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| Courtesy of NASA. |
Mars is in the news these days. We’re learning so
much from NASA and the European Union, and other countries are joining with
their own missions. India, Japan... Mars will be a multi-cultural planet. But
what fascinates me is the number of private
organizations joining the race, and the people ready to take a one-way
trip.
Obsession with Mars isn’t new. The Mars Society is
celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. They run simulations of living and
working on Mars and you can apply to join a mission.
Some recent
entries into the Mars race have a lot of money. Elon Musk is a good example, a
billionaire who wants to live and die on Mars. His SpaceX might make it.
Then there’s Mars
One, a non-profit that seems more aspirational than able, but thousands of
everyday people from all over the world applied to take one-way journeys.
Colonizing Mars will be very difficult. There’s a lot to think about. Here’s
a problem that never dawned on me: MIT students calculated that, to raise
enough food in Martian greenhouses to feed the settlers, gardens would produce
dangerously high oxygen levels.
There are a
lot of ways Mars can kill you.
Cold and a
near-vacuum atmosphere make the surface immediately deadly.
Cosmic and
solar radiation require anyone who wants a long life to shield their habitat
under meters of regolith - that’s Martian soil, but with no detectable life,
calling it soil seems optimistic.
Imagine if
traveling millions of kilometers means you hunker in a burrow, living as a
subsistence farmer, and only venturing onto the surface by remote control
robot.
Technology
can protect settlers from everything except the low gravity (which will damage
your metabolism and immune system as well as your bones and muscles, but let’s
move on) but the biggest challenge is
human nature.
Could you
live confined in tight quarters with a few other people? For the rest of your
life? Results from an experiment at Biosphere 2 make that a dismal prospect, and NASA won’t
release all the findings from their confinement studies. Hmm.
Personally,
I’m not brave enough to move to Mars. I like my favorite coffee shop too much.
That and grocery stores, electricity delivered to my house, and space. Lots and
lots of space to roam around under blue skies in warm sunshine.
But
creating a first foothold is an intriguing project. I explore the challenges and the delights in a science fiction book
about the first twelve settlers. I send diverse settlers, civilians from
different cultures and different backgrounds. These are real people, as real as
I can imagine them, struggling on the real Mars.
I had to
give them technologies we don’t have ready-to-go today, but a story about
colonizing Mars might be too short otherwise.
My sci-fi
colony has an Artificial Intelligence, and construction robots to harvest air
and build habitat space from the Martian regolith. An extensive satellite
system monitors space weather, provides communications, and beams power down to
the surface. I truly wish we had a power system like this for Earth today.
My settlers
encounter real problems and danger follows them from Earth. Mars is a deadly
planet and no matter how earthlings plan, unanticipated hazards may doom the
colony.
They have
different reasons to risk the journey. Emma Winters, a young roboticist, wants
to explore in walkabout suits she designed. Her friends want to spread life to
the barren planet, study its geology, and climb its vast mountains. A couple
Brits just want to play with the robots, the best erector set ever, and a Kiwi
wants to pilot ships in orbit. There’s also an orange tabby cat that doesn’t
care if he’s on Mars. He’d be a cat anywhere.
But survival takes priority over dreams,
because something is terribly wrong in the colony. A strange illness threatens these pioneers,
tragic deaths may be no accident, and experts on Earth can’t protect them. With
no way back to Earth, they must save themselves or Emma may be one of the last
humans on Mars. Because, even in the real-world, the gruesome death of early
settlers is bound to spoil our taste for Mars.
Kate Rauner
A science fiction writer, poet, firefighter,
and engineer on her way to eccentric old woman
KATE RAUNER writes science fiction novels and
science-inspired poetry, and serves as a volunteer firefighter. She’s a retired
environmental engineer and worked in America’s nuclear weapons complex, so she’s
also a Cold War Warrior. Honestly, as designated by the USA Congress.
A friend
tricked her into writing, first by involving her in his own book, then asking
her to post on his blog, and finally encouraging her to join NaNoWriMo, the
National Novel Writing Month. Kate says her first story was “not-terrible” so
she kept writing.
She lives
outside Silver City, New Mexico, where copper mines still anchors the economy,
and a budding artist community makes the place a miniature version of an
undiscovered Santa Fe. From a ridge-top home on the edge of southwest America’s
Gila National Forest, Kate enjoys hiking with her husband, feeding the birds,
and indulging her cats, llamas, and dog. Kate says she’s pursuing her life
goal, “to become an eccentric old woman.”
View Kate’s
videos on You Tube. Visit her blog. Find her
books at Amazon and other stores.
Special deal: a Box Set of all five books, value priced, at
Amazon and other stores!
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