Remembering A First Encounter

When first I saw the russet Mars surmount the southern sky,

And, riding high, transfix me with a baleful orange glow,

Did I conceive that I beheld the presence of a world?

Or see a future land that humankind might one day touch?

Star flies glimmered in the soft encompassing night air,

I heard the gentle beating gossamer of muted wings.

Those quiet voices called across the reach of arching void,

While Mars itself rose silent, speaking to a spirit depth.

Where To Land?

The Mars One project talks of sending an unmanned rover to Mars in 2018 to seek out a suitable landing site for a colony. I am not entirely sure how much scope for choice of site this will provide. None of the rovers sent to Mars so far have had high speed capabilities. They have been slow, partly because of power constraints but also because of the need to proceed cautiously when any intervention by controllers on Earth is subject to a long time lag caused by the light speed limit on communications. So it follows that Mars One will need to pre-determine a landing site within tight limits before sending its rover to conduct a detailed survey. Even a relatively fast vehicle will probably only be able to cover a few square miles before colonists  need to set out (2022 is the suggested launch target).

What features would a target area possess? Well, first it would help if it were relatively close to the equator of Mars. On such a cold planet, the more that can be done to reduce heating requirements and maximise solar energy for naturally generated photosynthesis in crops, and for solar panel produced electricity, then the better. Secondly, it will be necessary to find somewhere with quantities of water ice relatively close to the land surface, so that the ice can be drilled, melted and extracted to support the colony's water usage requirements. Thirdly, there may be useful mineral resources to be sought and detected within reasonably easy reach of the colony base. Fourthly, if geothermal energy is to be tapped, whatever can be done to assess the potential of a specific site both in terms of heat sources and drilling requirements, will be a priority.

More than this, a colony will hope to use local materials for building and most particularly for cut and cover work to provide solar radiation protection. A landing site will also need stable surface characteristics. Deep dust cover will be something to avoid. Relatively limited loose rock coverage of a site will reduce the work effort in land clearance and enhance the prospects of a safe landing. Any heavy duty leveling of the surface will be out of the question early on in settlement activity and it will remain something to avoid if possible in the longer-term, if only because of its resource implications. So a largely flat and level site must be sought, preferably with a broad expanse of even surface around it to make as easy as possible the future development and expansion of the colony.

Quite a lot of considerations to ponder. There is a lot of data already available from orbital surveys, together with quite detailed photography of the surface. This all needs careful analysis beyond the largely scientific study that has gone on so far, to determine candidate sites for any dedicated rover that may be sent on a colony survey mission.

Children

One issue, in more than one sense, will create a serious ethical problem on Mars. Procreation. Wherever human beings have gone, the settlement of new lands has of course entailed the birth and raising of children. How can a Mars colony be a true new beginning if having children and bringing them up is not involved? Several questions arise. Mars is a very dangerous environment. Should we expose children to the risk? We have of course always subjected kids to peril when we have settled new lands in the past. But we have very different attitudes to the safe upbringing of children today than we have had in the past. Leaving aside births on Mars, and if children were eligible for seats on a Mars voyage, I can easily imagine local social service department officials rushing to a launch site with court orders to hold the launch and take children into care. And that is not too bizarre a scenario. Think about it!

But birth on Mars is an even more crucial issue. Mars has a little more than one third Earth's gravity. We have experimented with the hatching of birds etc in the weightless environments of space stations. But the human gestation period is a long one, and child development is immensely longer. We have absolutely no idea what damage pregnancy and post-natal growth could do to a child born in the martian low-gravity environment. Significant birth defect, and drastically premature or still births are each possibilities. Beyond this, inadequate development of bone and musculature (including heart muscle) might be risks in a growing child.

Finally, supposing children can grow up fit and strong enough for Mars, we cannot guarantee that they would ever be able to survive on Earth. Imagine if we were transported to a planet with three times Earth's gravity. Our whole bodies would be subject to continuous and heavy strain, with dangers of resultant organ failure, broken limbs and damaged muscle. What if you weighed 400 or 500 lbs instead of ,say, 140 or 170? How much of a healthy life could you conceive of living? Yes Mars children would have our own genetic make-up in their favour. There is a chance that they might gradually adapt to Earth gravity. But we do not know that they would for certain. Suppose some disaster befalls a colony and we need to mount a rescue to Earth. What happens then to these children. Or what happens if returns from Mars become routinely practicable? How will a family be able to decide to re-migrate if the kids were born on Mars; and, if they cannot, then may they gradually become malcontents for a colony to deal with?

These questions need serious consideration if a natural human life is to become established on Mars. We need to start thinking about them soon.

Making The Grade

Who will go to Mars? Would I want to? Would you? I for one would go in a flash, but I will never get the chance. A history of depression or anxiety symptoms tend to make you miss out on even the first cut! And besides I will be pushing 70 by the earliest conceivable date we might start to settle Mars. In fact anyone who thinks that having $500,000 for a ticket, or coming out on top of a reality TV competition, or winning a lottery, or even having an essential skill, might guarantee a trip to Mars can think again. There will be some important background checks, mental and physical requirements and some fairly stringent testing needed first. Age will be a factor, and there will be minimum intelligence and skill barriers. Fitness and good health will be essential (a candidate will probably need to have her or his appendix removed as a precautionary measure). Family history of early cancer, or heart disease, or mental illness, may well exclude some potential colonists too. There will need to be some medical facilities on Mars but it will be no good tempting fate with an increased likelihood of major illness.

Beyond the obvious physical and mental issues, social compatibility and an equable temperament will be vital. Importing meanness of spirit, lack of social skills, moodiness, or inability to cope in emergencies to Mars would create unwanted tensions and risks in an enclosed and marginal environment. 'Hail to thee blithe spirit' should be the motto of the selectors. Upbeat, friendly, kind, courageous and adaptable human beings will be at a premium. Would you fit the bill? How many people do you know that might match up? The pool of those who may dream of going to Mars may be quite substantial. The proportion of those who will be fully suitable could be a lot, lot smaller!

Space X Impression Of A Dragon Spacecraft Landing On Mars

What The Mars One Venture Believe Their Colony Might Look Like

Power

For some years the question of how to power a Mars colony has been problematical. One might be forgiven for thinking that the essentials of life: air to breath, food to eat, and water to drink, would be the key to living on Mars. So they are in a fundamental sense but we are well on the way to creating stable technologies to provide each of these. Water reclamation and CO2 scrubbing enable long-term life support on the international space station. We need,of course, to expand our use of hydroponics to grow plants in space, because these can supply oxygen to breathe through their use of photosynthesis. They are also needed to provide an ongoing food supply. But all this requires power. Electricity to operate reclamation equipment, to pressurise structures to grow plants in the CO2 rich environment they require, and to provide a reliable supply of bright light to stimulate that photosynthesis for plant growth and oxygen creation (the sunlight on Mars is weaker than it is on Earth because the sun is so much further away; and dust storms of great intensity and duration can obscure the sun, limiting the reliability of both solar power generation and photosynthesis).. Power will also be needed to operate drills and heating equipment to extract water from sub-surface ice on Mars.

