survival rather than for traits that make a human "human" then we might be going into All Tomorrows horror show. Specifically Spacers and those that came from them.

Why do we need to add women to the scenario? Keep it all males or all females; the gender differences will cause unnecessary conflict.

Magical Realm is not just limited to DnD fantasy settings, so please take your forced breeding program fetish somewhere else.

...

You haven't actually read the thread have you?

I'm not going to try and claim that post-apocalypse Adam and Eve isn't something that gets some people rock hard. Where sex and union is to be celebrated rather than tolerated or even be ashamed of. God no. I'm rock hard just typing that.

This thread is not that.

This thread is maths with Habsburg.

How few people can you sustain on a moon base without it turning into Utah.

Pairing and methodically rotating pairs has been dismissed.

Now we are at artificially growing humans in a jar and throwing around where the stock material is going to come from.

Given that it's more clinical than an Icelandic dating app and as soulless ass a politician we may in fact be approaching the theoretical Null Fetish Mark, a place so devoid of love or lust that it is physically impossible to become aroused.

On the subject of which when all else fails, and if the technology allows, how about giving machines the last residue of humanity.

Maybe they will think of something, or find somewhere, that will allow humanity to live again.

It might take a few billion years and they might be far more suited to that time scale than a failing humanity.

We lived and died and by the machine lived again.

The traits that make humanity human are not necessarily what makes survival on the moon plausible, so unfortunately the premise of "kickstart human species on moon with no alternative" can essentially mean that the notions of humanity should be shifted. If you consider the ability to feel emotions and such as part of humanity, the negative emotions will likely hamper survival more so than anything. They'd have to be culled in order to improve the odds of survival. Which essentially kills humanity by such a definition.

So if the additional requirement that humanity as 21st century humans know it must remain intact is stated, then survival chances of the species will drop significantly.

The ideal solution indeed is to remove the human body entirely and adopt a machine consciousness, but even then that's assuming the tech level is high enough that a facility can be self sufficient for an indefinite amount of time. If that's true then really "humans" can survive indefinitely.

Speaking in terms of pure efficiency and given the option of transferring the consciousness into the machine, there's no advantage to having a human body on the moon. Especially if, as an AI, you can control the rest of the moon base autonomously. This last part isn't necessarily impossible either.

I so far see no problems.

Unless we can assume some seriously sci-fi tech, then they would probably starve to death eventually even before reproduction can be considered.

A: Anything that close to Earth is fucked.

B: Not enough people.

C: OP, don't be a faggot and ask Veeky Forums to do your basic research for you. You could have made this MODERATELY feasible by suggesting a Mars base, or a base on one of Jupiter's moons.

The space station has astronauts from all over the world so I don't think inbreeding will be a problem.

only for the first few generations 25 is a way to small pool maybe 2500 or something..

You might want to check out this thread for more ideas, although it is about a horror story rather than a survival one:

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=moonbase

>Heralded as one of mankind's greatest scientific achievements, the Armstrong Lunar Observatory and Research Station was also a rare example of goodwill and cooperation between nations in the increasingly war-torn 22nd Century.

>Crewed by an international team of astronauts and scientists, Armstrong L.O.R.S. was designed to be a permanent, self-sustaining lunar colony and meant to carry out myriad tests and experiments to aid in Humanity's exploration and understanding of space and the solar system.

>Despite the lofty ambitions of the astronautical community, conditions back on Earth continued to deteriorate as armed conflict between nations escalated in number and violence, eventually culminating in a world-wide nuclear exchange that left the Station and crew stranded and forgotten.

>Many, many, many years after that nuclear war Mankind has come back from the brink of destruction, reestablishing much of its former glory and even eventually renewing its interest in space travel and exploring the solar system.

>After repeated attempts to contact the abandoned Station fail, an ambitious plan is developed to send a team of astronauts up to the Moon with the goals of rehabilitating Armstrong L.O.R.S., recovering its technology, and discovering the ultimate fate of its crew.

Well, if we assume the station is safe from debris, and has a level of self sustainability like 3d printers and greenhouses, so they only need raw materials; as well as well as a few detachable reusable crafts at its disposal (most current stations keep at least 1 return capable craft docked at all times as lifeboats), with a neat stockpile of fuel (say it has been just refueled with a years worth of stationkeeping);

then realistically they would stilll be boned, but an interesting idea would be scavanging the countless goodies in orbit now: old satelites for extra fuel and spare parts, derelict or even surviving stations or ships to graft together, or join in a fleet, discarded rocket second stages to convert into storage, new crafts or living space, planet chunks for raw materials, "dirt" for the greenhouse, water and possible suriving biomass.
And technically all that was "Earth" is still there, it just needs to coalesce again, and if tehy can surive for a couple of generetaions, eventuall there should emerge a few patches of colonizable lands.

In the end imagine a huge chunk of orktek station made up form humanitys last 100 years of space debris.

Wouldn't be the first time our species had a near extinction event resulting in one hell of a bottleneck. Wouldn't be the second time, either.

