Category Archives: Mars Colony

Elon Musk has ruffled some feathers yet again on Twitter. This time, the SpaceX CEO decided to talk about extending human life to Mars in reply to another tweet. Known cryptocurrency influencer and YouTuber Matt Wallace tweeted on Saturday, Elon Musk (with a net worth equal to 861 billion Dogecoin) is now richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined! The tweet at once caught Musk's attention. He replied, Hopefully enough to extend life to Mars.

While the original tweet received around 31,700 likes, Musk's reply has garnered over 77,100 likes and has been retweeted more than 4,300 times at the time of writing.

Wallace replied to Musk's tweet and wrote, "Very very excited about seeing humans on Mars."

An account called DOGECOIN (@Investments_CEO), named after one of Musk's so-called favourite cryptocurrencies, replied, "We have your back every step of the way." Wallace commented, "Elon loves Dogecoin and Dogecoin loves Elon."

Another Dogecoin fan asked Musk if the crypto coin would be made the official currency of Mars. Wallace replied that Dogecoin "is the way to go!"

But Musk's tweet also received criticism and harsh reactions from many users. A user (@TobyDtheman) asked Musk why he is planning to invest that huge sum of money to go to Mars when he could use it to improve the conditions on Earth. "I get it it's cool but is it really necessary?" wrote the user.

Another user (@TrashyRatchet) wrote on similar lines. "How many tiny house developments on Earth could you build with that?" the user replied to Musk's tweet.

However, some users applauded Musk's "global intentions" that aimed at making the human species "multi-planetary."

It's clear that Musk has divided the Internet with his one-line tweet.

Cryptocurrency is an unregulated digital currency, not a legal tender and subject to market risks. The information provided in the article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, trading advice or any other advice or recommendation of any sort offered or endorsed by NDTV. NDTV shall not be responsible for any loss arising from any investment based on any perceived recommendation, forecast or any other information contained in the article.

More here:

Elon Musks Tweet About Extending 'Life to Mars' With His Dogecoins Gets Mixed Reaction - Gadgets 360

Jeff Bezos went to space again a little while ago. This time he brought William Shatner, the actor best known for playing Captain Kirk in the original series Star Trek. This was the newest launch in what has come to be referred to as The Billionaire Space Race, a battle between the worlds richest to privatize and commercialize space travel before anyone else.

Previous milestones in the race include Elon Musks founding of SpaceX, Richard Bransons company, Virgin Galactic making a successful trip into space this past summer, and Bezos making his first trip to space just a few days later.

By all measures, Im someone who should be incredibly excited about the prospect of space travel and exploration. I grew up watching Star Trek, and space documentaries. I excitedly watched every single video that Cmdr. Chris Hadfield posted from the International Space Station and devoured every update from the Mars Rovers. Space is really cool and my childhood heroes were the people who wanted to explore it.

The billionaires have killed that excitement for me, though. The appeal of shows like Star Trek, and books and movies like The Martian was that they presented space exploration as something noble. It was about boldly going where no one had gone before, to learn new things and to come together as human beings. Maybe it was idealistic, maybe it was simplistic, but this isnt how I imagined the next chapter of human space exploration unfolding, and Im really not a fan.

The Billionaire Space Race isnt about exploration or learning, its about the worlds wealthiest men showing off their wealth while simultaneously scheming up ways to get richer. There are always people who will make the argument that theres a net positive to all of this, that this privatization of space will lead to new technologies and innovations and that well all be better off for it.

The thing is though, the people going to space right now arent scientists, theyre not astronauts or engineers, theyre just people who are rich and famous enough to be able to afford to keep launching things into the atmosphere until they stick.

This iteration of the space race just seems so pointless to me, its not really about science or technology, no matter what some people might be claiming, its about tourism and money.

The other argument that gets made, particularly by people who are cheering for Musk, is that humanity needs a backup plan. Musk and SpaceX aim to send colonists to Mars by 2050. Musk himself has admitted that a lot of people are probably going to die in the beginning, and sure, space travel has always been dangerous, but thats why we dont let just anyone do it.

When Musk says he wants to send colonists to space, hes not talking about astronauts, hes not talking about scientists or pilots or people who have any kind of specialized training, hes talking about regular people. Combine that with the fact that, in the same interview, he said that there would be loans available for people who cant pay for their own way to get to Mars, that theyll be able to work off upon arrival, and it starts to sound like the beginning of a dystopian movie.

Thats not even to mention the climate crisis that were seeing the effects of here on Earth. There are problems that we need to solve, right here on this planet, problems that will not be solved by billionaires building rocket ships and launching themselves into space. When even Prince William and the rest of the Royal Family are calling for a more grounded approach, thats when you have to start thinking that maybe, just maybe, its a needless display of wealth and excess rather than a noble humanitarian pursuit.

Dont get me wrong, I absolutely believe that humanity should be reaching for the stars, but we should be doing it for the right reason, and it shouldnt be an excuse to avoid the problems that exist right here on earth.

Continue reading here:

How the billionaires ruined space - Brock Press

EDGEWATER, MD Sitting in South River Colony, this 8,800-square-foot mansion is breathtaking. Its most luxurious feature is the heated in-ground saltwater pool. A spacious pool house sits steps away with an outdoor kitchen and a finished bathroom.

Head to the listing on Redfin.com to see more pictures.

Through the screened-in porch lies an opulent interior. A butler's pantry leads from the formal dining and sitting rooms to the kitchen and the breakfast area.

The main living space lies beneath two-story ceilings and a wall of windows. Three gas fireplaces are scattered throughout the first floor. The fourth adorns the upstairs primary suite.

The main bedroom impresses with its double doors, tray ceiling and private lounge.

The ensuite bathroom is equally stunning. Highlights include a chandelier, dual vanities and a stand-alone tub.

The finished walk-out basement completes the property with its bar, second kitchen and media room. This lifestyle could be yours for just under $1.6 million.

Read the full description below and visit Redfin.com to see all 129 photos.

This listing appeared on redfin.com. For more information and photos, click here.

Visit link:

Edgewater Mansion With Heated Saltwater Pool Listed For $1.6M - Patch.com

Apple TV+ continues to kill it when it comes to fantastic science fiction TV series, and its adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, overseen by David S. Goyer, is full of surprises, the perfect way to adapt the classic sci-fi fable of a failing galactic empire, a space opera of truly epic proportions. Now that it's been officially renewed for a second season, there's no better time than now to catch up if you haven't started watching yetand in case you need one more incentive, we have an exclusive clip from the next episode, dropping Friday.

Things aren't looking good for the Foundation, the collective of human engineers, scientists, and philosophers established by Hari Seldon on a far-off planet at the edge of the galaxy. The colony on the planet Terminus is being menaced by a ship full of soldiers from Anacreon, who want revenge on the Empire for the neutron bombing of their planet as revenge for the destruction of the Empire's enormous space elevator. Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), Terminus' Warden, has failed to protect the citizens of her city and is on the run, trying to figure out a way to fight off the Anacreon threat.

In the clip, she and her lover Hugo (Daniel MacPherson) have a spirited argument about their next steps, and Hardin is paralyzed by the fear of making a wrong step and dooming the Foundation forever. In Asimov's book, mastermind Hari Seldon predicted a number of crises that would hit the Foundation in the coming decades after its formation, and, depending on how the citizens of the Foundation handle them, their decisions would set the course for the Foundation'sand the entire galaxy'sfuture.

"'An entire galaxy can pivot around the actions of an individual,'" Hardin says, quoting Seldon's explanation of why it's easier to predict the movements of large groups of people, rather than one single person. Hardin has found herself right in the middle of the Foundation's first crisis, and it's up to her to save everything she's ever lived for.

Read more from the original source:

The Fate of a Whole Galaxy Rests on One Person in This Exclusive 'Foundation' Clip - Thrillist

The latest iteration of Dune, set to hit theaters October 22, will serve as a potent reminder of our troubled relationship with water, particularly as we manage the catastrophic effects of climate change and increasingly venture out into space.

While reading Dune as a 16-year-old, I suddenly developed a surprisingly low tolerance for the wasting of water. I took shorter showers, finished every glass of water, and refused to let the tap run for any longer than required. Even rainy days started to feel different, and not such an intrusion. The novel tends to have that effect on people, owing to its portrayal of extreme water scarcity and the radical measures taken to sustain life on a desert planet.

