Category Archives: Mars Colonization

Elon Musk said in December that hes confident SpaceX will be able to land humans on Mars by 2026. Sadly, there are many obstacles to this ambitious plan, and his dreams of terraforming the Red Planet may not come to fruition in our lifetime.

Here are some of the biggest hurdles:

In 2018, scientists discovered a large source of liquid water almost a mile beneath Mars south polar cap. The lake is 20 kilometers (12.3 miles) wide and contains briny water rich in magnesium, calcium and sodium perchlorate, which keeps it in a liquid state at temperatures of about 200 Kelvin (-73 Celsius).

The reason why this discovery is important is simple: Where theres water, theres life or at least thats how it works on Earth.

To those, including Musk, who hope this water could be used for human consumption, scientists say: Not so fast! They claim that because of the risk of interplanetary contamination, we should not send humans on Mars until we know for sure whether its water contains life or not. We could bring molecules from Earth that could be mistaken for signs of Martian life or, if there is life on the Red Planet, expose it to microbes from Earth.

This would not only make research impossible but could also jeopardize the survival of native microorganisms. Years or even decades of drilling, sample analysis and research need to be undertaken first.

In an earlier tweet and follow-up, Musk said hed like to terraform Mars by bombarding the planets poles with 10,000 nuclear missiles. That would have released trapped carbon dioxide that forms Martian ice caps, thickened the planets atmosphere and increased temperatures.

That plan was short-lived.

The study published not long after the tweet showed that there is not enough CO2 remaining on Mars to provide significant greenhouse warming were the gas to be emplaced into the atmosphere; in addition, most of the CO2 gas in these reservoirs is not accessible and thus cannot be readily mobilized. As a result, we conclude that terraforming Mars is not possible using present-day technology.

Engineer and problem solver that he is, Musk came up with another solution: living in glass domes. (Musk runs SpaceX as well as electric-car maker Tesla TSLA, +2.05%. ) In a tweet in which he detailed this plan, he also said that [t]erraforming will be too slow to be relevant in our lifetime. However, we can establish a human base there in our lifetime. At least a future spacefaring civilization discovering our ruins will be impressed humans got that far.

This sci-fi city under the dome would need to be self-reliant and independent from Earth ships bringing in supplies. To this end, Musk said the colony would need to have 1 million inhabitants and transfer 1 million tons of cargo from Earth. If we take into account that SpaceXs Starship can carry up to 100 people and 150 tons of cargo, it would need to make more than 6,600 roundtrips to transfer all of it. Although this number would significantly decrease at some point due to growth of the colony population and colonists producing their own goods, it is still painfully obvious that Musk will need a bigger ship.

All these problems make the colonization of Mars a scientific and engineering nightmare of gargantuan proportions. However, there is an even greater issue: The economic viability of such a colony, should it ever be established.

John Hickman, a professor of political science at Berry College in Georgia, said in a piece titled The Economic Flaws in Elon Musks Mars Colonization Plans that a colony on Mars would have one huge disadvantage over those on Earth: the lack of a physical commodity worth exporting.

This is a big problem because history has shown that only colonies capable of producing a profitable export commodity manage to survive. These goods are used to kickstart an economic exchange with the mainland, including an influx of migrants eager to start a new life in the new world.

Since Martian products would not be able to compete with Earth-produced goods, the colony would not be able to establish this kind of exchange, which would also dispel any appeal of emigration. The rich, influential and successful a driving force behind every successful colony would not be enticed to move to Mars.

The inability to transfer existing material goods to another place, paired with a small Martian population and incompatible currencies, would cause their wealth and influence to take a substantial hit.

Finally, due to a crippling latency (3 hours and 22 minutes of signal lag), it would be hard for Martians to do business with Earthlings.

Musk has been criticized for his claims, and many colleagues of mine have written scorching pieces without considering that he isnt a scientist but an engineer and a problem solver. He reacts on scientific findings and adjusts his goals and trajectories. Even though these obstacles may seem insurmountable, I am certain Musk already has a plan to work around, or over, them.

I have reached out to him for comment, and if he responds, Ill be happy to update this piece.

Until then, the Red Planet awaits. Let us hope it wont wait for too long.

Read more:
If Elon Musk makes it to Mars, then what? These are the hurdles for humans who wish to live on the Red Planet - MarketWatch

"I'm hiding from an Elon Musk-like character..." Netflix

The character, a white man named James Sullivan (Richard Armitage), is the CEO of a corporation, UTS, that controls suburbs that orbit the earth. The company has big plans to relocate all of humanity to Mars, which it privately owns. UTS corporation dwarfs Tesla, the future-oriented company owned by the South African-born Elon Musk, the richest man on our earth until mid-Februaryhe goes back and forth with Jeff Bezos for this title.

Directed by Jo Sung-hee, Space Sweepers is set in 2092, maintains a fast pace, includes plot twists and turns that are not always easy to track, features lots of explosions, lots of robots, and that raw examination of capitalist class structures we have come to expect from the best of South Korea's directors (The Housemaid, Piet, Train to Busan, Parasite, and so on).