So power is the essential of essentials. It is also vital to the supply of lighting and heat for the colonists themselves, to operate all kinds of machinery, to cook, to bathe, to clean, to handle waste, to work communication equipment and all forms of electronics, to run medical services and to enable the use of any sophisticated tool. Once a colony is well established, power generation technologies will open up. There may be some scope for wind power using ultra-light, ultra-strong fabrics for large scale sails (wind velocities on Mars can be high, but the atmosphere is so thin that the generation of significant power would require large surface areas to capture much energy). Solar panels on a very large scale can be placed on the surface; but their use will be impeded by those dust storms and they will be expensive items to transport and to keep clean of dust. There will be potential for tapping geothermal sources of heat deep beneath the surface of the planet, but this will require large scale drilling and some fairly massive heat exchange equipment; it will not be available to the early colonists.

Initially, fuel cell technology may supply some power to supplement limited early solar panel arrays, although re-use of cells may be difficult. One marginal factor is that astronauts will need to take considerable exercise to maintain their musculature and fitness in a low gravity environment. Every source of energy should be tapped and even exercise bikes could be hitched to small generators to create some additional electricity (and the considerable body heat produced by exercise will help reduce the need for conventional heating in well insulated habitats).

But what is most likely to make the first settlement viable, is development of safe miniaturised nuclear fission reactors. I know that many will hate the idea of using nuclear technology on Mars, but leave aside the images of massive reactors and cooling towers and the long-term handling of large quantities of spent fuel. The reactors could literally be suitcase size and capable of substantial power generation. Such power plants have yet to be developed but the technology is considered feasible. They would revolutionise the chances of the first colonists and make the rapid build-up of a settlement much more practicable and speedy.

The Outward Urge

John Wyndham once wrote a science fiction novel called 'The Outward Urge' about a family tradition of space exploration. But the tradition of going out there to pit your wits and your strength against a hostile environment long pre-dates space travel. Whether it be Hillary and Tenzing on Everest, Amundsen and Scott racing for the south pole, Speke and Burton seeking the source of the Nile. Lewis and Clark crossing a continent, Burke and Wills in the dead heart of Australia, Magellan circumnavigating the globe, Columbus reaching the Americas, or Leif Ericsson doing the same long before him: all are pinnacles of human achievement. What do they have in common? Sheer grit and determination. Perseverance and a willingness to court danger and suffer extreme hardship in the steady pursuit of a goal. These are the qualities that will be essential on Mars. Not just technical expertise and the right skills but the spirit that rises above all qualification and suitability.

When Neil Armstrong was approaching the Moon's surface, with just seconds of fuel left, he found himself approaching a boulder field too hazardous to attempt to land on. He kept the Eagle hovering and seeking a safe spot to put down. Despite the lack of fuel, he held his nerve and brought off that momentous landing. When Tom Wolfe wrote his book about America's Mercury astronauts, he called it 'The Right Stuff'. That is what we will need on Mars. The Right Stuff.

That's One Small Step For A Woman.....

The settlement of Mars will be the first time in recorded history that women will have the chance to take a full leadership role in the migration to and exploration of a new world. I have little doubt that in the prehistoric past, in cases where gathering has been more important than hunting in sustaining nomadic groups, that women may have led migrations, but we have no record of those. I hope that equal numbers of men and women will take part in the Mars venture.Who will command the first voyage, or pilot the first lander? The choice should rightly go to the best qualified individual, female or male. We want the best possible chances of success. But half the human race has been excluded from those roles in the past, so I do hope at last that a woman gets the pick. Of one thing I am sure, however, that when it comes to choosing the first person to set a human foot on the Red Planet, it must be that of a woman, even if some man seems better qualified. There can be no justification for giving half the human race the short end of the stick again.

Should we be concerned about the ethnicity of the first person to take a step on the Red Planet? Symbolism can be important, of course. But what birthright to choose? I think that may be better left to chance, before we become too politically correct. As long as there is no remaining prejudice in favour of a wasp background involved in the choice, I would be content. But the gender issue seems to me to be too obvious to ignore.

For Those In Peril......

It is worth stressing just how dangerous setting up a Mars colony will be. Less so once a bridgehead has been established but not for the fainthearted even then. It is not so much that this is terra incognita like the new world in which Columbus ended up. Mars will be the best mapped and analysed new territory which mankind has ever settled. Nor is it the quality of ships. The Santa Maria was the product of generations of the development of shipbuilding skills (though she was still wrecked, leaving Columbus to return in the Nina, an even smaller ship). But the ships that go to Mars will be the product of an advanced technological civilisation, rigorously tested and with extensive redundancy built in. It is the extreme harshness of the martian environment and the sheer complexity of the mission that underlies the great peril of the enterprise. The number of discrete technologies and mechanisms that must work nearly perfectly to achieve success will be unprecedented.

The dangers of solar radiation and medical emergency, of serious spacecraft component failure or Apollo 13 style explosion, on the voyage out. Orbital complexities and pinpoint landing navigation, heatshield and rocket assisted touchdown, for the martian landing. Life-support and re-cycling systems, power supply, and pressurised containment, throughout transit and during the continuing settlement phase. These are just some of the broad brush contingencies. The devil is in the detail. All the subsystems and components which must not fail or must have reliable back-up built in will be hard even to tally up. There is a lot more to be said about each of the stages of flight, landing and construction on the surface. Hydroponic rearing of crops and soil farming are other critical subjects in themselves. But for a first post on the general issue of risk, this may stand as a preliminary sketch that underlines just how very brave colonists are going to have to be. The warrior rather than the worrier spirit is going to be in high demand.

To return for a moment to the Nina (pronounced Neenyah), since I have mentioned her here. She was Columbus's smallest ship but also his favourite. Nina means Girl in English. I think she too is a good candidate for the name of a Mars-bound spacecraft (but then I am just another rather hopeful romantic!)

An M Prize?

The X prize was very successful in spurring the private sector to achieve a minimal sub-orbital passenger spaceflight. Google's prize offer to get a commercial robotic rover to the Moon (while distinctly unambitious) has created a lot of competition. So what about a Mars, or M-prize? The first thing to say is that it would need to be very large to attract possible competitors, because the risk capital requirements to challenge for it would be simply enormous. In essence that means that only those seriously intent on going to Mars, with a plan for profitability, would challenge for it anyway. From the start it might therefore represent essentially dead money.