Most of the story takes place on Arrakis, a desert planet inhabited by a fierce indigenous group known as the Fremen. These people have adapted to the harsh conditions on Arrakis, finding ways to conserve even the tiniest drops of water, while making the wasting of water a literal crime against humanity.

Timothe Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica. Image: Warner Bros.

A key technological adaptation is the stillsuit. This full-body outfit preserves as much of the bodys moisture as possible, allowing the Fremen to venture out into the desert. As Liet Kynes, the fictional ecologist of Arrakis, said: With a Fremen suit in good working order you wont lose more than a thimbleful of moisture a day.

Even after death, a Fremen is expected to donate their bodys water to the group, in what is a very important funerary ritual. As the Fremen saying goes, A mans flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.

So rare is water on this planet that the Freman can scarcely imagine tales of lakes and oceans on other worlds. To them, its the stuff of fantasy. For us on Earth, however, its very much reality. And wow, do we ever take our water for granted.

Indeed, Earth is nothing like Arrakis, as water covers over 70% of our planets surface. Most of this is the salt water in our oceans (96.5% to be exact), but if all the fresh liquid water on Earth was gathered together, it would create a sphere measuring 169.5 miles (272.8 km) in diameter, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The worlds water: The largest blue sphere represents the total volume of all water on Earth; the second largest represents all fresh liquid water in the ground, lakes, swamps, and rivers; and the smallest sphere represents freshwater in lakes and rivers only. Image: USGS

Water, an indispensable requirement for life, is not equally distributed around the world. Earth is no Arrakis, but some people live in places that are becoming increasingly Arrakis-like. The World Resources Institute estimates that 1.8 billion peoplea quarter of the worlds populationinhabit countries that experience water stress. The Middle East and North Africa are among the most water-stressed places on Earth, but the U.S., with 10 states categorized as experiencing high or extreme water stress, is not immune.

A stark reminder of Americas water inequities occurred this past summer, when the Colorado River system, the largest water supply system in the West, experienced its first-ever shortage. Declining access to freshwater is the result of pollution, extreme heat and drought, and the overuse of water for agriculture and other purposes.

Map showing regions on Earth with extremely high water stress. Image: World Resources Institute

Globally, the situation is only going to get worse. A 2019 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of ongoing desertification as the result of frequent heat waves. From 1961 to 2010, the advance of deserts in dryland areas increased by approximately 1% each year, and some 500 million people have been affected by desertification since 1980, according to the report. The IPCC says changes to land use, including deforestation, have exacerbated these climate trends, particularly in south and east Asia.

Theres plenty of water on Earthits just notoriously difficult and expensive to transport. A potential solution to the problem is industrial-scale desalination, in which salt is removed from ocean water. The good news is that desalination plants can run on solar power, so itll likely be only a matter of time before we see wide-scale adoption.

Osvaldo Sala, an ecologist from the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, appreciates how much the upcoming film could influence public opinion on matters having to do with water scarcity and our approach to dryland areas.

Water allocation is a complicated legal issue thats driven by high-level politics, he explained in a video call. This issue is mostly driven by our values and political power, but we have a more humble message.

That message, he said, is that deserts are not empty, nor are they devoid of value. Drylands, he explained, are very diverse from a biological point of view, featuring many animals, plants, and microbes. Deserts, he added, are also culturally rich. Instead of misusing or ignoring deserts, we should work to preserve them and ensure their ecological sustainability moving forward.

Its a message the Fremen would most certainly rally behind. The Fremen, despite their hardships, have adapted to and even celebrate their sand-filled world. As Herbert writes in Dune, Polish comes from the cities; wisdom comes from the desert.

Celina Osuna, assistant director at the Desert Humanities Initiative, said there are lessons to be learned from the Fremen approach, such as viewing water and not the spice melangethe enabler of faster-than-light travel in Duneas the most valuable resource on Arrakis. Osuna notes that the canal system upgraded by the Salt Water Project of Arizona was originally built by the Hohokam people.

This canal system is based on the contributions of Indigenous people, and these stewards are still around, she said. Their world views are crucial for understanding deserts in less exotic waysthat is, as our homes, and as places where we can adapt and thrive.

For most of us, water is ubiquitous, and we forget how difficult it might be to access water when living and working in space. Its tough to transport water even here on Earths surface, and even tougher to transport it to beyond our gravity well owing to its tremendous weight and bulk. For crew members aboard the International Space Station, this has resulted in an approach to water that can only be described as very Fremen-like.

We recycle about 90% of all water-based liquids on the space station, including urine and sweat, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir explained in a September 2020 article. What we try to do aboard the space station is mimic elements of Earths natural water cycle to reclaim water from the air. And when it comes to our urine on ISS, todays coffee is tomorrows coffee!

Liet Kynes would be proud of this approach and of NASAs Environmental Control and Life Support System, which makes the recycling of water possible. In addition to urine and sweat, the Water Recovery System recycles the water used for showers and the moisture produced by breathing.

ISS astronauts arent equipped with Fremen stillsuits, so the recycling of urine is a bit more involved. The urine thats gathered is pumped into a distillation assembly, where a centrifuge forces the urine to its outer walls. The urine is heated, causing water to evaporate from the waste. Condensation then returns the vapor to a liquid state. This still-unclean water is pumped into a tank, where it mixes with other recovered water, such as sweat and cabin moisture. Pressure in the tank removes any stinky gas from the liquid, which is then delivered to a reactor that kills unwanted organic compounds and microorganisms with intense heat.

The process provides upwards of 3,600 liters (950 gallons) of recycled water each year. Recent upgrades to the system mean that overall water recovery is approaching 94%, which is damned impressive. That said, NASA is striving for 98% total recovery as it prepares for the Artemis missions to the Moon and an eventual crewed mission to Mars. NASA says the same tech could be used on Earth in places where water is scarcea prospect thats both futuristic and dystopian at the same time. In case youre wondering, fecal waste is not processed, but NASA is looking into that possibility.

NASAs Water Recovery System is not a straightforward solution, and its a reminder of the hoops we have to jump through to provide water to people living and working in space. Which brings us to Mars.

With its two moons and sprawling deserts, Mars is probably the most Arrakis-like planet in our solar system. And like Arrakis, the fourth planet from the Sun is seriously lacking in accessible water.

This wasnt always the case. The Red Planet was once accented in blue, as sprawling oceans covered the surface over a billion years ago. Much of this water was lost to space, but a good portion of it managed to stay behind. Theres so much ice at the polar caps that, if it all melted, the resulting water would cover the planet to depth of 65 feet (20 meters), according to Stefano Nerozzi, a postdoctoral research associate from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

Nerozzi says Mars is a hyper-arid desert by Earths standards.

Due to the very low atmospheric pressure, water can only exist as vapor or ice near the surface, he explained in an email. The atmosphere is extremely dry, containing only a tiny fraction of the water vapor compared to Earths, far too little to extract any meaningful amount. In fact, water management on a Martian human base will need to be extremely strict to preserve what is likely the most precious resource on the planetjust like a sietch on Arrakis!

Interestingly, research from 2020 suggests liquid water may lie buried at the Martian south pole, but this work remains controversial. If it is liquid, however, this water is probably very slushy and salty.

Researchers with the Subsurface Water Ice Mapping (SWIM) team have used satellites to find likely places where buried ice might be located on Marswork thats being used to support the selection of future landing sites. Matthew Chojnacki, a research scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, said these scientists really did an excellent job of identifying subsurface frozen water ice across the northern mid-latitudes of Mars that could benefit future human explorers.

Chojnacki and his colleagues at PSI are hoping to conduct a follow-up study in which they would map water-ice indicators, such as polygon-shaped terrain, glacial-like landforms, and concentric crater fill.

The onset of spring at the Martian north pole. Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

That water will be needed on Mars is obvious. Colonists will need to quench their thirst, grow crops, and process water into fuel for rockets. Trouble is, shipping water to Mars from Earth would be an awkward, time consuming, andmost importantlyprohibitively expensive ordeal.

More realistically, colonists will have to source water directly on Mars. Settlements might have to be built near the polar regions, allowing for quick access to the Martian ice sheets. This water probably wont be immediately potable, requiring desalination and other measures to remove dust and ensure purity.

