Introduction

Atlas is a fictional company that was started in 2015 by a group of visionary innovators and capital venture investors. The mission innovation of the Atlas Corporation is to begin colonization of Mars by 2025 and Asteroid Belt mining operations by 2030. The company comprises of various business units to include Space, Mining, and Research and Development. The company will begin executing the first phases of the mission to Mars this year by gathering and staging resources needed for the mission in Earth Orbit. The second phase will be to send everything to Mars orbit and to selected landing sites suitable for colonization by machines and robots. The third phase, once all habits and facilities have been constructed will be to send human astronauts to the Martian surface. By 2030, robotic mining operations will begin to extract minerals and other resources for the Mars colony and return to Earth for processing.

Scope

There are several innovative features that will benefit the mission. Four will be briefly described. The first innovative feature includes a unique ion propulsion system that will significantly reduce space travel time for the missions from Earth to Mars in conjunction with gravity assisted slingshots if applicable given time constraints and celestial body orbital positioning and alignment. The ion engine will be less reliant on traditional propellants and use less to get to faster speeds. Current technology gets spacecraft to Mars within seven months at a speed of 24,600 mph with a distance of 480 million kilometers (NASA, 2020). Earth and Mars are only aligned in such a way to minimize travel and expense every 26 months (Drake, n.d.). The second feature will make use of a new shielding technology that will shield the spacecraft vehicles, astronauts, and electronics equipment from damage from radiation from the sun, Jupiter, and interstellar cosmic rays. The shielding will use a combination of ionized water in tanks around all sensitive compartments and electromagnets to produce a charge that keeps particles and other small debris from penetrating the crafts hull surfaces. The third feature will employ the use of a type of hyper-sleep that will reduce the burden of long duration spaceflight. Some of the flights will take upward of 4-9 months with the new ion propulsion systems. The hyper-sleep feature of the Mars spaceflights include a combination of lowered body temperature and cutting edge pharmaceutical drugs to significantly reduce the human metabolism. A fourth feature involves the use of a revolutionary deep space communications relay network of positioning orbital relays at various points in orbit between Earth and Mars to speed up communications. The main limitation of the Mars colonization innovation involves the cooperation of governments and regulatory inhibitions, access to finances, and selection of suitable human astronauts for long space/planetary mission duration.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the innovation of establishing a colony on Mars contains several reasons for embarking on this monumental endeavor. For the scientific advancement to the body of knowledge, searching for life on Mars is the primary purpose. The second reason is to accelerate humankind’s footprint further into the cosmos. Our venturing outside of the confines of Earth and lunar orbits is long overdue. The third reasoning, is scientific research and discovery in the areas of geology, climatology, and other types of research. The fourth purpose is financial in nature, in the search for new valuable resources, such as precious metals and other materials that are not in abundance on Earth that could be used to facilitate the mass escalation of various technologies that can benefit humans, nature, and the planet.

Supporting Forces

The main supporting force that is heralding colonization of Mars is with two parts. The first part is scientific in nature as the majority of discoveries have already been made and saturated for what scientists and researchers can achieve on Earth. The need to push to the stars to further scientific research and discovery is a major force to facilitating this supporting force. The second part is financial. As there is no limit to the ingenuity of humans in creating vast economies of scale, the forces of centralized government seek to curtail economic freedoms throughout the world. Aiming for Mars and eventually to the Asteroid Belt will create vast new economies that will employ millions of people that would otherwise be placed onto universal basic income and disincentivized to innovate and contribute to economies of scale. The stars are where financial markets and business should look to herald in the next fifth economic revolution to access to materials, resources, and technologies not accessible on Earth.