Indeed, the space sweepers in Space Sweepers are basically space janitors. (Incidentally, according to Wikipedia, the show should really be called Space Victory, as that's the literal translation of the film's Korean title, Seungriho.) The janitors are in the risky business of cleaning the space junk that swirls around earth. They are clearly essential workers, but they are paid peanuts.

And so, on one side we have these broke janitors (mostly POCsAsians, Africans, South Asians), and on the other we have a white CEO, who looks to be in his late 40s but who is, in fact, 152-years-old. The rich die hard.

Aditya Mani Jha of Mint Lounge has this to say about it:

But there is one big difference between Musk and Sullivan. Musk wants humans to move to earth because of a solar catastrophe that will happen millions (if not billions) of years from now. The distance between us and that catastrophe is unlikely to get anyone excited about living on another world with another sky, another sun, another year. Sullivan knows this is the key problem in his commercial plans for the Red Planet. Most humans would just prefer stay on earth. The solution to the obstacle? It cannot be said without a SPOILER ALERT.

To get into the mood of what Sullivan has in mind for earthlings who do not want to become totally privatized Martians, let's read one of the best passages in W. G. Sebald's 1998 book The Rings of Saturn:

Can you feel that? If so, then you will easily see what Sullivan has in store for the only living planet in our solar system. By destroying earth's livability, he can force humans to colonize Mars on the terms of a contract. The problem with earth is that everyone (humans, other animals, and also plants) has a right to it, can still lay claim to it, is still attached to the billions of years that formed its biosphere. The contract can only go so far, earthlings. But the mad dream of capitalism has been the creation of a zone that is much like what Dubai is for foreign workers. A zone where citizenship is replaced by the contract.

This is how Daniel Brook describes the guest-worker system in Dubai in his book, A History of Future Cities:

But there is still worker unrest in Dubai, because Dubai is still on earth, the planet that is shared by every living thing. Mars, on the other hand, can be owned by the CEO who makes it livable. And those who are forced to call it home owe everything to the corporation that bankrolled its livability.

Elon Musk will eventually stop this talk about the sun burning the earth to a crisp in an unimaginably distant future and start siding with Sullivan's view of the Mars colonization problem: The essence of earth is irredeemably anti-capitalist.

More:
Elon Musk Is the Ultimate Villain in the Korean Sci-Fi Film Space Sweepers - TheStranger.com

Heres something I wrote, less than a quarter-century ago: Why should humans go to Mars? One reason is that the job market there looks pretty good. Martian society will experience a chronic shortage of labor, due to the small size of its initial population and the high cost of transportation from Earth. Hence, wages will be high, career opportunities will abound, and innovation will be rewarded. Paperwork, bureaucracy, and the quest for purely formal credentials will be kept to a minimum. Such are the exigencies of life on a harsh frontier.

That was the opening of my 1997 review for Reason about Robert Zubrins The Case for Mars and John S. Lewiss Mining the Sky, books with exuberant visions of space colonization offering vast economic and societal bounty. I added: Such ruminations might sound far-fetched, the stuff of some distant future, perhaps, but of no practical interest to anyone alive today. But that future may be closer than most people, including many space experts, currently think. It turned out that a future of Mars settlements and mining operations in the asteroid belt wasnt all that close. I wouldve been disappointed had I somehow gleaned back then where space travel would stand as of 2021.

Yet while my extra-planetary optimism reflected a connection to a subculture of space enthusiasts (which included many libertarians), it also was in keeping with a widely-shared zeitgeist derived from how things had been going on Earth. The 1990s were a notably optimistic time. The Cold War had ended in an unexpectedly peaceful fashion. Crime, poverty and unwanted pregnancies were trending downward. The Internets rapid expansion was opening vast new prospects for communication and commerce, with downsides not readily apparent.

Its different now, darkened by a couple of decades marked by war, financial and public health crises, and cultural and political strife. Likely, this is reflected in more subdued conceptions of space, although the exultation of my 1997 piece mightve been hard to maintain in any case. Mars Is a Hellhole, a recent Atlantic article by science writer Shannon Stirone, makes a cogent case that people on Mars will long be a rarity at best: For humans to live there in any capacity they would need to build tunnels and live underground, and what is not enticing about living in a tunnel lined with SAD lamps and trying to grow lettuce with UV lights?

Stirone takes particular exception to Elon Musks boosterism of Mars colonization, contrasting it with Carl Sagans exploratory emphasis. Theres a video in which Musk reads a famous passage from Sagans book Pale Blue Dot that includes the line, There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate, to which Musk scoffs, This is not true. This is falseMars. Sagan sought to understand what Mars tells us about the universe and life; if any native organisms were found there, even microbes, he wanted them left alone. Musk is already talking about domed cities and terraforming. Musk, writes Stirone, has used the medium of dreaming and exploration to wrap up a package of entitlement, greed, and ego.