Mars is hard, Mars is dry! Chojnacki wrote in an email. Its going to take a big effort to actually make these resources, he said. While human Mars mission plans are still in the conceptual stage, accessing and utilizing that water will be a daunting challenge.

Nerozzi said the polar caps are some of the most inhospitable places on its surface, which means any future human explorers are more likely to settle closer to the equator, where the climate is warmer and more forgiving. Problem is, sources of water near the equator are quite scarce.

The soil is usually very dry, although in some places there might be hydrated minerals that hold water in their crystalline structure, Nerozzi explained. This water is difficult to extract, but not impossible: humans would need ovens to break the chemical bonds of water in hydrated minerals and a condensation and filtration system to make it drinkable.

Debris-covered glaciers in the mid-latitudes could provide other sources of water, though settlers would likely have to use heavy excavation equipment to reach the concealed ice. Nerozzi said the terrain on these glaciers is very rough to even walk on, making these abundant water ice reservoirs very difficult to access.

Failing this, deliquescence might be another option for the prospective colonists, in which water is collected from the atmosphere similar to the fictional moisture vaporators in Star Wars (George Lucas, it needs to be said, borrowed heavily from Dune, which Frank Herbert published in 1965). Offworld, industrial-scale deliquescence remains within the realm of science fiction, and its not immediately clear if the Martian atmosphere can generate the required volumes of water.

Indeed, theres still much we dont know about how and where well source water on Mars, but its a problem in need of a solution.

Dune serves as a reminder that we should never take water for granted. Sadly, our species is increasingly dealing with water insecurity, frequent heat waves, and burgeoning rates of desertification.

Human-induced climate change has a lot to do with current environmental problems, and the result is that tiny versions of Arrakis are appearing across the globe. As Dune reminds us, we probably wont find it easy to seek shelter in outer space, as the cosmos is filled with inhospitable hellscapes. So we must take care of Earththe most valuable planet in the known universe. And not let our fear get the better of us.

Read more:

After Dune, Youll Never Think About Water the Same Way Again - Gizmodo

The St. Regis Hotel and Residences on Longboat Keyreceived final approval Wednesday to develop a five-star resort at the site of the former The Colony and Tennis Resort, this time with unanimous support from the Town Commission.

However, the approvalwasn't without extensive discussion from Longboat Key's commissioners after the town's staff discovered the parking requirements for the hotel portion of the project had notbeen met.

Previously, some Longboat Key commissioners had balked at a reduction in parking spaces after the developer sought changes from a plan that had been hashed out in 2018. There was also some discontent over how close some of the axillary structures could be to the erosion control line.

The total parking spacesrequired by the town's codefor the theresortthat will eventually see 67 condos and166 hotel rooms built in the 1600 block of Gulf of Mexico Drive is 405.

Previous reporting: St. Regis clears hurdle to build $600 million beachfront resort and condos on Longboat Key

Area defining project?: St. Regis project on Longboat Key to lift Sarasotas national profile once complete

The project provided all those spaces, but the way they were apportioned had more spaces than required in the residential section, leaving a parking deficitforthe hotel.

Chuck Whittall, an Orlando-based developer behind the St. Regis project, came up with a solution between Oct. 6, when the first approval was received, and Wednesday's meeting.

Commissioner B.J. Bishop noted at the beginning of the meeting that some of the documents supplied by the development team had arrived as early as 7:39 a.m. on Wednesday.

The plan to provide the required spaces in the hotel would see lifts used on 62, allowing two cars to be parked in one space, exceeding the required parking by one space.

Commissioners Bishop and Debra Williams had previously expressed reservations regarding the reduction of parking spaces from the2018 development plan between the town and Whittall's Unicorp Developments Corp.

Bishop, who has installed a lift in her own garage on Longboat Key, grilled Whittall andexperts on parking lifts supplied by the development teamabout what types of cars would be able to use the lifts andhow they planned to operate the lifts at large events.

But ultimately, she said, the parking headaches that might arise from the lifts would not be her issue to solve;her duty wasjust make sure the property had the required parking.

Both Bishop and Williams also had issues with the location of a pair of open-air structures the developer planned to build closer to the erosion control line than town code allowed. An erosion control line is a state surveyed line that differentiates between private beach and public land.

At issue was an event pavilion that would have been built about 75 feet away from that line and a "Monkey Bar," which is an homage to The Colony's famous beach bar, would be built roughly 108 feet away from the erosion control line.

Thecommission decided by majority vote to allow the Monkey Bar, but deny the event pavilion.

While Bishop and Williams had voted against final site plan approval at the Oct. 6 meeting, Bishop said Wednesday she will never be happy about the location of the Monkey Bar, but that overall, she supported the project.

Applause from the audience broke out after the 6-0 vote. Whittall then invited all the commissioners to a ground breaking for the $600 million projectat the property on Monday.

Here is the original post:

St. Regis Hotel and Residences on Longboat Key receives final approval - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Timothe Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson star in Dune, a movie based on sci-fi author Frank Herberts book. The tale draws in part upon Herberts experiences in the Pacific Northwest. (Warner Bros. Photo)

The deserts of Abu Dhabi and Jordan play starring roles in the blockbuster sci-fi movie Dune, which premieres this week in theaters and on HBO Max but the origins of the classic tale go back to a different set of dunes on the Oregon coast.

Dune creator Frank Herbert spent much of his life in the Pacific Northwest, from his childhood days in Tacoma to his stint as the Seattle Post-Intelligencers education editor. (When I worked at the P-I back in the 1980s, some of my fellow copy editors could still reminisce about Herberts habits.)

In 1957, Herbert spent some time researching what he hoped would be a magazine article about a U.S. Department of Agriculture project to stabilize the shifting sand dunes near Florence, Ore., by planting invasive beachgrass. The article was never finished, but according to Dreamer of Dune, a biography written by Herberts son Brian, the idea of transforming the dunes made a huge impression.

Dad realized he had something bigger in front of him than a magazine article, Brian Herbert wrote. He sat back at his desk and remembered flying over the Oregon dunes in a Cessna. Sand. A desert world. He envisioned the earth without the technology to stop encroaching sand dunes, and extrapolated that idea until an entire planet had become a desert.

From that initial thread of an idea, the elder Herbert wove six novels, published between 1965 and 1985. Since then, Brian Herbert and longtime sci-fi collaborator Kevin J. Anderson have written more than a dozen of their own Dune sequels and prequels. (The latest was published just last month.)

The newly released movie covers just the first half of the original Dune novel. But in subsequent books, Herbert traced how fictional scientists tried to green up the desert planet of Arrakis and how that brought about unanticipated, even problematic consequences.

Strangely enough, that part of the story parallels whats now happening amid Oregons dunes. Its a case of life imitating art imitating life.

It feels very extreme and sci-fi when you see it in a movie or in a book, but its also just like real U.S. government land management, said Rebecca Mostow, a graduate research assistant at Oregon State University.

Mostow and her faculty adviser, OSU biologist Sally Hacker, have been tracking how the two types of beachgrass planted by the USDA one thats native to Europe, and another thats native to the U.S. East Coast are taking over the dunes.

These grasses were introduced to do a job, and they did it really successfully, she said. Theyve built these dunes that are central to human communities being able to live out on the coast.

Problems can arise, however, when the grasses disrupt the sand dune ecosystem in areas that arent needed for human habitation but provide a home for plants like the pink sand verbena and birds like the western snowy plover. If the dunes were to disappear, such species could go extinct. In some cases, the grasses have been so invasive that theyve had to be pulled out by volunteers, wiped out with herbicides or bulldozed out with heavy machinery.

I dont think theres a lot of huge movement to remove the grasses everywhere, but in areas where we as people dont need the coastal protection theyre providing, we can think about some level of removal of the grasses, Mostow said.

And theres yet another plot twist: Recently, Hacker and Mostow found that the two beachgrass species are cross-breeding amid the dunes to create a hybrid type of grass that tends to grow taller.

Were putting in a lot of coulds and shoulds, but we know that in grasses, height is related to the amount of sand that they catch, Mostow said. Taller grasses catch more sand, and so seeing this hybrid grass get taller than the parent species, we predict that it will capture more sand. But there are a lot of other factors that affect the capture, and yeah, were digging into it.

