What will move the hearts of men to go to Mars, the kinds of men that will go, the kinds of Martians they will become, and the society that they will build
Thank you for a brilliant and thought provoking article. The issue of colonization of Mars has been well studied and thought out for at least the last 50 years. This is not including all of the Science Fiction novels that were written in the 1930s and 40s. The best way to protect our species is for us to explore the cosmos as it separates out the best and the brightest and the strongest genes from the remaining pool of society. Those that can withstand the vigor of space, travel, exploration, and colonization will lead the human race into the future and protect it from the petty men and women that have small minds left on earth. Hope you and your family have a happy Thanksgiving, even though you may be in Canada.
It's amazing how Pierce Brown's Red Rising novels and your optimistic space-futurist articles have completely re-awoken my capacity to dream about the possibilities of man's future with a sense of awe instead of dread. I do hope that some of my descendants will make the journey across the ink, and play their part in spreading human flourishing to the stars for generations to come.
Agreed, the way I see it the reason the setting is dystopic at all is due to tyranny of a ruling class that has lost its way. I think he paints a clear and intellectually honest picture that the only way humanity was going to get out of the mire we find ourselves in now was for a class of man possessing requisite iron will to rise up and conquer our baser desires, symbolized by the planet Earth. I think it's hard to sell the effectiveness of hierarchical order to "modern audiences," so it needs to be shown in an evil light.
Age doesn’t really matter. Moon would be a good place for the older man to regain his strength in a lighter gravity. You can still use tele-com to work remotely on the project with a drone.
Either space-ship crashing and being vaporised by its own anti-matter drive, or a communications-beam from a star system inside ten-fifteen light years from impacting on/through the atmosphere and setting off an explosion of superheated gasses due to surface rebound.
He had some wild ideas, but his worth lies not in any science but in daring to ask, and daring to challenge established consensus - that it's been over half a century doesn't matter, as we well know re: the consensus-disease. It is quite probable that hadn't he thrown down the gauntlet on the Great Pyramid, Stonehenge, and other places, people wouldn't have started to figure out how they were made - consensus in von Dänikens' heyday was basically "slaves built it".
Yeah? But - technically speaking - how?
As for Mars, I'm more or less of the opinion that we must go, because we can and because it's there. Same as Hillary (I think?) said about mountaineering: "Because it is there".
Because we can, and because it's there, is the heart of it. If we don't do this thing, our souls will know the difference, and wither. There's a price to turning our back on challenges … and there are often great rewards that come from meeting them.
That's a wild hypothesis re: van Daniken. Fascinating guy.
What if the economic and market effects of strip-mining asteroids for high-value elements becomes moot because too-cheap-to-meter electricity made mining ocean water for the same elements cost-effective first?
Of course, we'd have a long, slow slide in, say, gold prices rather than an abrupt crash due to market dumping due to the need to build and scale such a seawater-mining process, and the virtually-free electricity to run it.
The anti-gold-bugs would finally get their wish. Then it would become a showdown between fiat and crypto.
"This does however point to a profound difference between Musk and the money-grubbing financiers who manage our miserable vaisya-dominated bazaar of a social order. To the merchant class, money is the only possible point of doing anything; to Musk, money is merely a means to a higher end."
That right there is a very important point that needs highlighting even more. Money? Has no value at all, intrinsically. Water, air, food, shelter does. A Mars settlement (I'd argue for using settlement over colony, since a colony is beholden to a place of origin having dominion over the colony) would quite probably use some version of social credits rather than money, credits based on a combination of need and contribution. The reason for this is equally simple:
Fairness. You work and do your best and you do it right, or others suffer due to you being delinquent. In such an environment, hoarding or even having arbitrary tokens are nothing but a cause for conflict. I do not, however, mean social credits the way it is used in China and (informally, so far) the Americanised-Sinofied West. Your labour, not your opinions, will determine your worth.
And since the settlement needs your labour, and you needs the settlement, and there's a minimum of material needs everyone must be supplied with and supply the energy and materials for, some form of communal economy will evolve as the most stable form.