Humans are actually not all that genetically diverse compared to most other species. We aren't on transmissible cancer levels like the tasmanian devils are, but by the standards of chimps we're basically fucking our siblings.

Yes, at one point our numbers were reduced to just under 100,000, which is why inbreeding is so much more dangerous for us than for other species. Reducing to 25 really would mean extinction.

An absolute minimum population needed, assuming you have the most genetic diversity available, would be around 200 individuals. That's also assuming no one dies and everyone pairs up perfectly.

But on the safe side, you'd need a few thousand. Probably a few hundred thousand just to keep things going strong.

Space stations IRL are in low earth orbit. They wouldn't even survive long enough for that to happen.

It's been a while since I looked at the minimum population equation, but % chance of mutation was a factor. It introduces dangerous recessives but also adds some variation, so overall you can fudge the minimum population a little.

Keep some sperm and eggs frozen. Hope that either we develop gene modding technology, we develop self-perpetuating/improving AI that can eventually develop gene moddong technology, or some modestly-benevolent aliens find our gene stores long after we're gone.

GENETIC DIVERSITY IS NOT NECESSARILY A GOOD THING.

INBREEDING IS NOT NECESSARILY A BAD THING.

If your genetic diversity brings in crap genes, it's crap.

If your inbreeding doesn't pass on crap genes, it's fine.

That said, 25 astronauts (who tend to be fitter than typical humans, but at this point not genetically screened to reject applicants with bad genes) reproducing sexually in the normal fashion probably means gg humans no re.

That's just of course counting raw genetics. You also have to figure out general tech level, purpose of the station, location of the station, nature of the cataclysm that killed everyone, specifics of the station (energy source, radiation shielding, resources, size, etc.). For instance, 25 random scientists on the moon or Mars doing short-term science in a near-future setting would be screwed, while a "maintenance" crew for an off-world "SHTF-for-humanity-on-Earth" that had been genetically screened themselves, and had gene modification tech, artificial wombs, maybe a genesis device, etc., would be much better off.

>suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=moonbase

Holy shit they recycled the Starring Woman. She's becoming a meme on her own. This thread still has a legacy years later.

This is not a matter of "crap" gene, there is no such thing, this is a matter of recessive genes that have absolutely no incidence when you have normal mix that come back to bite you in the ass when you have such a limited pool. There is no screening for genes that are not a factor, nor for subsequent mix of genes that might become a problem for offsprings.

OP's question is the exact subject of a recent Sf book, 2015 or 2014, but the name eludes me right now.

I was told there are airships in that film. Is it true?

It worked for the Grineer whoops bad example

No.

They are space ships that just look like air ships.

Well that sucks. But as long as there are hot nazi babes in leather uniforms..

A friend of mine ran the numbers a while back for a BSG game, he said ~1000 if you can handpick disease-gene-free individuals with impeccable genetic analysis, ~5000 with a normal pop if you heavily enforce eugenic breeding and ~10,000 otherwise.

>Now we are at artificially growing humans in a jar and throwing around where the stock material is going to come from.
Hol' up there pardner.

Getting stuck in a can while having genetic material forcibly extracted from you is still a fetish.

My jimmies are so fucking rustled by this thread.

First of all, while the flight path of the station would be disturbed, it is very unlikely to be destabilized. Whoever said they keep space stations in geosynchronous orbit is an idiot, they keep the ISS in Low Earth Orbit (about 400 kilometers, though the specific distance changes every day) and there is no reason to build one further away than that. For any kind of cataclysm that is strong enough to wipe the Earth without also wiping the station, the Earth's remains will stay close together and re-form into a sphere over time (keeping there same center of gravity for the station orbit around), since there wouldn't have been nearly enough energy to send anything larger than a grain of sand beyond the atmosphere.

Earth probably slowly gets a ring like Saturn (color depends on whether the cataclysm kicked up mostly rock or ice) over the course of the next million years as those particles that did manage to get blown into orbit eventually converge on a single plane.

You might be thinking that the station's orbit will take it through the particle field and kill it. That only happens in movies with a questionable grasp of physics like Gravity. The station is effected by the same forces as the particulates, and will be flying at the same speed as anything that is at the same altitude as it. There will be a chance of a collision with something in an elliptical orbit that passes through the station's flight path, but you have to keep in mind that space - even in LEO - is Really, REALLY big, so the chances are literally astronomical, so the station retains essentially the same chance of getting hit as it had before.

You guys seem to forget that cheetahs all descend from literally one breeding family. Humans would be fine, especially with intelligence to breed correctly and surgical techniques to remove mutations, not to mention genetic engineering. They could probably find a few frozen corpses in the ruins of earth anyway, making the whole point moot.

It'd break down a lot faster, considering they all just watched everything they know and love die.

>Maybe they will think of something, or find somewhere, that will allow humanity to live again.

That sounds like the plot of a Mega Man game.

Does that AI know how to reproduce itself? If not, you run into the same situation in which it'll eventually fail, and with it humanity.