And yet, real things are happening on the Red Planet. In February, a new era of Mars exploration began with the landing of Perseverance, a SUV-sized rover that, as Lee Billings at Scientific American writes, will follow an ambitious to-do list. Explore the environment with rock-vaporizing lasers and ground-penetrating radar, and snap high-resolution panoramas, 3-D stereograms and microscopic close-ups with a suite of sophisticated cameras? Check. Listen to Martian soundscapes, and create weather reports with onboard sensors? Check. Test a device for manufacturing oxygen from the suffocatingly thin air, and launch Ingenuity, a first-of-its-kind four-bladed Marscopter on sorties through those alien skies? Check.

The mission, according to NASA, will pave the way for future human expeditions to Mars in several ways. The agency states: These include testing a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identifying other resources (such as subsurface water), improving landing techniques, and characterizing weather, dust, and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on Mars.

Mars cant replace Earth. Any notion of humanity moving there to escape terrestrial environmental damage is folly. Itll take massive resources and technology to make the fourth planet even briefly inhabitable for a small number of visitors. My 1990s enthusiasm for a well-paying job market on Mars was misplaced, or at least premature; a mirage generated by a particular cultural moment. But what happens in space can also shape the culture on Earth. An SUV and helicopter on Mars show that America and humanity can do amazing things.

Kenneth Silber is author ofIn DeWitts Footsteps: Seeing History on the Erie Canaland is on Twitter:@kennethsilber

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Hopes and Dreams of Mars - Splice Today

The SpaceX CEO's new project would take over the city of Boca Chica, where Elon Musk is building his Starship rocket.

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March3, 20213 min read

If anyone has the ability to surprise the world with his ambitious projects, it is Elon Musk . The billionaire announced that he is building a new city in Texas to be called Starbase , around the rocket launch site of his company SpaceX .

Used to causing a stir by typing just a few words, Musk posted on Twitter that he is "creating the city of Starbase , Texas ."

Later, he alluded to his project to colonize the red planet, hinting that Starbase would be just the beginning to go further. From there to Mars. And hence the Stars , detailed the CEO of Tesla .

The tycoon, who is currently the second richest person in the world , said that his city will occupy an area "much larger" than Boca Chica , a place that houses a launch site for SpaceX and where the company is building its Starship rocket.

Elon Musk shared some characteristics that his new city would have, such as that it will be friendly to dogs. He also hinted that it would be directed by "the Doge" , which can be interpreted in two ways.

On the one hand, it is a reference to the Doges, former rulers of Venice and Genoa. He could also be talking about Dogecoin , the cryptocurrency inspired by the 'Cheems' meme that Musk has long endorsed, which would be more interesting.

Eddie Trevio, judge for Cameron County, Texas, confirmed that SpaceX informed the authorities of Elon Musk's intention: to incorporate Boca Chica into the city of Starbase . The official noted that the mogul and his company must comply with all state statutes of incorporation and clarified that the county will process any petition in accordance with the law.

The 49-year-old billionaire is determined to make Texas his main base of operations. In addition to its launch center in Boca Chica, SpaceX has a rocket test facility in the town of McGregor and they plan to build a manufacturing plant in Austin. In July 2020, it was announced that Tesla's next gigafactory would be built outside of Austin.

Last December, Musk confirmed that he would be moving from California to Texas and, at the same time, auctioned all his properties in Los Angeles to finance his Mars colonization project .

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Elon Musk Is Creating a City in Texas. It Will Be Called Starbase and It Will Be Ruled by 'The Doge' - Entrepreneur

Thiemens is a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Chancellors Associates chair, and former dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego. He lives in North County.

Near high noon local time on Thursday, Feb., 18, the Perseverance spacecraft landed on the surface of Mars. The landing sequence was accompanied by some of the most astounding and breathtaking photography of a space landing ever taken. It happened that the time of landing was during a lecture for my upper-level environmental chemistry course at UC San Diego. The course is not restricted to Earths environment and has included Mars. Since it was timely, I livestreamed the landing and whats known as the seven minutes of terror to the class.

Perseverance in many ways is unique and, given the incredible array of space missions, it has a high bar. The landing was in an optimal site for the search for life, a mission focus of Perseverance. As NASA planned, it touched down in the 30-mile-wide, approximately 3.8-billion-year-old Jezero Crater. This site was chosen especially for its potential for life. It is deep, with delta-like drainage features and observed minerals associated with the activity of water which should be directed towards the crater bottom.

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As we discussed in class, the craft carries a full arsenal of analytical instruments to search for life on Mars from a multitude of perspectives. For the first time, there is the capability to drill and collect deeper Mars samples where life may be. Equally important is that it will establish a sample cache depot, where the samples will be left for future astronaut return missions, another first and clearly planned for humankinds deep exploration of space. The examination of Mars in this mission also achieves another first with the inclusion of the Ingenuity helicopter. The flights of Ingenuity will search for new notable geological features as well as provide road maps for future rovers and missions.

