Get Your Ass to Mars!

I must admit I am in no small amount moved by Elon Musk's fervor to reach Mars by 2025.  I am skeptical of its success, but I am also reminded of what Kennedy said in 1962 on a football field in Texas.

We choose to go to the moon.  We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, ONE WE ARE UNWILLING TO POSTPONE, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

 This quote remains relevant in the world today because, even in the face of Kennedy's death, we (as human beings) were able to pull together and send men to the moon within that decade.

The political and scientific significance of the actual moon landing is beyond the scope of this blog

There's no small amount of risk in interplanetary travel.  Some have compared it to the overseas travel of the 15th and 16th centuries, but Elon Musk's plan calls for something a bit more concentrated than that.

However, in that context, I've been thinking about some of the ways that people might find themselves on a rocket ship to Mars.  The very real threat of indentured servitude crops up here, since in founding a colony you're going to have a bunch of people who stand to gain quite a bit of land from completing initial contracts and corporate sponsorship is an easy way to cover costs and allow businesses on Earth to profit from the goings-on on Mars.  There is no doubt in my mind that this latter situation (Earth business profiting from Martian investments) is going to happen.

One must wonder what kind of society will be set up on Mars.  By necessity, I think it would likely be established as an 'international colony,' somewhat akin to the international research stations like those in Antarctica and, of course, the ISS.

Humans coming together for science!

The Martian political landscape is quite likely to be discussed thoroughly before its establishment, as humanity enters an age of neocolonialism.  It's impractical, with a 13-minute communication delay and a 2-year physical transportation gap, to remotely govern a Martian colony.  But I'm sure critics in Europe said the same thing about establishing colonies in the Americas where the delays were months-long for both physical transportation and message sending.

The very real promise with the Martian colony is its potential.  This potential has been argued both for and against, and I've seen compelling arguments both ways.  It could be that the "Martian Million" all perish as they attempt to establish a colony there.  But what a step forward it would otherwise be!

Image courtesy of the Curiosity rover

Another concern on Mars is where humans can ethically settle.  There has been water discovered on Mars - all over the damn place.  And while that's great from the point of view of people who are going to need water to live, it's also really frustrating because it presents the possibility for cross-planetary contamination.  Colonization is the fastest way to contaminate things, and the robots that NASA has been sending to Mars have gone through increasingly stringent processes to reduce the amount of Earth that goes to Mars.

What is there to contaminate?  Possibly nothing, but probably something.  Not necessarily microbial life, but there's a good chance of that being the case.  And if it is, then a pure sample will teach us a great deal about the evolutionary process as it applies to life on a universal scale.

Those clean white suits aren't just for style.

I will, and have, made no secret that I want to live (and likely die) on Mars.  I'd love to be one of the Martian Million.  There's no doubt that I could contribute to the Martian society, particularly in the form of entertainment (which they will need up there!)  I have other facts standing against me, though.  I have had a vasectomy, so I cannot effectively contribute to the gene pool of the Martian colony.  In an austere environment, reproductive efficiency is a must.  Although I'm sure reproduction problems will exist to some extent due to stress and other issues that arise from interplanetary travel that we're as yet unfamiliar, I am wholly unable to contribute.  Another fact against me is my legal obligation to my children, which will I will not be relinquished of in enough time to become one of the Martian Million.

I love my children dearly.  As they grow older, my presence in their life fluctuates.  Sometimes I see them quite a bit and sometimes I never see them at all.  Ideally, we could all go to Mars.  But I couldn't make that choice for them, not when going to Mars is this dangerous.  I would miss my children terribly, but I'd live with my choice to go if I could.  I know I could justify my actions to myself, even if I couldn't justify it to them.  Call me selfish, I don't care.  I've dreamt of being an astronaut since I was a child, and I've never stopped dreaming of it.

In the long run, Musk's Mars Million is not about just colonizing Mars and ultimately terraforming it.  It sounds silly to talk about the long-term goals of this mission, but Musk says it all in his mission statement: he wants to make human beings interplanetary.  This starts with what's in our solar system, but stretching out into vast and unknown stretches of time it covers interstellar exploration as well.

There's a reason why, in Star Trek, Mars was the jumping-off point for Starfleet after Earth Space Dock