If the hybrid grass turns out to possess enhanced ability to capture sand and build up dunes, that could have huge, ecosystem-scale consequences, Hacker said in a recent news release.

Hybridization could end up resulting in a really invasive taxon or increasing the invasive potential of either parent species, she said.

Our home world is already becoming more of a desert planet: One study found that the Sahara Desert has grown by about 10 percent over the past century, and according to a 2019 U.N. report, risks from desertification are likely to increase in the decades ahead due to climate change.

What about other worlds? In our own solar system, chilly and dry Mars is the closest thing to the planet portrayed in Dune. And indeed, Frank Herbert initially considered using the Red Planet as the setting for his first novel but decided against it. Readers would have too many preconceived ideas about that planet, due to the number of stories that had been written about it, Brian Herbert explained.

Tweaking Mars climate to make it more hospitable to humans is a time-honored plotline in sci-fi books and movies and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has suggested that blasting the Martian poles with thousands of nuclear missiles could do the trick. (Thats a terraforming strategy you wont read about in the Dune novels.)

Siegfried Eggl, a planetary scientist who left the University of Washington this summer to take up an assistant professorship at the University of Illinois, said there are probably enough desert planets beyond our solar system to keep the Dune sequels coming indefinitely.

Some simulations of the planetary formation process have suggested that the typical rocky planet is likely to be drier than Earth. It seems more likely that we would have Dune planets than Earthlike planets, Eggl said.

Thats not necessarily bad: Kevin Zahnle, a planetary scientist at NASAs Ames Research Center, has argued that under certain conditions, a planet like Arrakis has a better chance of habitability than a planet like Earth.

By the time humans get to those distant desert planets, will they be wise enough to do the right thing? Those are the sorts of questions that intrigue Mostow as she gets set to see the movie. I would be excited if theres any mention of the sort of terraforming, world-building climatology thats happening, she said.

She pointed out that in the Dune saga, an off-worlder enlists the aid of Arrakis native people to cultivate plants and begin reshaping the planets ecosystem.

Thats what we saw here on the Oregon coast, she said. There were native people who lived on the coast for generations and generations, and then colonists came in. . They introduced plants from their homelands, these grasses from Europe and from the East Coast. And so thats what we see in Dune as well, with these plants coming from Terra, or whatever they call Earth.

Striking the right balance between embracing an existing ecosystem and working to change it is a central issue amid the dunes of Arrakis and, it turns out, amid the dunes of the Oregon coast as well.

See original here:

How the Dune science-fiction saga parallels the real science of Oregons dunes - GeekWire

Middleboro High's Nate Tullish was voted last week's High School Offensive Football Player of the Week.

The junior, who received over 700 votes, needed just 13 carries to tally 204 yards in a 48-6 win over Norwell. He had touchdown runs of 75 and 79 yards.

NOTE: One change to the poll this week (and going forward). Votes can now be placed every hour, instead of once a day.

And this week's candidates are...

Anthony Girolamo, Sr., Stoughton: The running back ran 19 times for 168 yards and two TDs in a 31-13 win over Div. 1 Brockton.

Brady Sheehan, Sr., Holbrook/Avon: Sheehan turned 16 carries into 178 yards and two TDs in a 50-14 win over Monomoy. The Bulldogs for 330 yards as a team.

Amari Marsman, Sr., Milton: Marsman scored three times, two via rush (27 and 47 yards) and one via pass (9 yards) in a 35-14 win over Needham.

Eric Mann, Sr., Blue Hills: Mann ran eight times for 128 yards and TDs of 52 and 35 yards as the Warriors defeated Old Colony, 42-14, in a battle of undefeated teams. Blue Hills has won 13 games in a row, the second-longest active streak in the state.

Thomas Hansen, Jr., Cohasset: Hansen hauled in three TD receptions as his Skippers cruised to a 42-6 win over Mashpee with first place in the South Shore League Tobin Division on the line.

Keegan Sullivan, Sr., Scituate: Sullivan finished with 210 yards of offense (180 rushing, 30 receiving) and two TDs in a 21-13 win over Hanover.

More: HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL: Sullivan weathers the Sailors storm as Scituate halts Hanover

Owen Masterson, Sr., Marshfield: Masterson threw fourTD passes and ran for another in a 41-13 win over Whitman-Hanson.

More: Lighting his own torch, Marshfield's Owen Masterson was born to play quarterback

Jacob Briggs, Jr., Middleboro: Briggs completed 10 of 12 passes for 150 yards and threw four TD passes to four different receivers in a 24-13 win over Rockland.

More: HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL: Middleboro's Jacob Briggs brings it, leads Sachems past New Bedford

More: HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL: Middleboro's high-powered offense wins out in SSL showdown

Jackson Adams, Soph., Norwell: Adams hauled in a pair of TD passes in a 33-7 win over Sharon.

PJ Murphy, Sr., Plymouth South: With sophomore star Casious Johnson sidelined with an injury, this slot receiver moved to the backfield and starred in a 27-6 win over Quincy. He ran 22 times for 134 yards and a TD.

Adam Goodfellow, Sr., Wayland: The quarterback scored five total touchdowns (threerushing, twopassing) through just over a half of play as Wayland (4-2) knocked off host Newton South (3-3) on Saturday, 39-7. In all, Goodfellow ran for 74 yards on five carries including TD runs of 49, 6 and 2 yards. He also threw TD passes to Finn ODriscoll of 15 and 34 yards, finishing with 146 yards through the air on 7-of-10 passing.

Luke Herter, Sr., Ashland: The QB was 9-for-11 for 212 yards and two TD passes as Ashland (6-0, 2-0 TVL Large) stayed unbeaten with a 45-12, Tri-Valley League Large home win over Westwood on Fridays Senior Night.

Trey Howe, Sr, Blackstone Valley Tech: The senior running back rushed seven times for 82 yards and four touchdowns to send the host Beavers (3-2, 3-0 CAL) past Colonial Athletic League foe Abby Kelley Foster (1-5, 0-3 CAL) in Upton on Saturday, 33-8.

Robert Litscher, Jr., Hopkinton: The QB was 14-for-19 for 282 yards and two TDs (81 yards to Seamus Murphy and 28 yards to Joey Carrazza) and also ran for a 4-yard score as the host Hillers (2-4, 1-1 TVL Large ) beat Tri-Valley League Large foe Medfield, 36-21.

Nolan OBrien, Sr., Lincoln-Sudbury: In just the fifth game of the season, OBrien set the schools single-season TD reception mark with nine, catching a TD toss from Riley OConnell as the host Warriors (5-0, 2-0 DCL Large) stayed unbeaten with a 42-15 win over the Dual County League Large rival Grey Ghosts (4-2, 3-1 DCL Large). The previous mark was held by Mike DeFranco (1984) and Kurt Rogers (2007). OBrien added a 6-yard TD run on top of his 15-yard reception.

Quinn OBrien, Sr., Hudson: The senior running back ran 13 times for 160 yards, including scoring TDs from 60 and 30 yards out, as the host Hawks (5-1) routed Burncoat on Friday, 52-14.

Nealon Stemple, Jr., Marlborough: The running back ran for 112 yards on 19 carries and scored from 8 yards out in the third quarter to lift the visiting Panthers (4-2, 1-1 MWB) to a 7-0 win over Mid-Wach B host Nashoba.

Dylan Jennings, Sr. Concord-Carlisle: Jennings had16 carries for 159 yards and threetouchdowns in 43-0 win over Waltham.

Drew Gardiner, Sr., Saugus: Gardiner hauled in a 74-yard TD pass against Salem. The receiver was chain mover during the game.

Connor Cronin, Jr., Marblehead: Cronin ran well against Masconomet. George Percy, another running back, helped pave the way for Cronin.

One vote is allowed per hour. Voting closes on Friday, Oct. 15at noon. Emailed votes will not be counted. Send future nominations to cmcdaniel@wickedlocal.com.

Who is the High School Offensive Football Player of the Week?