If. If the settlements do not make themselves dependent on Earth currencies and units of "worth". If they stay on a "dollar-standard", they can't do anything but fail, as they'll become locked in the same trajectory towards totalitarian capitalism, so close to communism you'd be excused to mistake one for the other in poor light.
And here's where Spirituality enters the game: what authority will underwrite the ideals of the settlers? You can't worship toil alone, and we need only look at our present to see where making Greed God leads, and atheism has mutated into High School contrarianism and "goth" vulgarisation of nihilism. What idol, what avatar, what higher notion then, since all the old ones (not /the/ Old Ones, though) are Earth-bound and will bring their Earth-problems with them?
(You do not want jewish and arab settlers behaving as per their respective races on a Martian colony, which they inevitably will if allowed there.)
The Engineer Hero is too human and too vague, as well as too inhumane in cold logic and emotionless rationale. The God-Machine needs a degree of ignorance preventing further technological development. Martial ability? Maybe, but sooner or later it will need an out against someone, and being a good fighter does not equal being a good steward. Technical prowess? Difficult to judge, and lead back to a leading guild stifling advancement.
What spiritual need, forceful need, can make it work and can we make work for us?
Islam simply could not be replicated on Mars. The fundamentalists among them believe that human beings cannot ascend “beyond the (Copernicus-style) sphere of the Moon”. For that reason Khomeini declared the Moon landing a fake and the Iranian Ministry of Information said “Capricorn One” was really a documentary(!) There could be no fixed direction of prayer, no way to observe a lunar based calendar, no possibility of making the Hajj. My guess is that any person of Muslim descent forward looking enough to go to Mars would already have mentally left Islam behind. Nonetheless whoever is recruiting volunteer settlers would have to screen out anyone whose religious or nationalistic attachments would pose a threat to settler solidarity.
I watched Capricorn One in a movie theatre in Tehran in the early 1980s and there actually was a Persian language message posted at the beginning of the film that said the events depicted in the film were real and not fiction.
Islam can be molded: all it takes is that a recognised council of the imams, kadis, whatever declare it a sacred duty to spread the Dar al Islam to Mars.
A compass of sorts can easily be made so that it point towards Earth; it's not as if moslems far from Mekka bother with being exact with the direction of prayer - a general "South and East" (from where I am) is sufficient.
And a monotheistic and monocultural settlement would be plenty more stable than any multicultural one, as evidenced on Earth already. Plus, you can't screen for religion and culture without being racist and supremacist in some way, a big no-sell in the West at present and for any foreseeable future. Any non-Westerners going along to Mars would be the fully assimilated and naturalised ones.
As all the Abrahamic faiths, islam is at its core inherently pragmatic if it comes down to brass tacks - the priests, rabbis, imams /will/ declare as sacred whatever it is they realise they simply cannot do without, and find workarounds. Just look at how salafis and jews handle interest on loans: usury is haram, but fees aren't. And as if by magic, the monthly fees paid match what the interest rate would have been.
While the jews simply reasoned that that rule only apply to their fellow sons of David, not the goyim, and the Christians simply started to ignore it when it became too incovenient.
The whole "religion vs tech"-bit is a misunderstanding: the Abrahamic faiths oppose /all/ tech that threatens to upend their current powerbase, but once they realise they can't stop it, or that one of the other sects are using the tech to their advantage, they pivot and change their tune.
No reason settling space won't follow the same pattern they have kept up for more than two millennia.
Having lived in an Islamic nation for three years I can tell you that you are flat out wrong about Muslims non-chalantly not being fussy about the direction of prayer. The evidence from Mosques built since the eighth common era century to the present is not only are mosques built with the exact t direction of prayer but that their knowledge of geography encompassed the belief that the Earth was round. If you ever stayed in a modest hotel in Indonesia or Malaysia the direction of prayer is posted on the ceiling so guests know the correct direction. A man and his family in Seattle were murdered because the father had published an article claiming that the traditional method of determining the qibla was a degree off. Pragmatic indeed
Great stuff! My family of mostly sci-fi readers from age 6, is totally supportive of Mars exploration, though I have cautioned that the technology isn't quite there yet...
