by Brent Reilly
“Did you know he opposes whaling? He sees whalers as the competition. He argues that raising whales in giant pens is not ‘whaling’, since they don’t roam free in the wild. Anti-whalers say whales are too intelligent to morally kill, yet thousands of dolphins are killed by nets every year. Both dolphin and pig's intelligence are rated higher than dogs.”
Like Cari gave a shit about that. She was earning an MBA.
“How much did he sell the fish farms for?
In October Jackson suddenly sold all but his Antarctic fish farms, including the whale farms, to a Japanese consortium that apparently wasn’t aware tsunamis would soon destroy them.
“He wouldn’t say, and believe me I asked him when he gave us a tour. Reading between the lines, though, I think he’s going to simply rebuild the sea farms afterwards in the same places, only bigger and better. He didn’t include the huge nutrient tubes or the amorphous metal hangers in the sale, and he took the best of each stock to repopulate. He even harvested almost everything before closing the deal, froze them, then sent them with his fleet up the Yukon. He kept all his net-making machines and talked about increasing the whale pens to several thousand cubic kilometers. He wants to build fifteen fish pens, each larger than the United States. Can you even imagine that?
“And why not? He makes his own boats, ships, hydrogen fuel, and clean energy products while his foreign labor is cheap. He builds the fastest cargo ships in the world and has ordered a thousand jumbo heloplanes.
“It gets better, though. In the 1970’s they grew more and more fish, crabs, lobsters, oysters, and shrimp until they exhausted the local nutrients. So they started pumping to the surface nutrients from a nearby deep water current. The ocean apparently has the equivalent of Amazon-size rivers flowing hundreds of meters deep.
“The tube, however, pumped too many nutrients, which caused algae to grow on hundreds of square kilometers and suck the oxygen out of the water. Algae need just nitrogen and sunlight to proliferate. To reduce the algae, he cultivated microorganisms that fed on algae, then tiny sea creatures that feed on those microorganisms, and so on until he artificially created his own ecosystem. He saved millions from having to import food to feed the predator fish.
“But the pump still dumped too many nutrients on the surface, so he built floating boats called skimmers that scoop up the algae. They figured out a way to bake the algae into different bread-like protein products shaped to resemble loaves, tortillas, buns, biscuits, bagels, papusas, and arepa. His fish empanadas are pretty awesome. They used artificial flavoring to make them tasty, and suddenly he could feed his growing army of workers. The Russians had been feeding algae to their cosmonauts for decades. Algae bread is extremely high in nutrients and free of fats.
“Then he gave away whatever his workers didn’t eat. He made deals with as many major churches, temples, mosques, and food aid organizations as possible. Instead of him transporting millions of tons to ports around the world, the churches and charities contract out cargo ships who pick them up right where he makes or stores them.
“So when he says he gives away a billion dollars a year, he is talking about the retail value of his protein bread that he writes off his taxes. But because the skimmers and processing equipment are so automated, and his economies of scale are so huge, his costs are pennies per ton. He saves millions in taxes while helping feed millions of starving people every year. Not bad doing good.”
“You admire him.”
While Rance tweaked her tits, she got turned on enough to fondle him in return. Did he have enough for one more time?
“Of course I fucking admire him. The guy’s a business genius. And this isn’t even his best business idea. Check this out!
“A decade ago, the European Union started an anti-global warming program which paid businesses to remove or reduce greenhouse gases. This encouraged companies to start monitoring and reducing their release of greenhouse gases.
“Well, Jackson’s fifteen sea pumps brought up millions of tons of nutrients a year, which created vast algae fields that soaked up millions of tons of carbon dioxide. So all he needed to do was get the EU technicians to track how many tons of gases he was removing, and watch his bank account grow.
“Ditto for his tree and bamboo farms, which he also sold in October. He had seeded fast growing trees and bamboo on hundreds of uninhabited islands. Jackson bioengineered bamboo with stalks as dense as hardwood, strong enough when compressed for beams one meter wide and ten meters long that are capable of supporting eight tons. Bamboo is also the world’s fastest growing woody plant and absorbs a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide.
“And being paid in euros didn’t hurt. During Bush’s presidency, the euro rose from 87 cents to $1.79 dollars, doubling in value. So Jackson not only made several billions a year, but made an extra billion just from the dollar’s depreciation.