Anthony Girolamo, Sr., Stoughton

Brady Sheehan, Sr., Holbrook/Avon

Amari Marsman, Sr., Milton

Eric Mann, Sr., Blue Hills

Thomas Hansen, Jr., Cohasset

Keegan Sullivan, Sr., Scituate

Owen Masterson, Sr., Marshfield

Jacob Briggs, Jr., Middleboro

Jackson Adams, Soph., Norwell

PJ Murphy, Sr., Plymouth South

Adam Goodfellow, Sr., Wayland

Luke Herter, Sr., Ashland

Trey Howe, Sr, Blackstone Valley Tech

Robert Litscher, Jr., Hopkinton

Nolan OBrien, Sr., Lincoln-Sudbury

Quinn OBrien, Sr., Hudson

Nealon Stemple, Jr., Marlborough

Dylan Jennings, Sr. Concord-Carlisle

Drew Gardiner, Sr., Saugus

Connor Cronin, Jr., Marblehead

Here is the original post:

Record-setters and more Vote for the High School Football Offensive Player of the Week - Enterprise News

Forward-looking: The Austrian Space Forum has embarked on a month-long experiment that will simulate the conditions of a colony on Mars. The AMADEE-20 Mars simulation is being carried out in Ramon Crater, a massive erosion cirque in Israel. The program was originally planned for 2020 but was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This leg of the experiment is part of a larger research program that started in 2018 and will run until 2028, with the goal of developing hardware and workflows for future human-robotic surface missions to the Red Planet.

AMADEE is based on the PolAres program, which included 11 major international Mars analog field campaigns. Collectively, these missions helped to create the Aouda spacesuit simulator, a rover program and more.

AMADEE-20 Mars is the programs isolation phase, where a six-member field crew five men and one woman - will live in isolation for the next month inside a 1,300-square-foot structure shaped like two yurts. During this time, they will conduct roughly 20 science experiments in the field.

The only point of outside human contact for the crew will be through the Mission Support Center, which will implement a communications delay of 10 minutes to simulate how long it takes for signals to travel from Earth to Mars. That said, crew members will have their vital signs constantly monitored and are under continual video surveillance in order to better understand the human element of the mission.

Daily progress reports will be posted over on the Austrian Space Forums website.

Link:

Month-long Mars colony simulation starts today in an ...

"Red Mars" redirects here. For the planet, see Mars.

Series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Mars trilogy is a series of science fiction novels by Kim Stanley Robinson that chronicles the settlement and terraforming of the planet Mars through the personal and detailed viewpoints of a wide variety of characters spanning almost two centuries. Ultimately more utopian than dystopian, the story focuses on egalitarian, sociological, and scientific advances made on Mars, while Earth suffers from overpopulation and ecological disaster.

The three novels are Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996). The Martians (1999) is a collection of short stories set in the same fictional universe. Red Mars won the BSFA Award in 1992 and Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1993. Green Mars won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1994. Blue Mars also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1997.

Icehenge (1984), Robinson's first novel about Mars, is not set in this universe but deals with similar themes and plot elements. The trilogy shares some similarities with Robinson's more recent novel 2312 (2012); for instance, the terraforming of Mars and the extreme longevity of the characters in both novels.

Red Mars starts in 2026 with the first colonial voyage to Mars aboard the Ares, the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built and home to a crew who are to be the first hundred Martian colonists. The ship was built from clustered space shuttle external fuel tanks which, instead of reentering Earth's atmosphere, had been boosted into orbit until enough had been amassed to build the ship. The mission is a joint AmericanRussian undertaking, and seventy of the First Hundred are drawn from these countries (except, for example, Michel Duval, a French psychologist assigned to observe their behavior). The book details the trip out, construction of the first settlement on Mars (eventually called Underhill) by Russian engineer Nadia Cherneshevsky, as well as establishing colonies on Mars' hollowed out asteroid-moon Phobos, the ever-changing relationships between the colonists, debates among the colonists regarding both the terraforming of the planet and its future relationship to Earth. The two extreme views on terraforming are personified by Saxifrage "Sax" Russell, who believes their very presence on the planet means some level of terraforming has already begun and that it is humanity's obligation to spread life as it is the most scarce thing in the known universe, and Ann Clayborne, who stakes out the position that humankind does not have the right to change entire planets at their will.

Russell's view is initially purely scientific but in time comes to blend with the views of Hiroko Ai, the chief of the Agricultural Team who assembles a new belief system (the "Areophany") devoted to the appreciation and furthering of life ("viriditas"); these views are collectively known as the "Green" position, while Clayborne's naturalist stance comes to be known as "Red." The actual decision is left to the United Nations Organization of Mars Affairs (UNOMA), which greenlights terraforming, and a series of actions get underway, including the drilling of "moholes" to release subsurface heat; thickening of the atmosphere according to a complicated bio-chemical formula that comes to be known as the "Russell cocktail" after Sax Russell; and the detonation of nuclear explosions deep in the sub-surface permafrost to release water. Additional steps are taken to connect Mars more closely with Earth, including the insertion of an Areosynchronous asteroid "Clarke" to which a space elevator cable is tethered.

Against the backdrop of this development is another debate, one whose principal instigator is Arkady Bogdanov of the Russian contingent (possibly named in homage to the Russian polymath and science fiction writer Alexander Bogdanov - it is later revealed in Blue Mars that Alexander Bogdanov is an ancestor of Arkady's.). Bogdanov argues that Mars need not and should not be subject to Earth traditions, limitations, or authority. He is to some extent joined in this position by John Boone, famous as the "First Man on Mars" from a preceding expedition and rival to Frank Chalmers, the technical leader of the American contingent. Their rivalry is further exacerbated by competing romantic interest in Maya Katarina Toitovna, the leader of the Russian contingent. (In the opening of the book, Chalmers instigates a sequence of events that leads to Boone being assassinated; much of what follows is a retrospective examination of what led to that point.)

Earth meanwhile increasingly falls under the control of transnational corporations (transnats) that come to dominate its governments, particularly smaller nations adopted as "flags of convenience" for extending their influence into Martian affairs. As UNOMA's power erodes, the Mars treaty is renegotiated in a move led by Frank Chalmers; the outcome is impressive but proves short-lived as the transnats find ways around it through loop-holes. Things get worse as the nations of Earth start to clash over limited resources, expanding debt, and population growth as well as restrictions on access to a new longevity treatment developed by Martian scienceone that holds the promise of lifespans into the hundreds of years. In 2061, with Boone dead and exploding immigration threatening the fabric of Martian society, Bogdanov launches a revolution against what many now view as occupying transnat troops operating only loosely under an UNOMA rubber-stamp approval. Initially successful, the revolution proves infeasible on the basis of both a greater-than-expected willingness of the Earth troops to use violence and the extreme vulnerability of life on a planet without a habitable atmosphere. A series of exchanges sees the cutting of the space elevator, bombardment of several Martian cities (including the city where Bogdanov is himself organizing the rebellion; he is killed), the destruction of Phobos and its military complex, and the unleashing of a great flood of torrential groundwater freed by nuclear detonations.

By the end, most of the First Hundred are dead, and virtually all who remain have fled to a hidden refuge established years earlier by Ai and her followers. (One exception is Phyllis Boyle, who has allied herself with the transnats; she is on Clarke when the space elevator cable is cut and sent flying out of orbit to a fate unknown by the conclusion of the book.) The revolution dies and life on Mars returns to a sense of stability under heavy transnat control. The clash over resources on Earth breaks out into a full-blown world war leaving hundreds of millions dead, but cease-fire arrangements are reached when the transnats flee to the safety of the developed nations, which use their huge militaries to restore order, forming police-states. But a new generation of humans born on Mars holds the promise of change. In the meantime, the remaining First Hundred including Russell, Clayborne, Toitovna, and Cherneshevsky settle into life in Hiroko Ai's refuge called Zygote, hidden under the Martian south pole.

Green Mars takes its title from the stage of terraforming that has allowed plants to grow. It picks up the story 50 years after the events of Red Mars in the dawn of the 22nd century, following the lives of the remaining First Hundred and their children and grandchildren. Melting ice causes the top of the dome of Hiroko Ai's base under the south pole to collapse, forcing the survivors to escape into a (less literal) underground organization known as the Demimonde. Among the expanded group are the First Hundred's children, the Nisei, a number of whom live in Hiroko's second secret base, Gamete.