A more fruitful approach might be to set prizes for ancillary developments, like: habitat development, life support mechanisms, cargo modules, and most crucially of all, surface power supply. The more serious Space X, and Mars One, are about creating a colony then the more they are going to need all the help they can get. Entrepreneurs with deep pockets could push the Mars venture along considerably by offering the odd $20 to $50 million prize for solving carefully defined engineering problems. M prizes then, more than a single prize, might be a useful way to go.

Having raised the question of Mars surface power supply, I will be returning to that thorny subject later.

Some Thoughts On Terra-Forming

I don't intend this blog to be side-tracked into the far distant future, but I think it is worth saying something on the subject of Terra-forming. This has become a particular issue in the context of Mars, although space shows like Star Trek have popularised the concept. Simply put it is the application of massive chemical and biological engineering works to a planet to make that body's atmosphere and biosphere mirror as closely as possible that of Earth; thus making it habitable to humans without special suits or breathing apparatus, and as farmable as our own planet too.

Sounds great. But there is one serious drawback, even with the right technology the process would take a very long time. Hundreds or even thousands of years. Possible techniques vary but essentially you warm up a planet's atmosphere using greenhouse gases, tap underground sources of water released by ice melt, engineer suitable plant life to release atmospheric gas and convert CO2 to Oxygen. More vegetation. The atmospheric pressure rises; it becomes breathable to human and animal life. Presto! Off we go and shoot deer, fell timber, clear virgin acres and farm rich productive soil. Straightforward? Not at all. Little ever is.

Once you have created a suitably high pressure atmosphere on Mars with your godlike talents you have to keep releasing gas ad infinitum. Because Mars has a much lower gravity field than Earth. Gas bleeds off too quickly from the atmospheric boundary into space.

And our own planet has a naturally evolved biosphere. It is rather robust. But we have managed to put even that at risk; whether through species die-off, deforestation, weapons of mass destruction, or the vast release of greenhouse gases. Even a fully Terra-formed Mars, a thousand years or so in the future, would have an artificially created biosphere far more fragile than that of Earth. How could we protect that from our own depredations? Imagine if we had built-up a population of hundreds of millions on a Terra-formed Mars. What would we do to avert a self-induced climate catastrophe on Mars then?

And remember that colonisation of Mars will be a twenty first century challenge. The next great step for the 22nd or 23rd centuries may be travelling to other star systems, where habitable but uninhabited planets may be expected to exist in numbers and where colonisation may be attempted without the need for Terra-forming. Mars is a different type of adventure. The creation of a challenging frontier for the human spirit when it badly needs one. The wresting of a living from the most marginal of environments. A place for stout hearts and strong bodies; for brave minds and more than a trace of steel. It may come none too soon. Before we even start to settle Mars we are likely to be finding humanity splitting more and more into two distinct sub-cultures. Homo Virtualis and Homo Realis, if you like. The former finding its challenges in a world of whizzing electrons and silicon pathways; and the latter seeking real challenge in a very real and dangerous world.. Homo Virtualis will have been to Mars. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, in his shadow world, long before Homo Realis has established a firm foothold on the Red Planet. Virtualis will be trundling along in the Matrix looking for the next big thing (and good luck to him). In the meantime, things in the real world will be cooking withou any need to Terra-form Mars.

Forget also about arguments that Mars could be a refuge for humanity in the face of planetary catastrophe. It might preserve some millions of people and a good sample of our gene pool, but even if you could build a fleet of ships capable of carrying 10,000 humans apiece, you would need 700,000 (!) such ships to carry the population of Earth to Mars. Space Arks would be just that, Noah-like specimen containers, not rescue ships.

So Terra-forming is not necessary. It is a side track. The stars will beckon us first. Meantime the challenge is to maintain the human spirit with a real frontier. And I for one do not want to see humanity riding out into interplanetary space just to create clones of the Earth. There is magnificence out there a plenty already. We have treaties in place protecting the hostile but irreplaceable virgin environment of the Antarctic. There may not even be primitive life today on Mars but should we not preserve at least the cold beauties of its landscapes and vistas? Doesn't a planet, a whole separate world, deserve better of us than transformation into something else entirely?

Dragon Ships

A fanciful diversion, for a moment. I have just posted an image of the Susan Constant, the ship I have taken as one inspiration for these posts. But there are other inspirations of course. The first European settlers in the new world were Vikings. A long while back, NASA named its first unmanned martian landers Viking 1 and 2. Viking long ships have often been known as Dragon Ships, primarily because of the flowing dragon carvings which adorned their prows. So the thought that some future development of Space X's Dragon spaceship might be involved in transporting an early settlement venture would be delightfully appropriate. By Dragon Ship to Mars. Quite a romantic notion.

Namesake - Replica Of The Susan Constant At Jamestown

Linkage

I have include a number of relevant links in the sidebar of this blog. The Mars One website gives the most information about specific plans for a Mars colony. The Space X site is useful for rocket and spacecraft development but Elon Musk's Mars plans are not yet included. It appears that some proposals for a Mars Colonial Transporter will be announced later this year. The announcement may be limited in scope or a more exciting exposition of timetabling and development intentions. Both Bigelow Aerospace and Inspiration Mars websites contain useful information about space habitat development and the fly-by Mars mission proposals. The great visionary work on Mars settlement by Robert Zubrin, 'The Case For Mars', published first in 1996 and updated in 2011 is described in a Wikipedia link. Zubrin has long been the foremost proponent of human exploration of Mars and his ideas are carefully researched and highly developed. For Zubrin, large scale settlement follows scientific exploration. As you will have seen, I am more interested in reversing the order and beginning with settlement. But there are a range of possibilities lying between the two extremes. For those who have not read much about the Zubrin proposals, I will be returning to consideration of his work in future posts.

Golden Spike's plans for lunar tourism and scientific research opportunities are covered in one link. I want to keep this blog focused on Mars development but lunar possibilities are likely to prove relevant since they may employ some common habitat, rocketry and spacecraft elements. There may be developmental synergies for Mars planning inherent in The Golden Spike work. Finally, I have included some useful spaceflight news links. No doubt these will be familiar to many but some may be new to others., I will expand the links offered as I add to this blog over time.