What occurred to me while describing the experiments on board Perseverance was that the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, earmarked the mission in another special way. The experiment is constructed to convert carbon dioxide, the major component of the Martian atmosphere, to oxygen. The purpose is to prepare oxygen for human consumption and as a propellant to prepare for human habitation on Mars. In some ways, this highlights the fact that our expansion to inhabit space is very clearly underway, and this is a significant step. The Artemis project, scheduled to launch in 2024 and land the first woman and next man at the lunar South Pole, is the beginning of the first permanent station on the moon. It will develop the knowledge, experience and technology to expand our presence to Mars. NASA, along with an international group including Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine and Australia, and private corporations and universities, will collaborate on this expansion of human existence from Earth.

In describing and pondering these recent activities from the perspective of watching Sputnik, Apollo and space missions, flying my own rocket atmospheric samplers, measuring moonrocks and meteorites (including Martian ones) for more than 40 years, and learning of Artemis during my tenure on the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences it is staggering that so much can occur across our planet in less than a lifetime.

In 1976, Gerard K. ONeill wrote in The High Frontier that a post-Apollo road map to colonization of space involved the gravitationally stable L-4 and L-5 points, 60 degrees ahead of and 60 degrees behind the Moon in its orbit around the Earth. In 1979, Gov. Jerry Brown provided funds for creation of the University of Californias California Space Institute. This was a broad multi-campus organization to develop all aspects of space science, exploration and technology, including space inhabitation. Its founder was my former colleague James Arnold, the first chair and founder of our Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego, who was instrumental in creating NASAs lunar sample facility and research. He directed Calspace for 10 years and recruited Sally Ride to become the next director and a professor in the Department of Physics and the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences. These efforts seemed in the far future at the the time but very much justified and prescient.

With widespread international collaborations between countries, corporations and universities, there is an acceleration of space science and technologies. The students in the classroom today may very well be among the first citizens of Mars.

Read more from San Diegans on the Perseverance rovers landing on Mars:

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Opinion: The Perseverance rover landing on Mars is a giant leap toward human colonization of space - The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Perseverance rover has been on the planet for ten days - while the project is into its 213th day in total. Stunning images from the vehicle's 23 cameras captured the historic descent and dusty terrain of its landing - on what is thought to be a former lake.

Microphones picked up the sound of a gentle wind which was recorded and sent back to Earth.

Perseverance will spend at least two years drilling into rocks in the vicinity in search of past life.

Sanjeev Gupta, one of the leading scientists on the 3 billion mission, has said sophisticated laboratory analysis of samples will be used to establish if life existed.

He refers to the Jezero Crater on which the mission landed as Lake Jezero.

Discussing images of the Mars surface, he told BBC Newsnight: Youre looking at a new vista that nobody has ever seen before.

It looks like a very desolate place; reddish colour, rocks strewn.

But about 3.7 billion years ago, we think the crater that Perseverance landed in was actually a lake, so you would have been sitting in the middle of a lake.

The goals over the next year or so are going to be looking at the rocks we can see in the foreground and the background and trying to work out if the environment was actually habitable for life.

The project is so complex that gathered samples will not be returned until the 2030s, and hundreds of the worlds top scientists are offering their wisdom to the investigation.

READ MORE:Life on Mars: Scientists grow rock-eating organisms on Martian meteor

"Thats what we are seeking - chemical evidence for life or fossilized signatures.

The tubes of samples we are going to bring back are going to be tiny.

"But with lab techniques on Earth we will be able to delve into detail on those.

Presenter Emily Maitlis asked Professor Gupta, of Imperial College Londons Department of Earth Science and Engineering, if life had to be an organism relying on oxygen or water - or whether a different definition could exist.

He replied: We use Earth examples.

The rocks we are looking at are 3.7 billion years old and the earliest life on Earth that we can be certain of occurred about 3.5 billion years ago - and thats microbial life in rocks in Australia that used water and chemical energy.

"So we are using the same sorts of learnings from Earth to look for life on Mars.

On the refinement and evolution of Earth as a planet, Prof Gupta added: It makes Earth feel very special, a tropical landscape on Earth feels very special, and one can actually imagine 3.7 billion years ago one could have actually had a picnic on the lake shore of Lake Jezero but thats not possible now.

More:
NASA Mars mission: Perseverance to begin search for life on Red Planet - Daily Express

Humans dont live on Mars/ Nor do cats/ Or walruses/ There is no Perestroika on Mars/ Therefore no illusion/ No pollution/ Problems but no solutions/ No evolution, no revolution/ Go, go, go to Mars/ Go, go, go to Mars

Mangal Graha,

lyrics by Chandrabindoo

Theres something about Mars. Saturn has rings. Jupiter has 79 moons, maybe more. But Mars was always about Martians. Its the only planet whose inhabitants captured our collective imagination for over a century. Martians were a thing in a way Venusians and Jovians never were.