As unrest in the multinational control over Mars's affairs grows, various groups start to form with different aims and methods. Watching these groups evolve from Earth, the CEO of the Praxis Corporation sends a representative, Arthur Randolph, to organize the resistance movements. This culminates into the Dorsa Brevia agreement, in which nearly all the underground factions take part. Preparations are made for a second revolution beginning in the 2120s, from converting moholes to missiles silos or hidden bases, sabotaging orbital mirrors, to propelling Deimos out of Mars' gravity well and out into deep space so it could never be used as a weapons platform as Phobos was.

The book follows the characters across the Martian landscape, which is explained in detail. Russell's character infiltrates the transnat terraforming project, with a carefully crafted fake identity as Stephen Lindholm. The newly evolving Martian biosphere is described at great length and with more profound changes mostly aimed at warming up the surface of Mars to the brink of making it habitable, from continent-sized orbital mirrors, another space elevator built (using another anchored asteroid that is dubbed "New Clarke"), to melting the northern polar ice cap, and digging moholes deep enough to form volcanoes. A mainstay of the novel is a detailed analysis of philosophical, political, personal, economic, and geological experiences of the characters. The story weaves back and forth from character to character, providing a picture of Mars as seen by them.

Sax, alias Stephen, eventually becomes romantically involved with Phyllis, who had survived the events of 2061 from the end of the first novel, but she discovers his true identity and has him arrested. Members of the underground launch a daring rescue from the prison facility where Sax suffers torture and interrogation that causes him to have a stroke; Maya kills Phyllis in the process of the rescue.

The book ends on a major event which is a sudden catastrophic rise in Earth's global sea levels not caused primarily by any greenhouse effect but by the eruption of a chain of volcanoes underneath the ice of West Antarctica, disintegrating the ice sheet and displacing the fragments into the ocean. The resultant flooding causes global chaos on Earth, creating the perfect moment for the Martian underground to seize control of Martian society from Earth. Following a series of largely bloodless coups, an extremist faction of Reds bombs a dam near Burroughs, the major city where the remaining United Nations forces have concentrated, in order to force the security forces to evacuate. The entire city is flooded and the population of the city has to walk a staggeringly long distance in the open Martian atmosphere (which just barely has the temperature, atmospheric pressure, and gas mixture to support human life) to Libya Station, in order to resettle in other locations. With this, control of Mars is finally wrested away from Earth with minimal loss of life, leaving the weary survivors hopeful about the prospects of their newfound political autonomy.

Blue Mars takes its title from the stage of terraforming that has allowed atmospheric pressure and temperature to increase so that liquid water can exist on the planet's surface, forming rivers and seas. It follows closely in time from the end of Green Mars and has a much wider scope than the previous two books, covering an entire century after the second revolution. As Earth is heavily flooded by the sudden melting of the Antarctic ice cap, the once mighty metanats are brought to their knees; as the Praxis Corporation paves a new way of "democratic businesses". Mars becomes the "Head" of the system, giving universal healthcare, free education, and an abundance of food. However, this sparks illegal immigration from Earth, so to ease the population strain on the Blue Planet, Martian scientists and engineers are soon put to the task of creating asteroid cities; where small planetoids of the Belt are hollowed out, given a spin to produce gravity, and a mini-sun is created to produce light and heat.

With a vast increase in sciences, technologies, and spacecraft manufacturing, this begins the "Accelerando"; where humankind spreads its civilization throughout the Solar System, and eventually beyond. As Venus, the Jovian moons, the Saturnian moons, and eventually Triton are colonized and terraformed in some way, Jackie Boone (the granddaughter of John Boone, the first man to walk on Mars from the first book) takes an interstellar vessel (made out of an asteroid) to another star system twenty light-years away, where they will start to terraform the planets and moons found there.

The remaining First Hundred are generally regarded as living legends. Reports of Hiroko's survival are numerous, and purported sightings occur all over the colonized solar system, but none are substantiated. Nadia and Art Randolph lead a constitutional congress in which a global system of government is established that leaves most cities and settlements generally autonomous, but subject to a central representative legislature and two systems of courts, one legal and the other environmental. The environmental court is packed with members of the Red faction as a concession (in exchange for their support in the congress, as much of their power was broken when they attempted and failed to violently expel remaining UN forces early on after the second revolution of Green Mars; yet they still retained enough power to stymie constitutional negotiations). Vlad, Marina, and Ursula, the original inventors of the longevity treatments, introduce a new economic system that is a hybrid of capitalism, socialism, and environmental conservationism. During a trip to Earth occurring alongside the congress, Nirgal (one of the original children to be born on Mars to the First Hundred, and something of a Mars-wide celebrity), Maya, and Sax negotiate an agreement that allows Earth to send a number of migrants equal to 10% of Mars' population to Mars every year. Following the adoption of the new constitution, Nadia is elected the first president of Mars and serves competently, although she does not enjoy politics. She and Art work together closely, and eventually fall in love and have a child.

Sax Russell devotes himself to various scientific projects, all the while continuing to recover from the effects of his stroke. Since the second revolution, he feels enormous guilt that his pro-terraforming position became the dominant one at the expense of the goals of Ann's anti-terraforming stance, as Sax and Ann have come to be regarded as the original champions of their respective positions. Sax becomes increasingly preoccupied with seeking forgiveness and approval from Ann, while Ann, depressed and bitter from her many political and personal losses, is suicidal and refuses to accept any more longevity treatments. However, when Sax witnesses Ann collapse into a coma during an attempt to demonstrate to her the beauty of the terraformed world, he arranges for her to be resuscitated and to be treated with the longevity treatment, both against her will.

The longevity treatments themselves begin to show weaknesses once those receiving them reach the two-century mark in age. The treatments reduce most aging processes to a negligible rate, but are much less effective when it comes to brain function, and in particular memory. Maya in particular suffers extreme lapses in memory, although she remains high functioning most of the time. Further, as people age, they begin to show susceptibility to strange, fatal conditions which have no apparent explanation and are resistant to any treatment. Most common is the event that comes to be known as the "quick decline", where a person of extremely advanced age and in apparently good health suffers a sudden fatal heart arrythmia and dies abruptly. The exact mechanism is never explained. Michel dies of the quick decline, while attending the wake of another First Hundred member. Russell speculates that Michel's quick decline was brought on by the shock of seeing Maya fail to remember Frank Chalmers (who was killed while escaping security forces in the first revolution) upon looking at a treasured photo of him on her refrigerator. As a result of this and Russell's own problems with memory, he organizes a team of scientists to develop medicine that will restore memory. The remaining members of the First Hundred, of which there are only 12, congregate in Underhill, and take the medicine. It works so well that Russell remembers his own birth. He and Ann Clayborne finally recall that they had been in love prior to leaving Earth the very first time, but both had been too socially inept and nervous about their chances for selection for the Mars voyage to reveal this to each other. Their famous argument over terraforming had been a mere continuation of a running conversation they had been having since they still lived on Earth. Through the memory treatment it is also revealed that Phyllis had been lobbying to free Sax from his torturers when she was murdered by Maya. Maya herself declines the treatment. Sax also distinctly recalls Hiroko assisting him in finding his rover in a storm before he nearly froze to death before disappearing once again and is convinced she remains alive, although the question of whether she is actually alive is never resolved.

Eventually, the anti-immigration factions of the Martian government provoke massive illegal immigration from Earth, risking another war; however, under the leadership of Ann and Sax, who have fallen in love again following their reconciliation, along with Maya, the Martian population unites to reconstitute the government to accept more immigration from Earth, diffusing the imminent conflict and ushering in a new golden age of harmony and security on Mars.

Publication date

The Martians is a collection of short stories that takes place over the timespan of the original trilogy of novels, as well as some stories that take place in an alternate version of the novels where the First Hundred's mission was one of exploration rather than colonization. Buried in the stories are several hints about the eventual fate of the Martian terraforming program.

Trans-national Corporations, nicknamed "transnats", are extremely powerful multinational corporations that first emerge in the mid-21st century. Robinson tracks the evolution of the transnats into what he terms "metanats" (metanational). These multinational corporations have grown so large as a result of globalization that they have sufficient economic power to take over or strongly manipulate national governments, initially only relatively small third-world governments, but later, larger developed governments too, effectively running whole countries. In Robinson's future history, the metanational corporations become similar to nation-states in some respects, while continually attempting to take over competitors in order to become the sole controller of the interplanetary market. As the Mars trilogy draws to a close in the mid-23rd century, the metanational corporations are forced by a global catastrophe to concede more democratic powers to their workforces.