BTW, the meteor that exploded over southern Canada 12,900 years ago, leaving a layer of iridiulm like the Dinosaur killer, melte most of the ice sheet....it didn't set humanity back, it advanced humanity by creating access to most of North America...I totally agree that the disfunctional rights and customs now prevailing in the West will rapidly disappear....A very interesting view of this is contained in Heinlein's Hugo award winning The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which includes throwing rocks at a tyrannical Earth in the move to secure the Moon colony's independence....
Since mr Carter mentions Tunguska, for a fun time, look at a map to see what lies on or almost of the 60th parallel North, same as the impacted area in Siberia. Just a few hours difference and no more St. Petersburg, f.e.
Currently reading von Däniken's 1969 "Erinnerungen an die Zukunft: Ungelöste Rätsel der Vergangenkeit", and he mentions Tunguska quite a lot in the latter parts. His greatest contribution will always be daring to ask awkward questions, so that others too may dare.
Tunguska was a meteor that exploded over Siberia, leveling hundreds of square miles of forest.It wasn't known before that meteors could explode..There were few human casualties..The light from the explosion and fires was apparently visible from London...If it had exploded over London, hundreds of thousands would have died....
Technology isn't quite there, but it's getting very, very close.
The ice sheet would have melted in any case, in all probability. The immediate effects were to abruptly drop global temperatures while setting much of North America on fire. Most likely a lot of people died. So it was certainly a setback, even if in the long run we rebounded (and are now probably a lot more advanced than they were).
Portugal was the initiator of the Age of Exploration, at least above the level of random fishing boats or outlawed Vikings. Then they pulled back for domestic reasons which is why they are a world power. :>). Ming China did much the same leading to hundreds of years of decline. Only about 50 years kept the two from colliding in the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese treasure fleet is one of history's great cautionary tails. If they hadn't lost their nerve and turned their backs on the world, it's possible the century of shame would never have happened.
Arguably America's current woes are related to turning its back on space in the 70s. Imagine what the country would look like by now if it hadn't.
Good point...In fact, Portuguese fishermen were fishing the Grand Banks off Canada long before Columbus arrived ...and of course the Norse were there far earlier, but couldn't survive the natives' hostility...
If China remains wealthy and powerful in the foreseeable future, they will probably aim to build a Martian or Lunar colony of their own. Without Americans doing it first it would seem whimsical, but if Americans do it, it becomes prestigious and worth repeating. People deride the Chinese as copycats, but Chinese rocket companies are the ones moving quickly to replicate the Falcon 9 style of reusable booster while most oldspace companies are left in the dust. Any potential differences between these colonies would be of great interest to future anthropologists.
It also seems unlikely that long term Martian colonists will try and maintain an Earthlike physique. Especially the children born on Mars, with few prospects of ever going to Earth. What would be the point? The low gravity may twist and deform what we know of the human body into a strange new creature, the Martian Sapiens. And that creature will be different from any far future Titan colonists.
“Replicate” is really the key word when it comes to Chinese technology.
The other reason to maintain a good physique, not mentioned in the essay, is that it helps one to withstand high-g acceleration. If Earthlings can take 3 g’s but Martians can only tolerate 1, they're at a severe disadvantage.
When the Chinese are free from suffocating Maoist/XiJiangist control they have proven to be great entrepreneurs. If their Martian colony thrived I can imagine the CCP panicking over their inability to control their colony from afar. The best potential of Chinese civilization might develop there.
The current, ongoing “space race” began with the dawn of the age of nuclear power which was a relatively long time ago, around the middle of last century, conventionally speaking, so do the math on the actual, if undisclosed, progress.
Metaphysically, spiritually, I believe the “space race” is more ancient than our universe.
Anyway, within the current secular paradigm, the biggest threat to off-world buildout is earthly political trappings which are all-too human in their terminal folly, so maybe that’s the best justification for the media blackout and disinformation campaign on the subject, although full disclosure is the most direct and practical approach in my eyes, because blind alleys breed, well, the darker sides of humanity.
So, Antarctica is not sufficiently Mars-like for a demonstration that a large city can be built in hostile conditions.
Ok, how about the Rub’ al Khali on the Arabian peninsula? How about making a large city viable there? If it can’t be done there, why would anyone believe it can be done on Mars?