While every Mars mission, from US space agency Nasas Viking to Indias Mangalyaan, might have expanded the frontiers of science, they have also sadly made us realise that there are no Martians, whether itching to start a War of the Worlds or provide refuge from our nuclear winter. Mars has become the back-up planet now, the one we will escape to when we have rendered Earth uninhabitable. The Mars One project promised to establish a colony, a scheme that was funded by a reality TV show but that has gone belly-up. Business magnate Elon Musk dreams of sending a million people to Mars by 2050. No less than 10,932,295 people sent their names to Nasa to join the 2020 Perseverance mission, their names carried to the red planet on microchips. Over 5,500,000 have added their names for a future mission and gotten a boarding pass. More than 270,000 names are from India, the most after the Philippines and the US. In a year when most of us have not gone anywhere at all, just holding a boarding pass, even one that takes us nowhere, feels exhilarating. But the Martians are missing.

It all probably started because of the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli. In 1877, he saw channel-like structures on the surface of Mars. His Italian canali, or channels, got translated as canals. In 1906, The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story about Percival Lowell, an amateur astronomer who said he had discovered nearly 500 canals irrigating oases all over the planet. This was the time, writes Nathaniel Rich in Believer magazine, when canals, like the Suez and Panama, had come to represent the pinnacle of human achievement. Newspapers claimed Martians had built two immense canals in two years while earthlings had taken half a century to dig the Suez and Panama. An astronomy professor was sure that once we got advanced telescopes, we would be able to see Martian cities.

That canal fantasy so captivated us that Bengali writer Hemendra Kumar Roy fantasised in his novel, Meghduter Mortey Agomon, that Mars had green fields and jungles around 3,000- to 4,000-mile long canals while the rest of the planet was buffeted by red sandstorms. All that was debunked but, by then, the Martians had landed in our imagination.

In 1897, H.G. Wells had them levelling cities on Earth with lasers as they launched The War Of The Worlds. Decades later, when Satyajit Ray sent his Professor Shonku, the protagonist of his immensely popular Bengali sci-fi stories, to Mars along with his manservant Prahlad, his robot Bidhushekhar and his cat Newton, they too were attacked by an army of Martians. In Hemendra Kumar Roys world, the Martians were dwarfish, with huge triangular heads the same size as their thin bodies, highly evolved yet terrified of guns. They came to Earth to vacuum up samplesan entire pond, a banyan tree with a flock of monkeys, a steamer.

But not all Martians were hostile. Edgar Rice Burroughs discovered a princess on Mars, one that entranced his Confederate war hero turned Mars explorer John Carter. C.S. Lewis imagined a planet of great beauty with benign species bemused by the way humans were turning Earth into a wasteland. Lewis described three kinds of Martianstall, thin, otter-like hrossa covered in thick black hair with a penchant for poetry, the 15ft-high feathered sorn who specialised in science, and the pfifltriggi, with tapir-like heads and frog-like bodies, who mined gold. None of the species thought they were superior to the others.

When they were not trying to destroy us, the Martians were trying to save us. Sometimes, though, we got to save them. Bengali science fiction writer Premendra Mitras Ghana Da was the master of tall tales. When he was kidnapped by a devious scientist and taken to Mars, he found a planet of swirling dust where all civilisation had moved underground. Butspoiler alert!Ghana Da and his two companions, both men, found themselves hot commodities on a planet where the males had died out. Each female Martian was more exquisite than the next. But how come Martians looked exactly like humans? wondered a sceptical listener. They arent humans. But whos to say we arent Martians, retorted Ghana Da. That hundreds of thousands of years ago Martians didnt come to earth to establish our human civilization? Remember we have not found the missing link yet.

For us, Martians were a kind of missing link, whether to a glorious past or a bleak future. In the 1950s-60s, Mars was a perfect backdrop to play out debates over colonisation that were raging on Earth. In Robert A. Heinleins Red Planet, Martians have second thoughts about whether they want to share their planet with colonising humans. The Sands Of Mars, Arthur C. Clarkes first published novel, was set in a colony on Mars whose original inhabitants are plant-eating, kangaroo-like creatures of limited intelligence. In Ray Bradburys The Martian Chronicles, the Martians hunt down the newly arrived earthlings but the humans have a secret weapon against which they are defencelesschicken-pox germs.

Missions like Nasas Mariner 4 in 1965 and Viking, which landed on Mars in 1976, enthralled us but also sounded the death knell for the Martians. Mars slowly started shifting in our minds from the planet that belonged to Martians, to an empty terrain we could turn into Earth-II. Its landmarks were bestowed names like Olympus, Utopia, Elysium, names that sound almost like gated communities in Gurugram. Mars had once been a socialist utopia in the imagination of writers like Aleksandr Bogdanov, where men and women were nearly indistinguishable in their loose body suits and workers had an unlimited supply of goods. When Mariner 4 showed us the canals were an optical illusion, Mars became more of a dystopia, a place to be tamed.