Although there are many transnational and metanational corporations mentioned, two play an active role in the development of the plotline: Praxis, a largely benevolent and relatively democratic firm, and Subarash, which plays a large role in the maltreatment of the citizens of Mars.

Genetic engineering is first mentioned in Red Mars; it takes off when Sax creates an alga to withstand the harsh Martian temperature and convert its atmosphere into breathable air. Eventually this is done on a massive scale, with thousands of types of GE algae, lichen and bacteria being created to terraform the planet. In Green Mars, GE animals began to be created to withstand the thin Martian atmosphere, and to produce a working planetary-biosphere. By Blue Mars, GE is commonly being done on humans, willingly, to help them better adapt to the new worlds; to breathe thinner air (e.g. Russell), or to see better in the dimmer light of the outer planets.

The books also speculate on the colonization of other planets and moons in the Solar System, and include descriptions of settlements or terraforming efforts on Callisto, Mercury, Titania, Miranda and Venus. Toward the end of the last novel, humans are taking sub-light colony ships to other stars, taking advantage of the longevity treatments to survive the trip to their destinations.

A great portion of Blue Mars is concerned with the effects of extreme longevity on its protagonists, most of whom have lived over two hundred years as a result of repeated longevity treatments. In particular, Robinson speculates on the psychological effects of ultra-longevity, including memory loss, personality change, mental instability, and existential boredom.

The initial colonists from the Ares who established a permanent colony. Many of them later become leaders or exemplary figures in the transformation of Mars or its new society. The "First Hundred" actually consisted of 101, with Coyote being smuggled aboard the Ares by Hiroko.

An American astronaut, who was the first human to walk on Mars in the year 2020. He returns a public hero and uses his considerable influence to lobby for a second mission, this time one of colonization. Boone received a large amount of radiation on his first trip to Mars, more than the recommended dosage according to medical regulations. However, his celebrity status allows him to skirt this. On the second voyage, Boone is one of the "First Hundred" colonists sent to permanently colonize Mars. His accomplishments and natural charm yield him an informal leadership role. In the first chapter of Red Mars, John Boone is assassinated in a plot instigated by Frank Chalmers. The narrative then steps back to the First Hundred's voyage to Mars aboard the spaceship Ares. His ideas continue as a point of reference for the remainder of the trilogy. Boone's character portrayal is complex; in one light, Boone is a stereotypically simple, heroic figure, an everyman hero: his first words on his first trip to Mars are "Well, here we are." He is almost uniformly cheerful and good-natured, and approaches everything he undertakes with hale bonhomie. But later in Red Mars, Robinson switches to Boone's point of view, and it is in this section that it is revealed that late in life, Boone is addicted to omegendorph, a fictional drug that is based on endorphins in the human brain. In addition, it reveals that at least some of his seeming simplicity might simply be an act designed to further his political goals. Overall, Boone is presented as larger-than-life.

Head of the American contingent, he is Machiavellian in his use of power. However, his cynicism is later shown to be a form of self-defense; Chalmers is at least partly driven by a hidden idealistic side. Early in the voyage to Mars, he becomes sexually involved with Maya Toitovna, the leader of the Russian contingent of the mission. During the second half of the voyage, Toitovna becomes involved with Boone. Already bitter that Boone became the first to walk on Mars instead of him as they were both candidates for the mission and that he was allowed to join the colonization trip despite his manipulations, Chalmers further despises Boone because of Toitovna's affection. His dislike culminates in his involvement in a plot to assassinate Boone, which ultimately succeeds and allows him to take over handling major affairs on Mars. This ultimately becomes his undoing, as his ruthless governance and aggressive diplomatic work backfire on him during the revolution of 2061. In the final chapters of Red Mars, Chalmers flees with Toitovna and other members of the First Hundred to join the hidden colonists at the polar ice cap but dies along the way when he is caught outside their vehicle during an aquifer flood in Valles Marineris.

An emotional woman who is at the center of a love triangle between Boone and Chalmers, she begins as head of the Russian contingent. The novels hint that she used both wit and seduction to rise through the ranks of the Russian space agency to become the leader of the first colonization mission. After the first revolution, she flees with other members of the First Hundred to the hidden colony in the pole. She becomes a school teacher of the children of the hidden colonists but later becomes a powerful political force. After the deaths of Chalmers and Boone, she falls in love with Michel Duval. She suffers heavily from bipolar disorder and from memory-related psychological disorders with growing age, which often lead her to isolate herself from others and sometimes turn violent. Throughout the novels, Maya takes an active political role, helping to keep the surviving First Hundred together during the failed revolution of 2061 and guiding the successful revolutions that occur decades later, despite her psychological problems.

A Russian engineer who started out building nuclear reactors in Siberia, during the voyage and initial exploration of Mars, she does her best to avoid the squabbles of the other members of the First Hundred. Instead, she busies herself by building the first permanent habitation of Mars, Underhill, using programmed automated robots. She also helps to construct a new and larger habitat, and research facility in a nearby canyon. In the later books, she becomes a reluctant politician. Chernyshevski is in love with Bogdanov and is devastated when he is killed in an attack by anti-revolutionary forces associated with UNOMA, the transnationals and Phyllis Boyle during the first Martian revolution. In retaliation for Bogdanov's murder, she activates his hidden weapon system, built into Phobos, which causes the entire moon (a UNOMA/transnational military base) to decelerate in orbit and destructively aerobrake in Mars' atmosphere, utterly destroying it. In Blue Mars, she falls in love with Art Randolph, with whom she eventually starts a family. After Martian independence, she grudgingly becomes the first president of Mars.

A mechanical engineer with anarchist leanings, possibly based on the Russian Machist, Alexander Bogdanov (the character's ancestor) and Arkady Strugatsky, he is regarded by many other members of the First Hundred, particularly Boyle, as a troublemaker. He leads the team which establishes an outpost on the moon Phobos, and leads an uprising against the transnational corporation towards the end of first novel. Like Boone (with whom he was good friends), his political ideas (later known as Bogdanovism) weigh heavily on characters later in the series. In love with Nadia Chernyshevski, he is killed during the first Martian revolution in 2061.

An American physicist, he is a brilliant and creative scientist, and is greatly respected for his intellectual gifts. However, he is socially awkward and often finds it difficult to understand and relate to other people. Russell is a leader of the Green movement, the goal of which is to terraform Mars. During Green Mars, Sax suffers a stroke while being tortured by government security forces and fellow member of the First Hundred, Phyllis Boyle (although according to later it is revealed she actually opposed Sax's torture). He subsequently suffers from Expressive aphasia and has to relearn how to speak and becomes less predictable in his actions. Originally apolitical, this event and a growing attachment to Mars itself leads Russell to become the physical architect of the second revolution. After memory issues become apparent in many of the remaining first hundred including Sax he begins work on an ambitious project to gather the remaining first hundred and have them try an experimental treatment he helped to develop. It is after this that Sax realizes his persistent attempts to please Ann are actually because he is also secretly in love with Ann Clayborne, who cannot stand him at first, but after decades on Mars, eventually reconciles. Saxifrage means "stonebreaker" and is the name for an Alpine plant that grows between stones.

An American geologist, Clayborne is one of the first areologists and maintains a stalwart desire to see Mars preserved in the state it holds when humans arrive. Clayborne early on debates Saxifrage Russell over the proper role of humanity on Mars and though initially apolitical, this stance marks her as the original "Red," while Russell's hands-on terraforming reflects the antithesis of these views. Clayborne is shown to prefer solitude during much of the series, and even her relationship with fellow First Hundred settler Simon (with whom she has a child) is subject to introspective silence in most cases. Simon's death and the estrangement she finds from their son Peter when the latter emerges as a leading moderate "green" drive her to further isolation. Clayborne's relationship with Russell is shown to be complex, the two of them taking early opposite views but the situation slowly changing as Russell comes to appreciate what has been unleashed and what has indeed been lost as science gives way to commercial exploitation that he cannot control. During the events of Blue Mars, Russell intervenes to save Clayborne's life; later, the two are revealed to have once shared an attraction that went astray because of a casual misinterpretation between them. Ann undergoes a drastic change towards Blue Mars due to the emergence of something inside of her that she describes as anti-Ann and something else that she can't quite describe.