Well, with respect, maybe you’re the one missing the point.
Why not demonstrate the principles, (some of) the technology, and the social engineering required for a colony on another planet by making an economically viable large city in an environmentally extreme place right here on Earth? It’s easier to get to, much cheaper, orders of magnitude less difficult, and much safer. And if it can’t work, what is it about Mars that overcomes that impossibility?
And besides that, we’ve NEVER been to the moon. Mars is NEVER going to happen because it’s impossible. Why not Antarctica? Because the gig will be up on the Globe scam and all the other “outer space” BS!
Before “Covid” I would have thought anyone suggesting that the moon landings were faked was crazy.
And that only nut jobs thought 9/11 wasn’t what we were told.
And I would have said that willingly destroying the economy over a cold, and the forced injection of poison into billions, was a dark fantasy born of paranoid delusion.
But now, since the very obvious big lie of “Covid”, all recent (and some not-so-recent) “history” simply must be viewed with deep suspicion.
Let's hope we can get our asses there before it's too late. The artwork alone is almost enough to inspire great men to take the leap, but the post is what brings it all together. Absolute banger, mate.
A lot of this reminds me of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", from the decadent Earth, to the hyper-libertarian(the good kind) ideology, to every bit of oxygen being treasured. It necessitates a gruff, practical sort of man than can be both very social and willing to destroy everyone who gets in his way.
John,
Thank you for a brilliant and thought provoking article. The issue of colonization of Mars has been well studied and thought out for at least the last 50 years. This is not including all of the Science Fiction novels that were written in the 1930s and 40s. The best way to protect our species is for us to explore the cosmos as it separates out the best and the brightest and the strongest genes from the remaining pool of society. Those that can withstand the vigor of space, travel, exploration, and colonization will lead the human race into the future and protect it from the petty men and women that have small minds left on earth. Hope you and your family have a happy Thanksgiving, even though you may be in Canada.
That's exactly the idea.
I'm Canadian, so we celebrated Thanksgiving over a month ago ;)
I wonder if Martians will celebrate Thanksgiving? Their year is 2 Earth years long…
It's amazing how Pierce Brown's Red Rising novels and your optimistic space-futurist articles have completely re-awoken my capacity to dream about the possibilities of man's future with a sense of awe instead of dread. I do hope that some of my descendants will make the journey across the ink, and play their part in spreading human flourishing to the stars for generations to come.
Thank you for another terrific article!
The only problem with Red Rising was that he insisted on it being a dystopia. The Golds were a spectacular ruling class.
Agreed, the way I see it the reason the setting is dystopic at all is due to tyranny of a ruling class that has lost its way. I think he paints a clear and intellectually honest picture that the only way humanity was going to get out of the mire we find ourselves in now was for a class of man possessing requisite iron will to rise up and conquer our baser desires, symbolized by the planet Earth. I think it's hard to sell the effectiveness of hierarchical order to "modern audiences," so it needs to be shown in an evil light.
Really enjoyed this article. Makes me wish I was a younger man. Have a great Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Age doesn’t really matter. Moon would be a good place for the older man to regain his strength in a lighter gravity. You can still use tele-com to work remotely on the project with a drone.
Either space-ship crashing and being vaporised by its own anti-matter drive, or a communications-beam from a star system inside ten-fifteen light years from impacting on/through the atmosphere and setting off an explosion of superheated gasses due to surface rebound.
He had some wild ideas, but his worth lies not in any science but in daring to ask, and daring to challenge established consensus - that it's been over half a century doesn't matter, as we well know re: the consensus-disease. It is quite probable that hadn't he thrown down the gauntlet on the Great Pyramid, Stonehenge, and other places, people wouldn't have started to figure out how they were made - consensus in von Dänikens' heyday was basically "slaves built it".
Yeah? But - technically speaking - how?
As for Mars, I'm more or less of the opinion that we must go, because we can and because it's there. Same as Hillary (I think?) said about mountaineering: "Because it is there".
Because we can, and because it's there, is the heart of it. If we don't do this thing, our souls will know the difference, and wither. There's a price to turning our back on challenges … and there are often great rewards that come from meeting them.