Challenging Forces

The primary challenging forces are government regulation and interference and fiscal constraints for Earth. Regarding space, the challenging forces will be the lethal dangers inherent within space, i.e., the vacuum, radiation, fire, and asteroid debris strikes. Other challenges are the extreme distances from Earth Atlas control and Mars. It can take approximately five to twenty minutes for communications to traverse through the vacuum of space between the two planets. To help overcome this hurdle, relay orbiters will be positioned along orbital routes between Earth and Mars along with the construction of an Atlas deep space network (DSN) on both planets. This DSN can also be used to communicate with the eventual robotic missions in the Asteroid belt.

Methods

The method of choice to efficiently engage with Atlas scientific and managerial stakeholders will be the Delphi Method. The Delphi Method is one of several effective group decision making techniques or methods that enable participants to effectively collaborate within a team on crucial and substantive decisions. This method is defined as a communication architecture that has as its objective to effectively produce a detailed critical examination and subsequent discission (Green, 2014). The Delphi Method was devised and developed by Project RAND during the 1950s time period to forecast the effect of various forms of technology on modern warfare of the time (RAND, n.d.). This methodology was used to develop consensus amongst experts after repeating numerous rounds of group feedback anonymously, which was then used to forecast future attacks by an enemy (Nasa et al., 2021).

The Delphi Method uses a panel of experts regarding the topic with each expert tasked with constructing an anonymous prediction. The Atlas experts and participants are all anonymous in addition to their predictions. This is to ensure that none of the attributes of the participants will become a factor in affecting the predictive outcome (Nana et al., 2021). The process involves the development of the initial Delphi probe or question, expert panel selection, first round of questionnaire, collection and analysis of the round 1 responses from the experts, feedback, formulation of the second questionnaire with round 1 modification, repeat again for a round three, analysis of the final results, and distribution of the results to the panelists (Green, 2014).

This method will especially be effective regarding the high stakes nature of the missions and the extreme distances from key decision makers of the corporation. Several panels of experts across a vast swathe of disciplines will need to be employed to help make critical and crucial decisions regarding the unmanned and manned spaceflight and colonization missions.

Models

The following illustration (Figure 1) illustrates the generalized socio-technical innovation transitions between the socio-technical landscape, socio-technical system, and niche-innovations that can be applied to the effects of getting humans from Earth to the surface of Mars (Geels, 2018).

Figure 1

Spaceflight To Mars Socio-Technical Innovation Transitions

Analytical Plan

Given the inherent complexity of space travel, let alone piloted space flight and putting humans on celestial bodies, a sociotechnical systems analysis (STSA) is required to address the numerous problems that come with such an ambitious and challenging venture. One method that could be employed to conduct an STSA for getting people to Mars is the CUBE, which has bee used on research involving aviation to healthcare safety. The CUBE explores four specific domains such as the system, culture, action, and making sense of it all (Callan et al., 2022).

The culture domain represents the common pattern of general assumptions and comprehension of the STSA. The common sense-making examines how individuals operate within the system(s) and how they make sense of it all, via practical application. System functioning explores how the systems actually functions and brings together formal and informal aspects. The action domain examines how everyone behaves within the system, based on knowledge, information, and comprehension of what occurs within the system and is measurable providing an analysis at different levels regarding individual acts, team performance, activities, and a end results, process, or other aspects that are correlated to the performance of the system.

The STSA CUBE seeks to bring together a comprehension of the different domains regarding approaches and elements that may lack oversight if the organization only focuses on one aspect. The four domains can be further explored as goals, process sequences, social relations, and information and knowledge. Table 1 illustrates the interrelationships between these aspects (Callan et al., 2022).