A Japanese expert on biology, agriculture, and ecological systems, it was Ai who smuggled Desmond "Coyote" Hawkins onto the Ares (the two were friends and lovers as students in London). She is the charismatic leader of the farm team, one of the important work groups and cliques among the First Hundred. She thus becomes the focus of many of the trilogy's central themes. Most importantly, she teaches the importance of maintaining a respectful relation with one's planet. On Mars, this is called the Areophany. In the secret colony Zygote, which Hiroko established, the first generation of children of the First Hundred, the ectogenes, are all the product of artificial insemination outside of any human body. Hiroko uses the ova of the female members of the First Hundred as the female genetic material and uses the sperm of the male members of the First Hundred to fertilize the ova. Although Hiroko is seldom at the center of the narrative, her influence is pervasive. She disappears for the final time in Green Mars. Her ultimate fate is left unresolved.

A French psychologist pivotally involved in early psychological screening of First Hundred candidates in Antarctica which he describes as being a collection of double blind requirements. Duval is assigned to accompany the Mars mission and is treated as an observer rather than as a member of the team during the early events of Red Mars. His aloof personality enforces this ostracism and also subverts his relationships with others, but in time it becomes clear that Duval is struggling with his own psychological issues perhaps more than anyone else from the expedition. During the first disappearance of the farm team, he is invited by Hiroko to flee with the farm team and establish Zygote, the first hidden colony. Duval desperately wants to return to Provence as he remembers it, and after visiting as a part of the Martian diplomatic mission to Earth, he becomes even more homesick. Duval falls in love with Maya Toitovna and guides her through particularly challenging psychological episodes throughout most of the series, dying late in Blue Mars of heart arrhythmia when Maya displays signs of very heavy temporary memory loss.

Nearly sixty when he arrives on Mars, a Russian biological scientist who is the oldest of the First Hundred. Taneev heads medical treatment and most research projects on Mars, becoming famous as the creator of the gerontological treatment used to regenerate human cellular systems and ushering in a new era of longevity. He lives in Acheron on the Great Escarpment in the north of Mars before fleeing to the hidden colony after the First Revolution but later returns to his research, falling victim to "quick decline" late in the events of Blue Mars. For much of his Mars-centric life, Taneev lives in a mnage trois with Ursula and Marina, the exact nature of which is never resolved.

A Christian American geologist with a harsh personality that does not win her many friends among the First Hundred and gains particular enmity from Ann Clayborne. As the Mars situation develops, Boyle sides against most of the First Hundred in favor of the increasingly authoritarian United Nations Office of Mars Affairs (UNOMA) and its successor, the corporate/quasi-fascist United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTA). Her influence is strongest during the later events of Red Mars, where by the 2061 revolution she has been placed in charge of the asteroid Clarke that serves as the counterweight of the First Space Elevator. The events of the revolution send Clarke (and Boyle) spinning off into the outer Solar System at the end of Red Mars; Green Mars finds her back in the equation, but her influence is greatly reduced against the backdrop of a much-expanded UNTA presence. Boyle engages in a brief sexual relationship with Saxifrage Russell (who despises her) while the latter is living under an assumed identity and is singularly capable of discerning who he really is, turning him over the UNTA. She is later present at a session in Kasei Vallis where Russell is being tortured, and is killed by Maya Toitovna. Later, as his memory recovers, Russell reveals that Boyle had been opposed to his torture and was demanding that he be released at the time that Maya's team freed him.

A Trinidadian stowaway, he is a friend and supporter of Hiroko, and a fervent anarchist communist. Present in Red Mars only as a stowaway who eventually blends effortlessly into the Martian background, he is not even identified as anything more than Coyote until the beginning of Green Mars. He becomes a leading figure in the underground and an unofficial coordinator of a developing gift economy.

Since the trilogy covers over 200 years of human history, later immigrants and the children and grandchildren of the First Hundred eventually become important characters in their own right.

The Martians use the same terminology for different generations as Japanese Americans. People who immigrated from Earth are called issei, the first generation born on Mars are nisei, and the second-generation Martians are sansei. Third-generation Martians are called yonsei.

Kasei is the son of Hiroko and John Boone and the father of Jackie Boone. Kasei is the leader of the Kakaze, a radical Red faction. His name is Japanese for the planet Mars. He dies during the second revolution, after an unsuccessful attack on the second space elevator.

The son of Hiroko and Coyote, he is raised communally by Hiroko and her followers in Zygote. He is a good-natured wanderer who eventually becomes a political leader advocating ties with Earth. He is one of the founders of the Free Mars movement and is famous for his running technique that allows him to run all day for days on end. As Nadia's assistants, he and Art are instrumental in getting the Martian constitutional declaration written. Later he is sent on a diplomatic mission to Earth but nearly dies from an infection. His name is ancient Babylonian for Mars (the planet and the war-god).

The granddaughter of Hiroko and John Boone (raised with Nirgal), she emerges as a leader of the Free Mars movement, but is seen to change her platform based on whatever keeps her in power (e.g. changing from banning Earth immigration to allowing almost unlimited immigrants). After her daughter Zo's death, she retires in grief and joins a one-way expedition to an extrasolar planet near Aldebaran.

Peter Clayborne is the son of Ann Clayborne and Simon Frazier, being one of the first children born on Mars. Peter holds a position of older brother to all of the following first generation. Many revolutionary and later political decisions of the Mars First movement are influenced by his opinions and judgment. He works part-time as an engineer and a green politician.

Jackie's daughter; she has feline traits (purring) inserted into her genome via the gerontological longevity treatment. In Blue Mars, she travels the solar system running political errands for Jackie, although the two do not get along particularly well. Her character is portrayed as hedonistic and explicitly nihilistic, making sexual satisfaction a priority and seemingly having little regard for the feelings of others. On the other hand, she apparently has a conscience, risking her life to rescue a man on Mercury and later dying in an attempt to save a distressed flier.

The daughter of Nadia and Art.

A representative of the Praxis corporation sent to contact the Martian underground movement on a quasi-diplomatic mission in an attempt to create a system of ecological capitalism based on democratic corporations. Like the other metanationals, it takes on intensive economic and political ties with governments, but Praxis aims for partnerships rather than exploitive relationships.

Bedouin nomads who originally emigrated from Egypt and respected figures in the Arab Martian community. Zeyk is a close friend of Chalmers. His eidetic memory becomes a minor plot point.

The founder of Praxis, one of the huge multinational corporations. He embraces a fusion of Eastern and Western lifestyles.

In an interview at UCSD, Robinson said that he was looking at a satellite photo of Mars and thought that would be a great place to go backpacking. He said the Mars trilogy grew out of that urge.[2]

The series has had difficulty moving into film and TV for over two decades. The Mars trilogy screen production rights were held by James Cameron in the late 1990s,[8] who conceived a five-hour miniseries to be directed by Martha Coolidge,[9] but he subsequently passed on the option.[citation needed] Later, Gale Ann Hurd planned a similar mini-series for the Sci-Fi Channel, which also remained unproduced.[10] Then, in October 2008, it was reported that AMC and Jonathan Hensleigh had teamed up and were planning to develop a television mini-series based on Red Mars.[11]

In September 2014, SpikeTV announced it was working with producer Vince Gerardis to develop a TV series adaptation of Red Mars[12] and in December 2015, formally greenlit a ten-episode first season of a TV series based on the novels, with J. Michael Straczynski serving as showrunner and writer.[13] However, in March 2016, Deadline reported that Straczynski had left his position as showrunner with Peter Noah replacing him, but he too left due to creative differences with Spike. Spike then put the series on hold for further development.[14]

The content of Green Mars and the cover artwork for Red Mars are included on the Phoenix DVD, carried on board Phoenix, a NASA lander that successfully touched down on Mars in May 2008. The First Interplanetary Library is intended to be a sort of time capsule for future Mars explorers and colonists.[15]

The trilogy has been translated into Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Polish, Hebrew, Japanese, Italian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Serbian among others.

The rest is here:

Mars trilogy - Wikipedia