MARS COLONY: Chapter One and Two | MARS EXPEDITION

MARS COLONY VIDEO: https://vimeo.com/85216764

Chapter One: Rendezvous

Ten billion dollars might not change the course of human history, but it was worth a try. When five aging billionaires formed the Cartel, they all agreed humanitys past was a muddle, a vast bloody wasteland, with only a few bright moments of inspiration. Ideologies came and went. Philosophy was ignored by most people of the 20th and 21st centuries. Most of our great art was produced within civilizations of soldiers. Religions came and went, often competing with obsessive, yet entirely rational, forms of materialistic hedonism. Humanitys self-definition needed some work, and that work was not being done on Earth.

Over a decade, the Cartel bought everything required to send one-hundred-seventy-five people, with one giant leap of faith, to colonize Mars. In 2014, three ships left Earth to rendezvous ten thousand miles past the Moon. Here twenty agile astronauts transformed thirty modules to create one unified ship, the Erasmus. Eight meters high in most places, eighty meters wide and eight hundred meters in length, this ship would transport the colonists, and remain in orbit around Mars. Just in case someone wanted to come back.

Many of the crew had no intention of coming back. They signed-on for a fifteen year tour-of-duty. The crew was carefully chosen from nearly 200,000 applicants. The Cartel wanted scientists who were also artists, and technicians who were also poets. Two composers and a novelist also made the final cut. Scientific exploration was only a small part of the mission. The primary mission was to invent a new form of civilization. Of course, the Cartel had some ideas about what that civilization might look like, but they kept most of those ideas to themselves. They wanted, and expected creative action from the crew of the Erasmus.

The rendezvous was complete, only when the entire crew settled-in and began to discuss their diverse views of what the word civilization meant. It was more than a good meal for everyone. More than indoor plumbing. More than endless entertainment. More than science and more than art. It was definitely more than all the computer and biotech advances of the past fifty years. The people obsessed with those advances, were not looking for civilization, they were looking practical solutions, or simply looking to make some money. Those many advances happened side-by-side with a decline in personal freedom, and an increase in economic desperation for millions of citizens.

On the Erasmus, there was a rendezvous of minds, the best minds the Cartel could find. These were the brightest, most creative and well-adjusted bunch of nerds available for space travel. Free of economic pressure, free from the influence or demands of any government, free from all society except the society they would create, it was hoped these one-hundred-seventy-five colonists would look into themselves, and look at their knowledge of human history, then rendezvous to invent something new.

MARS EXPEDITION MUSIC: http://marsexpedition.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-the-colonization-of-mars

Chapter Two: The Love Lounge

The two places aboard the Erasmus most conducive to the conversation are the dining hall and the love lounge.In both places strangers meet, to start friendships, to discuss the details of their lives and their mission. I prefer the love lounge. Two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. One afternoon, I sat near a lovely black girl, her long hair in tight ringlets, flowing over naked shoulders, framing an intelligent face. Her perfect smile proved a childhood of excellent dental care.

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MARS COLONY: Chapter One and Two | MARS EXPEDITION