Midway

Double

Terran Union 1.1 means adding a second planet with its moons Phobos, Deimos and the adjacent asteroid belt as a full partner to the hegemony.

Terran Union 1.0 prepared humanity for Terran Union 1.1.

The potential is to double the human population capacity that the Earth plus Luna has by adding Mars, Phobos, Deimos and the adjacent asteroid belt as third full Terran Union member.

It is also likely that resource diversity expands with Terran Union 1.1.

The challenge is the Martian atmosphere is negligible and there is no protection from cosmic radiation like what Earth has and Luna has, partially.

Although parallel exploration of Luna and Mars continued side-by-side for decades, the brief Earth-Luna round trip of a few days versus the Earth-Mars round trip of years favored the less expensive Luna development over Martian colonization.

Of course, it is necessary to have a presence on Mars, Phobos and Deimos to oversee robotic operations and perform tasks that the robotic technology couldn't do but, generally, robotic operations is far more cost effective and interplanetary space flight and Mars are toxic to humans.

So, the switch from robotic exploration to an expansion in human presence occurred much sooner on Luna than it did on Mars.

The push for deeper and more comprehensive exploration continued for the asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud and neighbor stars.

Phobos & Deimos

Some information from NASA:

From ChatGPT 2021: known Phobos, Deimos resources

Phobos & Deimos, Mars' moons, is thought to contain various resources that could be of interest for future exploration and potential utilization. Some of the resources that have been hypothesized to exist on Phobos & Deimos include Water Ice: There's evidence suggesting the presence of water ice on Phobos & Deimos, which could be a vital resource for future human missions to Mars. Water could be used for drinking, growing plants, and even producing rocket fuel through electrolysis. Regolith: The surface of Phobos & Deimos is covered in a layer of regolith, which consists of loose, fragmented material. This regolith could potentially contain useful minerals and metals, though further exploration is needed to confirm their presence and abundance. Metals: Phobos & Deimos is believed to contain significant amounts of metals such as iron and nickel. These metals could potentially be mined for use in construction and manufacturing processes. Carbonaceous Material: Phobos & Deimos may also contain carbonaceous material, which could be of interest for scientific study and potentially for extracting resources such as organic compounds. Exploration missions to Phobos & Deimos such as sample return missions or robotic mining missions, would provide valuable data to better understand the composition and potential resource abundance of this moon.

In other words, NASA in 2021 can only speculate what resources are available to us.

Once the human presence expanded on Mars, the Terran Union accepted business bids to complete the mapping of resource locations within the asteroid belt.

Then followed the financing of robotic mining within the belt.

Resources found on Phobos & Deimos are likely common on asteroids and the massive size of the asteroid belt suggest a greater diversity including other resources.

Because of the weight limit of current rocket technology, robotic operations on Mars, Phobos and Deimos surveying deep resource deposits will require robots constructed and transported from Luna where the weight limit of rockets is much larger.

That means, of course, that Luna not Earth is the platform for human expansion on Mars.

It also means the upper limit of human and robot population expand far beyond 10 billion in the transition from Terran Union 1.0 to Terran Union 1.1.

Human perspectives about many things will change as 2024 becomes 2099.