Suiting Up

Will Mars colonists need to wear bulky and clumsy space suits similar to those used on the Moon? Conventional wisdom says yes, with the proviso that suits would need to be heated rather than cooled. The surface atmospheric pressure on Mars  is very low and the human body would hemorrhage blood if exposed to it. The atmosphere is largely CO2, so breathing apparatus would be essential. But what about a close fitting development of a neoprene diving suit to protect most of the body from vacuum without additional pressurised protection? I have not seen the idea explored in depth but Mars surface temperatures are very cold. At the Viking landing site the average temperature was minus 55 degrees C and ranged from minus 17 to minus 107. Clearly very extreme conditions but not necessarily beyond the capacity of suitably developed additional arctic weather clothing to cope with. An advanced full-face insulated or heated breathing mask would need to be developed, along with an oxygen tank. but if a full space suit with integral water circulation heating could be avoided, then work on the surface might be much less encumbered and considerably less expensive to equip The insulated clothing needed for wear on top of a neoprene suit would need to be varied but layering of clothing is known to be particularly effective at coping with changing outside temperatures. I suspect the resulting ensemble surface weather gear would give colonists more freedom of movement and a closer experience of the martian environment than a cumbersome spacesuit.

The Age Of The City State

Would the first colony be the sole settlement on Mars for very long? I doubt it. I have mentioned before the Chinese ambitions for the Red Planet. And as transport and habitat costs are driven down, there may be many groups with the motivation to establish settlements. International treaties preclude any one nation from claiming Mars as its own. So any group able to afford the huge investment could try to set up shop there. If several settlements did emerge over time, then they would likely be widely dispersed. Proximity might enhance the prospects of trade between outposts but I would guess that most immigrants would be most attracted to the first, most well developed colony. Setting up elsewhere would more likely be the choice of special interest groups: survivalists maybe (goodbye federal government!), millenarians or other religious sects. Perhaps groups favouring alternative lifestyles, polygamist or polyandrist communities for example. Freak shows in general as well. Even the odd eccentric multi-billionaire might fancy declaring himself king of his own tiny martian state.

Are there dangers in all this, if such diversification proves possible. Of course there are. Although some may see attractions in the growth of a planet of city states (the golden age of Greece after all has its romantic draw), we must be careful to place some constraints on any corporations offering to transport settlers to Mars. The last thing anyone of remotely liberal conscience will want to countenance is an atavistic revival of slavery, indentured servitude, indeed any form of human trafficking; or even the transportation of criminals to a penal colony. The importation of inequalities of gender, race, religion, or sexuality will also need to be guarded against with vigilance. In my view, that postulated eccentric regal billionaire should be sent packing too!

These issues are of course a long way down the track. But again it is well to think things through as far ahead as possible, lest the incaution of today creates scope for the tragedy of tomorrow. Had England abolished slavery 200 years earlier than it did, then the institution would never have been imported into the American colonies, and the US founding fathers would not have had to make allowance for such a barbarity. The holocaust of the American civil war might then never have taken place either and perhaps the path to true racial equality would have been smoothed.

Comment

I think I should stress how much I would welcome comments on these posts, particularly criticism as well as new thinking and ideas. Debate is the life blood of new venture and I am trying to put forward thoughts here that are much in need of testing against critique. I hope some of what I say is worth a line or two of response (but maybe I delude myself!)

Doctor Internet?

It is fortuitous that the coming of the internet, with all its multiplicity of entertainment, informational and educational opportunities, has pre-dated martian colonisation. Hard work, and hopefully community spirit is going to need to sustain colonists and enhance their mental well-being in the early years. But it is going to be a potentially lonely life out there. Entertainment and personal development are will be necessities on the Red Planet. So an early priority will be to set up communication relays that are capable of giving colonists broadband internet access if at all possible. The inevitable nostalgia for 'The Green Hills Of Earth' will be assuaged somewhat by an intimate connection with developing Earth culture and news, access to images of Earth landscapes, and, most importantly, a high grade mechanism for maintaining contact with loved ones on the mother planet.

This priority will need investment but it will be money very well spent. The cost implications of numbers of colonists developing depression and other mental illness could be considerable. And the potential for wider social disruption from anxiety and even psychoses could create broader problems that might be difficult to control in a small isolated community.

A bit of a glum prospect, this potential for mental ill-health, I fear. But it is an issue that needs to be addressed from the start in planning for a colony. Prevention is better than cure, and a lot of wise thinking is needed to minimise the economic costs of importing modern social stresses from Earth into such a much more marginal environment.

Incidentally, internet connectivity will be an important feature in the diagnosis and treatment of physical ailments as well. It will be important to have medical professionals in the colony itself  but it will be a long while before a Mars colony will be able to have a substantial range of specialist medical experts on the surface. The long time delay in communicating with Earth will of course preclude earthbound doctors from conducting remote surgery, for example, but the sharing of expertise, advice, and some actual training in techniques should be possible.

'Red' Mars?

This is the most difficult issue for me, mainly because some of what I have to say goes against the grain of my core beliefs. I am a proponent of capitalism through and through. And a believer in free market economics, free enterprise and the crucial role of the entrepreneur. As I have said, I think the settlement of Mars should be private sector led and based on sound commercial planning. I don't want to see a 'Red' Mars in the political sense. I have no doubt that China will be headed to Mars sometime in the next 20 years. And as long as China is led by an oligarchical communist party and lacks true democracy, I want the free world to be well ahead of them in colonising Mars. Is that because I have any antipathy towards the Chinese? Of course not, and I laud China's recent accomplishments in space. But I want to see a flourishing Free Mars, not a culture of state direction and censored debate.

But this is where it gets difficult. We can get to Mars using the power of free markets and the private sector, but, in its initial phases, I doubt the practicality of anything less than community enterprise and a commonwealth economy working within the colony itself. When America was settled, a colonist's labour and enterprise could wrest a living and subsequently wealth by the work of his own hands and the smartness of his own brain. When a land is bountiful, with abundant water, trees for building in wood, and fertile soil to grow crops; then the energy of the individual can be let loose to prosper freely and make its own way in a new world. Ultimately, individuals discover sources of mineral wealth as well and an economy can take off explosively.

But Mars is not like that. It is a cold, dead place. Not bountiful but forbidding. On the far margins of habitability even with the benefits of modern technology. It will be a long time before advances in propulsion and reductions in transport costs offer anyone a real prospect of making significant profit from work on the martian surface. When Mallory was asked why try to climb Everest, he answered famously, 'Because its there'. Colonists of Mars can expect for many years to work hard just to make a living. 'Because its there' will be their main motivation for a long time; the spirit of the pioneer, convinced of the future, and striving with all human ingenuity and pride to make it work. They will need to draw solace from the clean fresh lines of the high desert landscape and its spectacular sunsets; they will have none of the softer beauties of an abundant Earth to inspire them.

So back to free enterprise versus commonwealth in the first years of martian settlement. A wide range of skills will be needed in an infant colony. Each will be quite as important for survival as the other. A doctor will be no more vital than a nurse, a farmer no more than a construction worker, an artisan no more than a technician. And so on. Each of these will share in the building of Mars. There will be no surplus in the early years. The entrepreneurs who build the rockets to take humans to Mars will have the right to break even and take a profit through selling tickets to Mars and aiming towards a target like Elon Musk's 80,000 inhabitants. The colonists will be facing decades of hard effort to survive and thrive. If everything is not plowed back into the communal needs of the colony it simply will not succeed. In effect, such a commonwealth will need to take all that is produced and apply it to common necessities. That is just the way it must be. It will take a generation at least before true free enterprise can be introduced to Mars. Personal rather than communal profit will just have to wait.