“Not content with that, he purchased huge amounts of iron direct from producers, then used his own ships to distribute it around his sea farms. The resulting algae blooms gave him more algae bread, tax write offs, and carbon dioxide payments.
“The Japanese consortium paid so much because they were buying both his fish farms and his greenhouse gas money machine.”
“And Lisa will one day get half of that,” Cari pointed out.
Rance tweaked her tit and smiled.
26
“Mars,” Jackson explained helpfully.
Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over.
“Mars…”
“Look, we want to maximize the habitability of the solar system asap. Mars is relatively close, has a Goldilocks orbit, the right axial tilt to make seasons, an Earth-like day, and literally oceans of water buried under its surface. However, Mars is only half the size of Earth and has only a third of the surface area.
“Mars is too inhospitable for humans as it is. The constant radiation kills everything living on the surface. The temperature extremes between day and night make travel nearly impossible. The freezing weather and ultra fine dust would destroy any people, equipment, or vehicles on or near the surface. Including the pressure suits that everyone would have to wear since the atmospheric pressure is one hundred times lower than Earth. The air is 95% poisonous carbon dioxide, which forces people to carry heavy oxygen tanks. And the talcum powder-like dust will get into one’s eyes, nose, ears, throat, anus, food, clothes, suits, equipment, and vehicles. Nothing that depends on grease, oils, sealants, gears, or lubricants could work for very long, including our eyes. Our lungs would quickly fill up with the stuff.
“Even a tiny tear in a glove or suit, or a tiny leak in a joint or seal would kill you on the Martian surface. If you cut yourself, your exposed blood would literally boil away, which I imagine would be painful. And anyone working in a bulky pressure suit on equipment is likely to cut himself sooner or later.
“And we couldn’t grow anything because there is no soil on Mars. Martian regolith is deader than disco. Nothing organic grows on the surface, not even bacteria. As hydrogen leaked out of the atmosphere into space, the resulting oxygen literally rusted the planet, creating super-oxidant dirt. We need to cover the entire surface with leafy plants and trees to scrub the atmosphere of CO2, but can’t without soil. Because the whole planet is covered with fine dust and dead dirt, the obvious solution is to bury the planet with organics.
“There is another problem. The gravity is too weak to hold hydrogen, which leaks into space, which is why Mars has no liquid surface water. Increasing its mass increases its gravity, which thickens the atmosphere and warms up the planet above freezing.
“Our goal is to optimize the planet for human habitation. We are not going to convince millions of people to move to Mars if every day is a brutal, life-or-death ordeal. So we are going to make Mars not just more Earthlike, but better than Earth in many ways.
“Ultimately, we want to triple the size of Mars by importing thousands of asteroids. This will multiply its carrying capacity.
&nbs
p; “Bulking up Mars will solve several other problems, besides burying the ultra-fine dust and dead soil under a few thousand kilometers of asteroid regolith. First, thickening the atmosphere with trillions of cubic meters of gases protects us, our farm animals, and crops from deadly cosmic radiation, even while it warms the planet up by retaining the Sun’s heat. Mars today is like Antarctica, except colder, dryer, windier, dustier, and the nearest help is 70 million kilometers farther away.
“The atmospheric pressure is now so low that virtually no plants could live on the surface. Humans need a minimum density of 100 millibars and Mars at ‘sea-level’ only has 6. Greater air pressure means if you cut yourself, you put on a Band-Aid instead of watching in agony as your blood boils away.
“It would also reduce temperature extremes. Temperatures on Mars today fluctuate more in a day than on Earth in a year. It can be 60 degrees F in the day and -100 that very night. Also, raising the mean temperature above freezing would melt the millions of square kilometers of permafrost lying under the surface, and create new lakes, rivers, seas, and oceans via rainfall.
“Bulking up the atmosphere would also add needed oxygen, while diluting the carbon dioxide that we cannot breathe. Mars now only has .2% oxygen, and we need several percent. We need billions of tons of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the only way to get that is by direct importation via comets and iceteroids. While primitive plants can get by without it, advanced plants need about 1 mb and humans need 120 mb. Afterwards, we could walk around Mars in t-shirts and shorts while breathing through a simple CO2 filter mask. We would not even need heavy oxygen tanks.
“The solution to all of these challenges is bulking up the planet as much as possible and as fast as possible, and the way to do that is to capture thousands of large asteroids from the inner Main Belt seventy million kilometers past Mars. That is why we need one hundred spaceships. Gravity, atmospheric pressure, rain, snow, wind and storms will later settle the rubble and regolith into something more solid.