That's a wild hypothesis re: van Daniken. Fascinating guy.
What if the economic and market effects of strip-mining asteroids for high-value elements becomes moot because too-cheap-to-meter electricity made mining ocean water for the same elements cost-effective first?
Of course, we'd have a long, slow slide in, say, gold prices rather than an abrupt crash due to market dumping due to the need to build and scale such a seawater-mining process, and the virtually-free electricity to run it.
The anti-gold-bugs would finally get their wish. Then it would become a showdown between fiat and crypto.
"This does however point to a profound difference between Musk and the money-grubbing financiers who manage our miserable vaisya-dominated bazaar of a social order. To the merchant class, money is the only possible point of doing anything; to Musk, money is merely a means to a higher end."
That right there is a very important point that needs highlighting even more. Money? Has no value at all, intrinsically. Water, air, food, shelter does. A Mars settlement (I'd argue for using settlement over colony, since a colony is beholden to a place of origin having dominion over the colony) would quite probably use some version of social credits rather than money, credits based on a combination of need and contribution. The reason for this is equally simple:
Fairness. You work and do your best and you do it right, or others suffer due to you being delinquent. In such an environment, hoarding or even having arbitrary tokens are nothing but a cause for conflict. I do not, however, mean social credits the way it is used in China and (informally, so far) the Americanised-Sinofied West. Your labour, not your opinions, will determine your worth.
And since the settlement needs your labour, and you needs the settlement, and there's a minimum of material needs everyone must be supplied with and supply the energy and materials for, some form of communal economy will evolve as the most stable form.
If. If the settlements do not make themselves dependent on Earth currencies and units of "worth". If they stay on a "dollar-standard", they can't do anything but fail, as they'll become locked in the same trajectory towards totalitarian capitalism, so close to communism you'd be excused to mistake one for the other in poor light.
And here's where Spirituality enters the game: what authority will underwrite the ideals of the settlers? You can't worship toil alone, and we need only look at our present to see where making Greed God leads, and atheism has mutated into High School contrarianism and "goth" vulgarisation of nihilism. What idol, what avatar, what higher notion then, since all the old ones (not /the/ Old Ones, though) are Earth-bound and will bring their Earth-problems with them?
(You do not want jewish and arab settlers behaving as per their respective races on a Martian colony, which they inevitably will if allowed there.)
The Engineer Hero is too human and too vague, as well as too inhumane in cold logic and emotionless rationale. The God-Machine needs a degree of ignorance preventing further technological development. Martial ability? Maybe, but sooner or later it will need an out against someone, and being a good fighter does not equal being a good steward. Technical prowess? Difficult to judge, and lead back to a leading guild stifling advancement.
What spiritual need, forceful need, can make it work and can we make work for us?
The obvious answer is the Sky Father.
Suitably updated to reflect our understanding of just how deep the sky really is.
Islam simply could not be replicated on Mars. The fundamentalists among them believe that human beings cannot ascend “beyond the (Copernicus-style) sphere of the Moon”. For that reason Khomeini declared the Moon landing a fake and the Iranian Ministry of Information said “Capricorn One” was really a documentary(!) There could be no fixed direction of prayer, no way to observe a lunar based calendar, no possibility of making the Hajj. My guess is that any person of Muslim descent forward looking enough to go to Mars would already have mentally left Islam behind. Nonetheless whoever is recruiting volunteer settlers would have to screen out anyone whose religious or nationalistic attachments would pose a threat to settler solidarity.
I watched Capricorn One in a movie theatre in Tehran in the early 1980s and there actually was a Persian language message posted at the beginning of the film that said the events depicted in the film were real and not fiction.
Notice I don't say "moslems" but arabs.
Islam can be molded: all it takes is that a recognised council of the imams, kadis, whatever declare it a sacred duty to spread the Dar al Islam to Mars.
A compass of sorts can easily be made so that it point towards Earth; it's not as if moslems far from Mekka bother with being exact with the direction of prayer - a general "South and East" (from where I am) is sufficient.