As I say, I do not like this thought, it edges far too close to socialism or even communism for my liking. That is why I prefer to call it commonwealth or community enterprise. Mars must be free. And even a necessary era of purely communal wealth creation should be as short lived as possible. If free enterprise does not take hold, the future for Mars colonists could ultimately be as bleak as life in the socialist economies which freedom on Earth has largely consigned to the ash can of history.

Thank you

I would just like to say a personal thank you to those readers who have plus 1'd posts on this blog on Google+ . Blogging is a solitary sort of occupation. You put your thoughts out there at a venture and hope for some sort of positive response. When it comes it is reassuring and encouraging. Thank you very much!

Of Time And Tide

Just a little sidetrack on the subject of clocks and calendars. More of an important issue than one might think. The martian year, one orbit of the sun, is 687 days, getting on for twice an Earth year. So using Earth year calendars in a colony would keep the seasons on Mars completely out of sync.. Not too much of a problem in itself because seasons move slowly and we adapt with them, and having one martian midsummer in say a March and the next two Januaries later would not be too hard to get used to. We are after all an adaptable species. But curiously it is the much smaller difference in Mars and Earth days that would cause the big problem. The Mars day, however measured, is roughly 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. So if colonists tried to use the Earth day, to keep calendars aligned, they would find their clocks useless for regulating their own activities. Despite the relatively small difference, colonists would find themselves waking in the middle of the night or going to bed in, say, the middle of the afternoon, indeed at a whole range of different Mars local times as the months wore on. Matching your sleeping patterns with the cycle of day and night tends to be important for longer term mental health, so it takes very little thought to realise that Mars just cannot realistically use Earth days to order its affairs. This has follow-on implications for the whole calendar. There really is no point in trying to stick to Earth months, or years, if days are out of sync (think about it).

So Mars will need its own months, maybe 12, or more logically, 24. And its own years. Perhaps year one on Mars could start at the winter solstice in the planet's northern hemisphere prior to the first landing of colonists. That sounds neat enough. But this should not lead you to think I am trying to suggest that humans should drop their allegiance to traditional modes of thought and religious calendrical importance. I think colonists would get used to a dual system of time and clock hours (computers make this easy). Birthdays of Earth bound relatives, festivals and traditional holy days could still be kept on Christian, Jewish, Islamic or Chinese calendars etc. It might be strange to have Ramadan start at 2 am Mars local time or Christmas midnight mass to occur in mid afternoon; but we humans have got used to worse things!

Muscle

Today, two Russian Cosmonauts have been undertaking the 169th construction and maintenance spacewalk at the international space station. Quite a record for the machinery of the human body. And that reminds us that our own bodies remain the ultimate in all-purpose machines. Indeed they are likely to stay so for a very long time to come. I do hope that planners of a Mars colony keep this fact at the centre of their research and development priorities. There is going to be a case for a huge range of machinery and tools to aid the construction and running of a colony. In the initial phases, it is going to be crucial to minimise development costs. If a human can do something with a relatively simple tool, even if it requires significant man hours and acceptance of some inefficiency compared with an expensively developed machine for a narrow purpose; then take the human option wherever possible. Both development and massive transport costs may be savable and an earlier start date for settlement will be more likely. For example, NASA has been involved in experimental work on a pressurised Mars land vehicle. Such a vehicle would permit exploratory journeys and surface research at considerable distances from a colony. If one's principal aim is geological and other scientific work then a 'Mars car' would be invaluable. In the longer term, there is a strong case for building a vehicle of the kind. But if we want to afford an early start on building up a colony as our first priority (still allowing for some sample collection and exploration) then development of a much more low tech transport, maybe a kind of martian mountain bike for relatively near at hand excursions, would make greater sense. The low gravity of Mars could make such a vehicle particularly efficient and flexible.

Spades, shovels, picks and drills, have proved pretty effective in building work down the centuries. Of course, earth moving machinery makes modern construction faster and more efficient. But developing earth movers for the martian environment and transporting such very heavy machinery would be vastly expensive. And human muscle will be available on Mars from a colony's inception. Hard physical work is not degrading. Indeed physical labour is often conducive to good mental health. The enclosed and over-intimate environment of a small colony will bring many psychological stresses, and the reality of construction work is likely to prove helpfully therapeutic.

Am I suggesting turning the dream of settling Mars into some kind of labour colony? Of course not. Mechanical  labour saving devices should be imported as soon as both their development and transport can be afforded. But let us use every ounce of leverage we can from the physical advantages that evolution has given us!

Laws And Social Mores

What is a colony if not a new society? It is no use thinking of funding mechanisms, of technologies, of timetables, of long-term economics, of the selection of pioneers, or even of justifications and the philosophy of human destiny, if we do not consider what the creation of a new society means in terms of human relationships, governance, law, and morality. This deeper issue is actually one of the most complex and challenging. That is particularly so because what is being espoused in these pages is a commercially led enterprise and one which envisages the leadership of the most individualistic and free enterprise driven nation on Earth.

The British colonists in America threw off the yoke of government by their mother country after less than 200 years of settlement. It was this great event that created the opportunity of a driving, expansionist and free society. It led ultimately to an explosion of economic growth and the development of the most powerful nation on the planet. So is that a model for Mars? As far as possible, yes. But there are key factors at work in the case of the Red Planet that must make us pause. There is no indigenous population, but there are no green acres of virgin territory either, no fertile soil, no forests of timber awaiting the axe, no rivers and lakes of pure fresh water, no relatively cheap forms of transport with which to export any but the most valuable goods and products. Free air is absent, life is impossible without pressurised environments at risk from leaks and radiation. The whole enterprise puts a premium on self- discipline, community spirit, and the re-investment of income in the costly development of the colony itself. Not the kind of place for Daniel Boone, I fear. Famously, upon seeing the smoke trail from another settler's fire a few valleys over, Boone decided things were getting too crowded and upped sticks and moved on. Perhaps the self-disciplined approach of the pilgrim fathers at Plymouth Bay is a better model. But how far removed from current mores and social attitudes are those austere and strictly moralistic settlers?