When botanist astronaut Mark Watney (in Andy Weirs The Martian) gets stranded on Mars, he tries to reclaim water and grow potato plants using his own bio-waste. In Mark Haddons The Woodpecker And The Wolf, an astronaut on a Mars station discovers she is pregnant and there are no supplies coming from Earth. Once we were worried about what the Martians wanted from us. The more we learnt about Mars, the more it turned into an extreme episode of Survivor.

Bradbury writes that when the men of Earth came to Mars, they were the Lonely Ones, who were leaving bad wives or bad towns; they were coming to find something or leave something or get something, to dig up something or bury something. Mars became part of the manifest destiny of us as human beings, a wild frontier we would tame into submission without post-colonial guilt.

As a boy, I remember lying on our rooftop in Kolkata on sultry power-cut summer nights looking up at the stars, imagining someone out there looking back at us. I only had access to a pocket-sized sky hemmed in by the water cisterns and television antennas of taller buildings all around us. But the imagination was unfettered, racing through the sky at the speed of light. At the time, I could never have thought that an Elon Musk would talk about setting up human colonies on Mars in my lifetime. But thanks to Isaac Asimov and Ghana Da stories, I fantasised about what Martians might be like.

Mars is back on our minds, thanks to Perseverance, but the Martians have vanished. And even as I marvel at the selfies from Percy, I cant help but miss the Martians in whom we once saw the best and worst of ourselves.

Cult Friction is a fortnightly column on issues we keep rubbing up against. Sandip Roy is a writer, journalist and radio host.

@sandipr

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Why are humans so obsessed with Mars? - Livemint

On Thursday 18th February, the Mars rover Perseverance landed at the Jezero Crater after having been launched six and a half months earlier on July 30th from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and will remain there for at least one Mars year (687 Earth days). Its main job is going to be to find evidence of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for possible return to Earth. It will also test the oxygen production on the planet to prepare for the feasible habitation of humans on Mars. In addition, there is a helicopter that hitched a ride with the rover, named Ingenuity, which will be used to test the first powered flight on Mars.

Acting as the brains of the metal creature, the rover has two computers, one being backup, which help with monitoring its condition, exchanging information with the team back on Earth and navigating the rock terrain of the red planet, so they carry out the same functions as a human brain. The computers run at 200 megahertz speed, which is 10 times faster than the computers of the other two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. They have an incredible amount of memory, with 2 GB of flash memory, which is 8 times as much as other rovers on Mars, 256 MB of RAM and 256 KB of ROM. The memory is even radiation proof to survive through space and the Martian surface. All of this is protected by the rovers body, or the warm electronics box, WEB for short. The helicopters mass is 1.8kg, and it can fly up to 300 meters an altitude of 5 meters. Its power comes from lithium ion batteries, which are charged by a solar panel. This gives it enough energy for a 90-second flight per Martian day.

Back in 2011, when NASA found evidence of water on Mars, the world was buzzing about possible alien life. Now they hadnt actually found water, but the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had detected evidence of hydrated salts where there were mysterious dark streaks on the red planet. Scientists suggested that it was most likely a shallow subsurface flow, with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening. However, two years later, additional research was done which interpreted the streaks as granular flows, where it was sand and dust slipping downhill causing the dark streaks, not seeping water. The hydrated salts that the Orbiter detected do suggest that there is some water on Mars, whether that be in the form of ice or liquid water. When the rock and soil samples are returned from Perseverance, we might be able to see some more evidence of water. If there evidence of water, it could mean that there could was life on Mars, which could be in the form of humans or aliens like you would see in a sci-fi movie.

In November 1964, the first successful flybys of Mars were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Mariner 3 was launched on November 5th but did not make it to Mars, as the protective casing on the spacecraft failed to open properly, so it was lost during the launch. However, Mariner 4 was launched 3 weeks later, and successfully made it to Mars. It first flew past the red planet in July of 1965, and took the first close-up photographs of another planet. There had been 6 previous attempts to get to Mars made by the Soviet Union, all of which had failed due to launch and spacecraft failures, but their first (partially) successful mission was Mars 2 in 1971. The orbiter was successful, but the lander crashed into Mars, and with it went the rover. This was, however, the first impact on Mars. The most recent NASA mission to Mars was the 2018 InSight mission, consisting of a lander and two flybys, all of which were successful. The missions purpose was to look at the geology of the planet, specifically the interior structure. There are two planned NASA missions for the next decade. The first is another rover, set to launch in 2022. This will be a part of a series of missions in collaboration with the ESA and Roscosmos to find out if there was ever life on Mars. The one after is another sample return, set to launch in 2026, and land on Mars in late 2027/2028. This mission is specifically focused on the concept of sample return, and with Perseverance being part of the first mission to conduct sample return on another planet, it is a fairly new concept. The mission will last for about 5 years, returning in 2031.