System Action	Culture Making Sense of It All
Goals	Getting humans onto Mars
Process	Engineering the spacecraft, preparation of crewed spaceflight, staging of spacecraft and personnel, space travel, landing on Mars, establishing a colony
Social	Ensuring that humans are prepared for long spaceflight duration, long duration on other planetary surface, social interdynamics of spaceflight and Mars colonization
Information and Knowledge	Collection of scientific data during active mission, analysis of data collected, analysis of physics and orbital dynamics, exploration of radiation dangers during spacecraft and on Martian surgace

Table 1

CUBE Diagram

Anticipated Results

The social impact of the changes that will result from the end goal achievement of colonizing Mars will be significant toward the human race as a whole and indicative of the overall technological achievement. With a focus on other worlds and world building, a common focus and harmony for humans could an end result with people, organizations, and governments working together in a way that was not possible prior. On the other hand, there could also be severe and adverse socioeconomic implications of this as well. Societal problems current inherent today, could be further exasperated with less focus on their resolution and mitigation. Overall, the anticipated results will be a net positive for humanity regarding extending reach to the inner solar system and potentially interstellar to other star systems once advanced propulsion technologies have been achieved.

Conclusion

Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) Theory is one of the oldest theories in the social science realm, developed by E.M. Rogers in 1962. This theory attempts to provide an explanation of how an idea, product, or other service can obtain momentum and spread through targeted populations and social structures over a given time. A final result of this diffusive spread is that society adopts a new concept, behavior, or product wherein people act or behave in a manner that is quite different from what they were previously doing. Society must conclude that the perception of the idea, behavior, or product as something new and full of innovation (LaMorte, W., 2022).

The primary stakeholders regarding this theory are the innovators, early adopters, the pre-majority, the late majority, and the ones that are slow to make the adoption. The innovators are the ones who have the vision and drive to make the goal of humans on Mars. This, of course, is not possible with intense and structured cooperation and financing, which is key. The early adopters are the ones that may have an interest in trying out the technology and establish the common occurrence within society as a whole. The early majority are people that make it possible for the use of an innovation within the whole of society and general population once they see what humans on Mars and ultimately Asteroid Belt mining can do for them in terms of better technology and societal harmony toward a common goal of space exploration. The late majority of the population will eventually adopt the innovation of the concepts and technologies derived from the missions into their daily lives. The ones that are slow to adopt the innovation are generally risk-averse, stubborn, and conservative in their methods of daily activities. Once they see the benefits of Mars colonization, they may begin to use it, but may ultimately be forced into using the technologies once economies and cultures have already adopted them. This part of the population tends to be inherently skeptical of overall change as a result of Mars inhabitation (Halton, 2021).

There are several phases or stages at which societal members will adopt innovation and participating in the diffusion or spreading process. This precludes an awareness of the necessity for innovation, a conscious decision to adopt or even to reject the innovation, the beginning of the usage of the innovation and testing it, and finally the continued practical utility of using the innovation in society or an organization. These phases can be depicted as five primary factors that can affect the adoption of an innovation (LaMorte, W., 2022).

The first factor that can influence the acceptance of innovative ideas or technologies is the aspect of a relative advantage of people seeing if it is more beneficial than the idea, system, or product that it seeks to replace. The second factor deals with compatibility and how the innovation is able to be consistent with any values, experiences, and requirements of the people prior to general adoption. The third factor is with complexity and if the innovation is too difficult to comprehend or utilize. The fourth factor deals with triability an how an innovation can be either tested or experimented with before people decide to adopt it. The fifth factor regarding innovation is with observability and if it can provide results that are tangible (LaMorte, W., 2022).

There are several limitation of the diffusion of innovation theory which include that much of the evidence regarding this theory does not facilitate a participative method towards adoption of the innovation. Behavioral adoption usually performs better than stopping or preventing behaviors. The theory also does not preclude people’s possessive resources or social supportive systems prior to the adoption of the fresh behavior or innovative idea, system, or product (LaMorte, W., 2022).

Areas of Future Research

There is a definitive need for further research into spaceflight, more efficient orbital mechanics, advanced or even exotic propulsion systems, hyper sleep technologies, and other means of protecting personnel and equipment from the ravages of solar and cosmic radiation during spaceflight and after colonization begins. Further research should also be conducted to prepare for scenario planning of how the achievement of landing people and colonies on Mars and the Asteroid Belt will affect societies and economies here on Earth.

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