If we consider urban culture today across the western world, we see the cult of the individual riding largely unchallenged. The 'you can have it all' morality of short-term relationships, broken families and single parenthood; the primacy of personal economic reward; the tolerance of deprivation among an underclass of have nots; and a spiraling of conspicuous consumption and environmental damage: all these bring social problems in their wake. It does not take much considered thought to recognise that all this is going to be hugely inappropriate  in the restricted, risky and interdependent context of a growing martian settlement. A colony is going to need to resemble more the structure of a kibbutz than the free for all of the old American frontier or the social structures of a modern day Manhattan or Los Angeles. Call them rules and regulations or call them laws, restrictions on social and economic behaviour are, at least for a long time, going to need to be quite tight. Some things will be for the colonists themselves to decide, but each colonist, before being accepted, is going to need to sign up to a wide range of restrictive requirements. Just importing the legal structure of an average American State would be inappropriate, but adherence to US constitutional protections, at least in part, would be wise  (although in a pressurised environment, just as in an airplane in the US, the right to bear arms doesn't sound too sensible!)

So a growing colony is going to need democratic institutions, a city council, a court and judges, and (OMG) yes, some lawyers. But laws are not everything, much more ethical social behaviour is going to be needed. Far from being a sixties sort of free love commune, a colony will need to be a place where formal ties between men and women are valued and respected. Anything less in the hothouse of a small, endangered, and pressurised community could be hugely disruptive. Cliquery, personal enmities, and selfish, devious, anti-social behaviour will need to be strongly discouraged. Will there be crime on Mars? You bet. Crime goes wherever human beings go. The framework within which crime is detected and punished, however, will need careful thought. The idea of having to support a jail population in a small outpost is hardly ideal.

This may not be the sort of discussion which most websites about a potential Mars colony tend to dwell upon but the issues are vital nonetheless. I will return in a future post to the question of law in the context of economic relationships, earnings, and the handling of income in a settlement with high and continuing communal costs.

Faking It - A Famous Apollo Image Marsified!

Sunset On A Red World

Government And Voluntary Work

I do believe that public/private sector collaboration is possible in the drive for Mars. But roles need some reversal. The private sector needs to lead. It is only the dynamic of the private sector that can drive down costs. NASA's budget is currently mired in Congress largely because of its misbegotten plan to harness a minuscule asteroid and park it in lunar orbit for gradual exploitation. This proposal typifies NASA's loss of vision. The commitment to the hugely expensive Orion spacecraft and the SLS launch system, as I have argued before, shows that NASA has learned few lessons from the vast budgetary drain of the Space Shuttle program. NASA spends like there is no tomorrow and then wonders, when it turns out there is no tomorrow for its white elephants, just why that is so. The private sector is perfectly capable of creating the flight infrastructure for Mars. The rockets, the spacecraft and the habitats. It will do it at far less cost than NASA ever could. Design by committee is always the most expensive option. But there is a need for much development of life support systems, advanced propulsion, chemical engineering plants for Mars surface use, construction and transport methodologies on the Red Planet,and farming and hydroponic techniques and infrastructure. These ancillary necessities provide scope for much continuing work by the Space Agency, spurred on by the rapid development of private sector delivery mechanisms. Ideally, if Orion and the SLS were cancelled by Congress, then the budget left over for reassignment could go half to provide seed corn for private sector focused investment and half for these continuing and expanding NASA ancillary priorities.

The thought-power for taking forward blue-sky thinking and engineering innovation on the wide front that a successful Mars colony must require will be enormous and expensive. One productive possibility would be to set up a think/engineering tank manned by the many engineering and design experts available at both ends of the age spectrum. Enthusiasm abounds among retirees and students both. There is no reason why such a think tank could not be staffed nearly entirely on a salary free internship basis. A sort of Peace Corps of the skies. Would there be enough volunteers? For the chance to be involved at the ground floor of a project like this, you can bet there would. And good calibre people too. The housing and facilities costs for such an institution? Well how about a Manhattan Project style concentrated campus. The military could be employed to set up a canvassed encampment and supply it with accomodation, consumables and power. A useful training opportunity for logistics units if nothing else.

All these are just preliminary thoughts. The delivery of a Mars colony is going to require a lot of out of the box reasoning.

Collaboration

It strikes me that there are a few players out there in the space exploration field who could usefully collaborate in the great Mars venture. We should hear later this year from Space X about its ideas for what it has called a Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT). This is apparently intended to go far beyond the Dragon and Falcon Heavy architecture, with the capacity to start taking materials, machinery, habitats and colonists to Mars on a large scale. Space X will no doubt have something to say on the timeline but I would imagine an MCT to be years in development. An augmented Mars One approach might be able to utilise a fleet of Dragon enhanced landers and perhaps Bigelow inflatable space habitats to put together an initial bridgehead colony more quickly, with a  massive build-up as an MCT comes online. Space X, Mars One and Bigelow Aerospace could do more jointly than separately perhaps. Space X and Bigelow are already co-operating to deliver a developmental inflatable habitat to the international space station in 2015. Bigelow are aiming to develop their habitats into space hotels for tourists and as hireable research stations in Earth and perhaps lunar orbit. Collaboration with Space X in putting a habitat into lunar orbit and crewing and supplying it with Dragon and Falcon heavy vehicles could lead to useful further developments of habitats to be used in Mars voyages or even on the surface of the Red Planet.

A Dragon, Falcon Heavy and Bigelow architecture also looks the best bet if Dennis Tito's near term Mars Mission is to get off the ground. Tito is planning as soon as 2018 to send two astronauts, probably a married couple, on a close fly-by of the martian surface. This would not place the crew in orbit but would be a demonstration of America's capacity to send humans out into deep space to Mars and return them safely to Earth. It is a bold and dangerous mission but its capacity to inspire an earthbound audience and to encourage interest and investment in a Mars colony should not be underestimated. Technical challenges in long term life support and radiation protection will need to be overcome and should provide valuable lessons for a colony program. Once again there are prospects for collaboration with Tito's project (which he has called 'Inspiration Mars'). I myself would love to see all the players I have mentioned enter into some sort of consortium arrangement, for pursuing Mars colonisation, perhaps with a sideways research and development contract with NASA as well. More on all this and the NASA/government angle later.

More Funding Options

Again on the subject of what Mars could sell. Writers, artists, poets, musicians, photographers and filmmakers, all strike me as being good colonial material. What they produce is readily exportable electronically at no transportation cost (except perhaps rolled up canvasses in the case of artists). Written items would include blogs, formal diaries, novels, scientific non-fiction, magazines and an online newspaper. With the right quality of participants, Mars could have a thriving literary culture and earning capacity based on topicality, novelty and earthbound enthusiasm for things martian. Facebook pages of colonists would be immensely popular as well, with advertising possibilities.