Many of the Mars missions are now focused on finding out if there was life on the planet, and testing new techniques such as the previously mentioned sample return. Soon focus will be shifted onto human colonization, if possible. Soon we might see the first human on Mars, maybe as soon as 2026. If the climate situation on Earth gets worse, we may have to leave to survive, and colonizing other planets will not be a choice, but a necessity.

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Perseverance - The Mars Rover - Fiorella Beausang-Hunter - Latymer Upper School - This is Local London

This is a big month for our solar system. The robot explorer Perseverance made a 300-million-mile journey through space and landed on Mars, an Antares rocket launched the Cygnus cargo ship to the space station for NASA, and a local man published his poetic thoughts on the universe.

Our thoughts naturally turn toward space and what it took to make robotic probes, and massive rocket launches seem almost commonplace.

So, whether you grew up in the Sputnik era or think of that time as ancient history you probably need a refresher. The best source for this is Americas funniest historian Mary Roach. Her book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, is an irresistible cruise across all the facets of how to become an astronaut so you can jaunt into space, and what to do when you get there.

Starting with how Japan selects an astronaut (hint: origami is seriously involved), moving on through the psychology of isolation (several someones caught up on sleep), continuing though motion sickness (throwing up really is in that direction when in weightless confinement), and interspacing it all with amusing anecdotes, Roach kept me reading from chapter to chapter without pause.

Roach begins with early space travel and all of the trials experienced by those macho astronauts and then turns to how all of this was just a prelude to the enormous challenges of eventual interplanetary travel.

Typically, research involving long-time travel in space usually tends to be very dry and technical. Yet, with her usual wit, Roach provides a series of highly entertaining accounts including how scientists figured out methods for feeding these sailors to the stars. For example, one suggestion was to add shredded paper as a thickener to a main course of vitamin and mineral-enriched sugar water. However, Roach was unable to ascertain whether it was as an aid to palatability, regularity, or document security. I guess some things will forever remain a mystery, even for Roach.

All of these chapters culminated in discussing that final goal in the race to outer space specifically to Mars. While many of us thought that the moon was the big deal, the reality was much further away, mostly because many deep thinkers have realized that Earth may not always be as habitable as it is right now. Yes, projections are that at some point in the distant future our sun will die, humanity will have used up Earths resources, and some cataclysmic event is highly likely.

How do we know this? Michio Kaku has the answer in The Future of Humanity: Our Destiny in the Universe. Kaku is a theoretical physicist, very deep thinker, and author of several best sellers. He begins by reminding us that one day about seventy-five thousand years ago, humanity almost died. This was due to that massive eruption of Toba in Indonesia that created a volcanic winter. It is theorized that all but around 2,000 humans world-wide died, along with most of the vegetation and wildlife. Apparently this was the first cataclysmic event, and mathematical and scientific speculation suggests more are on the way.

Things got better after that first big blow up, but as we know, other events have, and will, happen. For Kaku, Mars is only the next goal in what he believes is just the first in a series of stages, scaffolding to the ultimate prize interstellar colonization.

Given what we know of the current scientific trends, this is not really so far-fetched. Medical science is working to reverse aging (we need amazing longevity to survive the flights to the nearest star system that has earth-like planets orbiting younger suns). Botanists are developing life-sustaining plants that will grow under a variety of hostile conditions (check out UNHs kiwis), and engineers are designing starships rugged enough to travel those astonishing distances.

Right now, Mars is the planet of choice for many of the experiments in space travel, and Kaku brilliantly discusses all of these efforts. Once Mars has again become the lush and habitable planet many think it once was, all of the data can be gathered and used for the next step of the journey.

Speaking of journeys, Kaku also speculates that perhaps some day humans can leave their bodies and just laser port to the farther galaxies. This is how theoretical physicists think and many times their thinking becomes reality. What a fascinating way to think of how we could achieve immortality.

Once read, these books make it impossible to get these thoughts out of my head. Like the endless breakers on the sand, I keep thinking of the forever of space, the possibility of some part of me being forever and traveling through the stars, and someday a civilization that can harness extragalactic energy to keep life going despite the ultimate apocalypse.

And one man, in a small corner of a medium-sized state, looks up at the stars every night and gives poetic voice to those thoughts that swirl through our heads. The Peterborough Poetry Project has just published Bill Chatfields newest poems We Are Stardust: The Universe in Verse. Sometimes when we look to the heavens after reading something profound, or remembering a photograph from a distant telescope, we lack the words to describe what we feel. That is what poetry is for and that is what poets do.

Chatfield likes to push the envelope surrounding our traditional thinking by giving voice to our ponderings. For example, the Big Bang is a scientific belief that leads us to believe this whole thing we call the infinite universe all started in a moment, with a bang. As finite beings, we can accept that because we understand a beginning and an end. Chatfield, on the other hand, in his poem No Big Bang suggests something else.