And a monotheistic and monocultural settlement would be plenty more stable than any multicultural one, as evidenced on Earth already. Plus, you can't screen for religion and culture without being racist and supremacist in some way, a big no-sell in the West at present and for any foreseeable future. Any non-Westerners going along to Mars would be the fully assimilated and naturalised ones.
As all the Abrahamic faiths, islam is at its core inherently pragmatic if it comes down to brass tacks - the priests, rabbis, imams /will/ declare as sacred whatever it is they realise they simply cannot do without, and find workarounds. Just look at how salafis and jews handle interest on loans: usury is haram, but fees aren't. And as if by magic, the monthly fees paid match what the interest rate would have been.
While the jews simply reasoned that that rule only apply to their fellow sons of David, not the goyim, and the Christians simply started to ignore it when it became too incovenient.
The whole "religion vs tech"-bit is a misunderstanding: the Abrahamic faiths oppose /all/ tech that threatens to upend their current powerbase, but once they realise they can't stop it, or that one of the other sects are using the tech to their advantage, they pivot and change their tune.
No reason settling space won't follow the same pattern they have kept up for more than two millennia.
Having lived in an Islamic nation for three years I can tell you that you are flat out wrong about Muslims non-chalantly not being fussy about the direction of prayer. The evidence from Mosques built since the eighth common era century to the present is not only are mosques built with the exact t direction of prayer but that their knowledge of geography encompassed the belief that the Earth was round. If you ever stayed in a modest hotel in Indonesia or Malaysia the direction of prayer is posted on the ceiling so guests know the correct direction. A man and his family in Seattle were murdered because the father had published an article claiming that the traditional method of determining the qibla was a degree off. Pragmatic indeed
And having lived and worked in the most islamised city in Sweden for 20 years, I stand by my assessment, as that is based on experience.
I lived a traditionally Muslim country where the norms are observed rigorously. What sloppy Muslims do in Sweden is of no consequence.
Great stuff! My family of mostly sci-fi readers from age 6, is totally supportive of Mars exploration, though I have cautioned that the technology isn't quite there yet...
BTW, the meteor that exploded over southern Canada 12,900 years ago, leaving a layer of iridiulm like the Dinosaur killer, melte most of the ice sheet....it didn't set humanity back, it advanced humanity by creating access to most of North America...I totally agree that the disfunctional rights and customs now prevailing in the West will rapidly disappear....A very interesting view of this is contained in Heinlein's Hugo award winning The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which includes throwing rocks at a tyrannical Earth in the move to secure the Moon colony's independence....
Since mr Carter mentions Tunguska, for a fun time, look at a map to see what lies on or almost of the 60th parallel North, same as the impacted area in Siberia. Just a few hours difference and no more St. Petersburg, f.e.
Currently reading von Däniken's 1969 "Erinnerungen an die Zukunft: Ungelöste Rätsel der Vergangenkeit", and he mentions Tunguska quite a lot in the latter parts. His greatest contribution will always be daring to ask awkward questions, so that others too may dare.
Interesting. What's his take on Tunguska?
See above: too long comments overlap the one below, causing the "Reply"-button to not register.
Tunguska was a meteor that exploded over Siberia, leveling hundreds of square miles of forest.It wasn't known before that meteors could explode..There were few human casualties..The light from the explosion and fires was apparently visible from London...If it had exploded over London, hundreds of thousands would have died....
Technology isn't quite there, but it's getting very, very close.
The ice sheet would have melted in any case, in all probability. The immediate effects were to abruptly drop global temperatures while setting much of North America on fire. Most likely a lot of people died. So it was certainly a setback, even if in the long run we rebounded (and are now probably a lot more advanced than they were).
Portugal was the initiator of the Age of Exploration, at least above the level of random fishing boats or outlawed Vikings. Then they pulled back for domestic reasons which is why they are a world power. :>). Ming China did much the same leading to hundreds of years of decline. Only about 50 years kept the two from colliding in the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese treasure fleet is one of history's great cautionary tails. If they hadn't lost their nerve and turned their backs on the world, it's possible the century of shame would never have happened.
Arguably America's current woes are related to turning its back on space in the 70s. Imagine what the country would look like by now if it hadn't.
We had to pay for The Great Society after all.