And looking once more at start-up costs, I think Elon Musk's plans for selling $500,000 seats could be augmented with a lottery. I have in mind a fully global draw (where legal frameworks permit), say once a month. Five dollar tickets could be sold, with the aim of selling perhaps 100 million tickets per draw. That would create a cash income of $6 billion a year. Winners would need to be screened for some aspects of suitability with the alternative of a cash prize if they proved too hopelessly incompatible, but entrants I think would still be willing to take the risk. Even after prizes and costs, there should be left perhaps $4 billion a year in profits. Incredibly, just nine years of such an operation could cover the whole of Elon Musk's cost estimate for setting up his proposed colony, leaving aside direct sales of seats on Mars ships, Mars One's media sales proposals, and the memorial program for space enthusiasts I put forward earlier.

When you start thinking things through there are quite a bag of options out there both for development funding and a long-term economy. The feasibility of setting up a colony starts to look much more plausible I think.

A Little Caviar On The Cake

How could a colony so far from Earth and with such enormous transport costs make money in the longer term future? For a start, there will be a substantial demand for scientific research. In the lunar paradigm, all the costs of getting rock samples and placing experiments fell to NASA. But in a commercial colonisation of Mars, the taking of measurements, the undertaking of experiments, the retrieval of samples, would be services that the Martian colonists could sell to a vast range of institutional clients on Earth. Universities, research establishments and corporations could be willing to pay very handsomely for the colony's efforts and merchandise.

There is also no need to postulate valuable mineral resources at a colony's doorstep. Bits of the Moon were never made available for substantial sales to the general public. Mars rock is certain to be in great demand as souvenirs and curios. Quite small samples could fetch very high prices if marketed really effectively. But high value could be added to quite ordinary ground rock. If jewelers and masons were among the Mars colonists from an early stage, then fabrication in situ of polished rock jewelry, for example, might create a demand for necklaces, bracelets etc. The distinction between jewelry items made on Mars of martian materials and similar items made of the same martian materials from rock imports on Earth could be like the difference between cultured and natural pearls.

Would there be a market for such jewelry made of non precious materials? Of course there would. Firstly just the transportation cost and rarity value is likely to create demand among the rich and competitive. So many people cherish and seek after things few can own. Secondly, the colonisation of Mars is likely to be so much in the forefront of people's minds that it will make marketing a very fruitful process.

These are just some possibilities. There will be plenty of time to put together an innovative strategy for long term economic growth in the colony. How about fish farming on Mars (Sturgeon's eggs)? Just think of the price a loopy gastronome might pay for the ultimate dinner party extravagance. Martian caviar!

Finally on a side issue, apologies for the fact that this blog seems to have gone monochrome. I am chasing Blogger for a solution and a return of technicolor and the Martian background!

Some Income Possibilities

So, what about financing the initial voyage to Mars. The crucial pre-income costs. Well the first point is that they need not necessarily pre-date income streams. Investors do not need to carry the whole burden. The Dutch founded Mars One venture, although only at a very early stage, envisages a one way voyage for colonists, financed by media deals with intensive coverage. A kind of super reality show. The Dutch did after all invent the Big Brother TV format. Mars One already has 80,000 volunteer colonists. It intends to whittle these down to a very few initial pioneers through a TV show process of competition and public voting ( Mars Has Talent?!!!) Merchandising may also have scope for creating substantial income. Can Mars One generate the funds it will need? Philanthropic donation, crowd funding efforts, perhaps some sort of link up with an Elon Musk venture. All these could help. And never underestimate the Dutch - some of the foremost merchant venturers in the history of the exploration of our own planet!

One thought I have myself is that the colony should be named something like Mars Free City and the honorific 'Free Citizen of Mars' should be promoted as a badge of distinction for all colonists. FCM after your name should come to mean something rather noble. Perhaps large scale donors could also be conferred the honour. After all, university donors often receive honorary degrees. But I think there is scope for another untapped resource on a large scale in promoting the concept of free citizenship. Suppose, say, that the early colonists were to build a monument on Mars, a hollow pyramid perhaps 10 feet tall (nothing of significant cost or work effort). This could be ornamented with a golden apex light and a small LED band for displaying names at mid height. The pyramid could gradually be filled with 1 cm micro-engraved cubes carrying a portion of the ashes of earthbound enthusiasts, whose names would be shown in rotation on the LED display. Each of the departed seeking this form of memorial could obtain it by making a donation of, say $5,000 dollars in their will, a quite inexpensive addition to funeral costs. There are many millions of space enthusiasts out there. I believe there could be quite a demand, particularly if each donation also conferred the Free Citizen of Mars honorific posthumously.

You may say, 'so what, that won't raise much!' Maybe so, but if just 125,000 people chose the option, then the funds raised would be over $600 million dollars. And the freight space for all this? Just one 50 cm cube in one Mars ship, not much more than an average supermarket delivery box.  And what if the idea took off by just ten times, still only one and a quarter million of the several billion humans on this planet? The resulting income would be $6 billion! That would be an immense contribution towards making a Mars colony a reality.

By the way, I am not suggesting that free citizenship should in some way displace colonist's existing Earth nationalities or create complex legal problems. The distinction would simply be a matter of pride in ones involvement and something that I think others would come to honour in its own right.

A Bit About Finance

What about finance? And what about cost? Two linked problems. The cost estimates that I have seen are very speculative. Elon Musk's big vision of a colony of 80,000 people eventually is looking at a possible cost of $36 billion. In Apollo era terms that estimate is very small, but Musk plans to use fully recyclable rockets which could bring present day costs to Earth orbit down by a factor of 100. Musk envisages starting work on a colony with a first group of 10 settlers but he hopes to make the colonial build up economically viable by ultimately charging each new colonist $500,000 for an emigration ticket. For a colony of 80,000, that adds up to a cash inflow of $40 billion. Hey presto, a ten per cent profit, given Musk's cost estimate. Does that seem just a bit too neat? You bet! When you are pulling figures out of the air it is easy to make them come out the way you want them. What is needed of course is a proper projection of cash flow and costs over the life of the project, year by year. In particular, funding is needed up front for the hugely costly research and development phase; and for the work on the martian surface in building housing, facilities and, most especially, indoor crop farming acreage.

The Musk funding formula does not fully address the up front cost issue. It will be crucial to keep government funding to a minimum; taxpayers are just not going to stand being bled dry for the years it will take to build a colony. Were, however, the US Congress to cause NASA to switch to a private sector ethos more fully, not just for supply of the space station but for deep space exploration as well; then by cancelling both the Orion and launch system projects, a large amount of seed funding would become available for the Mars colony project, without increasing budgets. Using that funding to leverage massive private sector investment would be difficult, though the approach has certainly worked in the case of space station resupply and crew transport. But what is needed are early sources of income, not just investment capital. That applies at the other end of the timeline as well, of course. $500,000 a seat may finance initial colony growth but a colony will need a commercial economy for the longer term. Put bluntly it will need to be able to sell things! I will return to the issues of up front and long term income in a future post.