Some scientists doubt

that a Big Bang

created all of this

that we see

from a bland without.

The idea

of no big bang

sounds about right to me.

Beginnings and

endings play

havoc with the idea of eternity.

After reading about packing for a Martian voyage and laughing with Roach about the very human efforts to launch these expeditions, then venturing beyond the outer rim of our galaxy with Kaku, we can begin to appreciate how one poet can give voice to these thoughts. Now, we need to formulate our responses to this future.

The Peterborough Poetry Project has offered a challenge and a promise. All readers are asked to become part of the Cosmic Poetry series by submitting their own poems about the cosmos. So, read, think, speculate, imagine, and, first dance your mind through the stars, then second, put pen to paper and add your new fresh voice to the Cosmos.

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The Avid Reader: A trip into the universe - Monadnock Ledger Transcript

The Expanse, the hit sci-fi show set in humanitys far future,returnedto Amazon Prime in December 2020, with a new actionpackedstoryline and stunning visuals based onastronautic science.

In thehour-longepisodes, The Expanse deliversjawdropping narrative expanding upon two maincharactersNaomi Nagataplayed by Dominique Tipperand Amos BurtonplayedbyWesChatham,whilst focusingon new tensions and conflicts between planetary governments.

ASyfy channel original for its first three premier seasons, The Expanse has received numerous awards and nominations, such as the Dragon Award and Saturn Award, for its depiction of accurate science inits cinematography. It.Waspicked up by Amazon for its fourth, fifth, andupcomingsixth season.

Im going to analyze this season,so bewareof spoilers.

The seasonreturnstothemain characters split up after theincidentcausedby Belterson the newly colonizedexoplanet.Beltersisagroup of people native to the Asteroid Belt between Earth and Mars.

We join James Holden,played by StevenStraitand Naomi Nagatabeginningtheir lives together when Naomi finds informationaboutthe locationof herlong-lostsonwho wasstolen by her ex-husband, and main antagonist of this season MarcoInaros,played by Keon Alexander.The reunion is promptly interruptedwhenher son turnson herandNaomi is taken. Thistriggers a series of eventsleading James and his crew aiding in a dire rescue mission.This islearningabout asecret group seeking the last remaining amount ofprotomolecule,a bioweapon revealed to be engineered by an ancientspecies thatwent extinct for unknownreasons.

On another storyline,we follow Alex seeking amends with his familythathe leftbehindprior toseason one.He isrejoined withthemartialmarine gunnery sergeant Roberta BobbieDrapper,played by Frankie Adams.Asthe two begin travelingthe solar systemin arepurposedmartialwarship,they investigatewho is supplying the BelterO.P.Aterrorist organization with Martiantechnology.

On Earth,Amos returnsto his hometown of Boston,Massachusetts,to settle a disputeabout an old arrangement made prior to season onethatescalates.Amos fleestheworld withhis acquaintance after a terrorist attack, brought on by antagonist Marco as he flings meteor into the Earths atmosphere, destroying manylarge,populatedcities across the globe.

The season finishes withUnited Nations secretary general playedbyChrisjenAvasarala,played byShohrehAghdashloo,strugglingto keep peace between Earth and Marsasthesnewly formed Belter terrorist organization declarewar.

Therearea lot of great aspects of thisseasontomake up for the dry and slow plotline.This is done byexploring many of the other main characters past lives andhistories andthingsliketheoverwhelming anticipation ofwherea missing asteroid around Venusisand how itwasusedina terrorist attackon the Earth.The politics that go into keeping peacebetweenthree governmentsadd to it too.

However,this seasonlacks pacing.It can lose the audiences attention early on with the first three episodes.While theresthrilling momentslikethebattle between theRocinante,the shows main space vessel,and the Belter armada,it takes over too much of the season making quite a few of the scenes unnecessary to seasons plot.

Another problem surrounds the characterAlex Kamal,played byCas Anvar. There were sexual assault allegationsagainst the actor,as well as multiple womenallegedlyreceivinginappropriate messages and pictures.Theactor was fired from the show because of the allegations, bringinga troubling scene toward the end of the season, where he was killed off. The scene is troubling becausefeels forced rather than necessary or compelling to the plot.It alsobrings concern aboutwhat will happen in season six.

Season fiveof The Expanseis by far more thrilling than itsprecedingseason,which seemed to drag on before the final three episodes, but season five comes with its owncomplications.Thedeath of main character Alex,even the expectation of the asteroid impactfelt anti-climactic compared to other thrilling scenes seen in seasons two and three.

Other than that,season five keepsaudienceslocked in and is must watch for anyone invested.Thedevelopingplotlineseemsto be setting up for something big in season six.Id rate the season3.5picksout of five,as it delivers to the audience compelling drama and thrilling actioncontent,butmay take a bit of watching to get to.

Sven Kline may be reached at[emailprotected]edu.@SvenKline on Twitter.

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The Expanse season five kicks off slowly - The Prospector