Good point...In fact, Portuguese fishermen were fishing the Grand Banks off Canada long before Columbus arrived ...and of course the Norse were there far earlier, but couldn't survive the natives' hostility...
If China remains wealthy and powerful in the foreseeable future, they will probably aim to build a Martian or Lunar colony of their own. Without Americans doing it first it would seem whimsical, but if Americans do it, it becomes prestigious and worth repeating. People deride the Chinese as copycats, but Chinese rocket companies are the ones moving quickly to replicate the Falcon 9 style of reusable booster while most oldspace companies are left in the dust. Any potential differences between these colonies would be of great interest to future anthropologists.
It also seems unlikely that long term Martian colonists will try and maintain an Earthlike physique. Especially the children born on Mars, with few prospects of ever going to Earth. What would be the point? The low gravity may twist and deform what we know of the human body into a strange new creature, the Martian Sapiens. And that creature will be different from any far future Titan colonists.
“Replicate” is really the key word when it comes to Chinese technology.
The other reason to maintain a good physique, not mentioned in the essay, is that it helps one to withstand high-g acceleration. If Earthlings can take 3 g’s but Martians can only tolerate 1, they're at a severe disadvantage.
When the Chinese are free from suffocating Maoist/XiJiangist control they have proven to be great entrepreneurs. If their Martian colony thrived I can imagine the CCP panicking over their inability to control their colony from afar. The best potential of Chinese civilization might develop there.
They make very good merchants. They aren't a creative people in general, however.
Bronze Age pervert made a similar observation about East Asian societies.
The current, ongoing “space race” began with the dawn of the age of nuclear power which was a relatively long time ago, around the middle of last century, conventionally speaking, so do the math on the actual, if undisclosed, progress.
Metaphysically, spiritually, I believe the “space race” is more ancient than our universe.
Anyway, within the current secular paradigm, the biggest threat to off-world buildout is earthly political trappings which are all-too human in their terminal folly, so maybe that’s the best justification for the media blackout and disinformation campaign on the subject, although full disclosure is the most direct and practical approach in my eyes, because blind alleys breed, well, the darker sides of humanity.
Case in point:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
There is no good reason not to try.
Happy Thanksgiving!
So, Antarctica is not sufficiently Mars-like for a demonstration that a large city can be built in hostile conditions.
Ok, how about the Rub’ al Khali on the Arabian peninsula? How about making a large city viable there? If it can’t be done there, why would anyone believe it can be done on Mars?
Talk about missing the point.
Well, with respect, maybe you’re the one missing the point.
Why not demonstrate the principles, (some of) the technology, and the social engineering required for a colony on another planet by making an economically viable large city in an environmentally extreme place right here on Earth? It’s easier to get to, much cheaper, orders of magnitude less difficult, and much safer. And if it can’t work, what is it about Mars that overcomes that impossibility?
And besides that, we’ve NEVER been to the moon. Mars is NEVER going to happen because it’s impossible. Why not Antarctica? Because the gig will be up on the Globe scam and all the other “outer space” BS!
Before “Covid” I would have thought anyone suggesting that the moon landings were faked was crazy.
And that only nut jobs thought 9/11 wasn’t what we were told.
And I would have said that willingly destroying the economy over a cold, and the forced injection of poison into billions, was a dark fantasy born of paranoid delusion.
But now, since the very obvious big lie of “Covid”, all recent (and some not-so-recent) “history” simply must be viewed with deep suspicion.
Now this is the plan: get your ass to Mars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAX2H0hpOc4
Let's hope we can get our asses there before it's too late. The artwork alone is almost enough to inspire great men to take the leap, but the post is what brings it all together. Absolute banger, mate.
I would rather die in a failed Mars colony than ride out Imperial decline back here on yeast-Earth.
We must become our own Antarctic Space Nazis, or die trying.
Also, the first colony must be Carter City.
A lot of this reminds me of Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", from the decadent Earth, to the hyper-libertarian(the good kind) ideology, to every bit of oxygen being treasured. It necessitates a gruff, practical sort of man than can be both very social and willing to destroy everyone who gets in his way.
"Because it's there." -- George Leigh Mallory