From Khufu To Kennedy

When John Kennedy committed America to send men to the Moon, he made a speech in which two words have always stood out for me: 'choose' and 'hard'. The choice to act is always the prerequisite of achievement. And mankind has made the greatest strides through doing the hard, not the easy, things. So Kennedy said: 'We choose to go to the moon, and do the other things. Not because they are easy but because they are hard'. Going to Mars requires a choice. And the work will be hard. Over four millennia ago a god-king chose to build a monument, a tomb for himself. The building work was hard. And it was over-ambitious too because the king was no god in reality and he was the ruler only of a small and desert bound land. The king was Khufu, also called Cheops, of Egypt. The pyramid he had built benefited neither himself nor his people. But it has since inspired and awed countless human beings down the ages. Four millennia from now, John Kennedy too will be a footnote in history, his own speech barely remembered. But what he caused to have done, to take men for the first time to another world, will have inspired in turn generation upon generation of people like us. That is something truly worthwhile. Colonising Mars would rank in this league as one of the great inspirations of the human race. History calls. And history favours the brave.

Just Ask Ben Franklin...

Leading on from the question of economics, does the settlement of Mars need a justification anyway? We humans struggle with debates about the meaning of life. It has led us into horrific conflict and slaughter throughout history. Life should be a joy if we can make it so. Why not espouse joyful adventure for its own pure sake; a celebration of what it is to be human. And Mars is a joyful adventure if ever there was one! Perhaps Benjamin Franklin summed up human meaning and purpose best in his tongue in cheek question in response to the bean counters of his day, when he simply asked..... 'What is the use of a new born baby?'

Economics

The opponents of investing in Mars colonisation generally begin by an attack on the economic front. It is a waste of money and cannot be economically viable runs the argument. But just stating the case does not make it true. Even were no profits earned by colonising Mars it would still be ecomomically worthwhile in terms of GDP growth in America particularly. The employment and economic activity generated would be substantial and continuing.

Take GDP: who are the heroes behind the vast US economy? Auto workers, movie makers, high tech factory workers, or perhaps those in Silicon Valley? Answer of course all the above. But if you really want to add to GDP growth take the man dying in hospital with cancer who is contesting a divorce and trying to prevent his wife inheriting his money. Add his multi-million law suit against the tobacco companies whom he blames for his lung cancer. This man is a true economic powerhouse due to the peculiarities of GDP and growth measurement. Nothing in what he is doing may appear productive on the surface. But his vast expenditure on legal and medical bills all add to GDP.

This may just seem a bit bizarre, but it is nonetheless true that setting up a Mars colony will help significantly to stimulate, primarily, the US economy and its GDP. In turn, the rest of the world will benefit from the knock on effects of American growth. And all this does not have to increase the burden on long-suffering (again principally American) taxpayers. Private enterprise wants to go to Mars. It instinctively smells an opportunity for future growth, market dominance, and ultimately profit. Would the tax funded NASA play no part? Of course it would. But there would be no need to increase its budget and there might be opportunities to rein that colossal tax drain in over time. In the Space X Dragon program there is a developable architecture for deep space flight operations. It would be relatively cheap to build on Dragon and on Space X's planned heavy lift and reusable rocket technology to do the same things NASA is spending so many billions on in redundantly developing the Orion spacecraft and the SLS launch system.

Axing Orion etc and switching some funding to the development of commercial deep space capacity would speed up development substantially and bring costs down dramatically. Just look at what the private sector has achieved already in developing resupply capacity for the International Space Station. Commercial flights may be taking crews to the station before NASA has even launched the first unmanned Orion. NASA's role could be redirected to research and development and helping the private sector work up the constituent machinery and technology to turn its existing work on deep space capacity and habitat development into a fully worked up set of tools and hardware to make a Mars colony practicable.

So how would a Mars colony be funded in detail? There are plenty of inspired ideas out there already, and many more waiting to be developed. I will leave that as the subject of a future post.

Learning From The Past

One of the reasons why the monumental achievements of the Apollo Moon landings were not followed up by further deep space manned exploration seems to me to be the strictly short duration of the explorations planned. The decision to go for a series of discrete short missions was of course understandable in the context of America's race with the Soviet Union to get men to the Moon. But such an approach could never have captured the imagination of mankind in the longer term. Until recent years, the most likely candidate for a possible manned Mars landing was another governmental, massively expensive, short term mission of scientific exploration. Unfortunately, that would have been subject to the vagaries of political decision making and I have little doubt that after a very few expeditions the program would have followed the sad precedent of Apollo into the oblivion of history.

Now however, the paradigm is clearly changing. The colonisation of Mars rather than a short series of exploratory landings has now been espoused by Elon Musk of Space X and the Dutch led Mars One venture. Crucially the idea that humans could be flown to Mars permanently to settle there has revolutionised the potential costs of putting humans on the Red Planet. Expeditions could avoid the enormous additional financial burden of launching return vehicles from Mars and bringing them back to Earth with all the crew members on board. The savings in research and development as well as fuel and management for the return voyage may transform the prospects for landing us on Mars in the relatively near term. There is now a chance that the first men and women could be on the martian surface before the end of the 2020's. The private sector may lead the way. This while a cash-strapped NASA continues to pour billions into a taxpayer funded deep space flight capacity. It may be that Space X, whose intentions are becoming clearer, will be able to develop deep space manned capability considerably faster and less expensively.

Inspiration

The address of this blog is susanconstant.blogspot.co.uk  For anyone not familiar with her, the Susan Constant was the name of the lead ship of three which landed the first colonists at Jamestown in Virginia. Jamestown was of course the first successful english speaking colony in America. A famous and auspicious inspiration for this blog I hope. And not a bad candidate name for some future Mars ship perhaps?

Credo

Why have one planet when you can have two? Humanity throughout history has been a species that, like Oliver Twist, has wanted more. So why do so many of our aspirations seem to stop at the edge of our home planet's atmosphere? Do we lack the nerve, the imagination, the resources? The answer is no in each case. Visionaries are already dreaming the dream of going to Mars and have started planning for the reality. They have some finance and many supporters; but for now they have too little of both.

What we need is a vast increase in people ready to seize the future - not carpe diem but carpe futuro. The Elon Musks of this world deserve more back-up than they currently get. The greater the public demand for a future beyond Earth, then the more the impetus for the early colonisation of Mars will grow. I have started this blog to add my small voice to all those calling for a great new venture (and adventure) for mankind. The aim is to argue, cajole, attempt to inspire, make constructive suggestions, and provide news and comment as developments take place. Mars is uninhabited. It is ours, all of humanity, for the taking. Had the explorers and colonists of the past sat on their hands and talked about new worlds, just think how backward and unfulfilled we would now be. It is more than time to stand up for our interplanetary 'manifest destiny'. Lets go!