“Scientists will want to study Mars for several years before we bury it, however, so first we need to quickly bulk up the atmosphere so that they are not killed by radiation, global dust storms, fine powder, or freezing temperatures. Just getting in and out of vehicles or rocket planes would be tough in huge suits.
“We could quickly thicken the atmosphere by crashing its moons, Phobos and Deimos, and the largest nearby asteroids and comets into the poles or into deep areas of permafrost. Phobos has three trillion tons and Deimos another two trillion tons of frozen water and other volatiles. Exploding Phobos over the larger South Pole and Deimos over the smaller North Pole would vaporize millions of tons of ice, instantly doubling its atmospheric mass.
“Mars’ two moons are doomed anyway, since exploding thousands of large asteroids will knock them out of their low orbits. Phobos orbits only 6000 kilometers above the surface and Deimos 20,000 kilometers. If you stood on Phobos, you could throw a rock and actually hit Mars.” He stopped to smile. “Well, Lisa couldn’t – she couldn’t hit Earth if she stood on it.
“Comets average 60% water by weight, and over one hundred short period comets cross or approach Mars’ orbit. We could simply nudge the comets at perihelion – when they are closest to the Sun -- to collide with Mars since most of them are small, in the 3-4 kilometer range. Exploding the two small moons and a hundred small short-period comets would quickly give Mars enough atmosphere to shield us from deadly radiation, allow us to walk around without pressure suits, warm the mean temperature above freezing, and allow liquid surface water.
“Tripling the size of Mars could double its gravity from 38% of Earth’s to roughly 75% of Earth’s, which will be great news for the elderly. Gravity and ultraviolet rays are the two main causes of wrinkles, and sunlight is only half as strong on Mars.
“A thicker atmosphere will help burn up and explode the chunks of asteroids falling from the sky. The first few dozen asteroids that we capture from the inner Main Belt should be as rich in frozen liquids as possible to thicken the atmosphere to lessen the devastation of large M asteroids that will follow. Like on the Moon, having metallic asteroids on the surface gives us easy access to quadrillions of dollars worth of metals.
“Afterwards we seed the surface with bacteria, fungi, lichens, algae, and self-composting plants. As the atmospheric pressure increases, we will have more complex self-composting plants, mosses, grasses, bushes, and eventually trees.
“Botanists once believed that only soil microbes could convert organic nitrogen into the nitrates and nitrites that plants need, but since have discovered 15 self-composting plant species that generate nitrates and nitrites in their tissues when they die. We can therefore create soil by cultivating self-composting plants. In addition to catapulting millions of tons of fertilizer from Earth via the lunar launcher, we will also need huge soil and fertilizer factories on Mars, as well as millions of horses, cattle, buffalo, elephants, chickens, deer, turkeys, birds, ducks, rabbits, rodents, fish, and lots of insects. I’d love to introduce whales. Hell, maybe we could clone mammoth or herbivore dinosaurs for the manure.
“80% of Earth is covered by liquid or frozen water. Mars would be best served by reversing that ratio, while still using water to transport goods and people cheaply around the planet. Waterways are low-friction mediums that are far cheaper to transport goods than land or air. We should optimize the oceans, seas, and rivers to navigate as much of the planet as possible to boost trade, exploration, and settlement. What we don’t want is huge inland continents like Africa with few navigable rivers.
“We need millions of young, healthy workers to terraform the surface. Among other things, we need to grow trillions of leafy carbon dioxide-eating trees, lumbar trees, and fruit trees. The tallest trees on Earth are almost 400 feet high, so trees on Mars may reach an amazing 600 feet.
“Mars today has scientific, but no economic, value because no one can live there independently. In contrast, a bulked up and terraformed Mars may be worth $100 quadrillion within a century.
“And if we are the only ones who can send people to Mars, then we could send only those people we want. Like genetically screened, westernized English speakers. We could have one global government, with one dollar-based economy, one system of metrics, systems, and processes, and virtually no violent crime, poverty, deadly disease, unemployment, poor people, or wars.”
“Utopia.” Cooper finally looked impressed.
“Or at least the closest we can come to Utopia.
“And that’s just Mars.
“My dad wants to bulk up Ceres to several times its current size as we pass through the Asteroid Belt to give Venus a moon. Factories on Ceres would then build a sunscreen made of solar panels 13,000 kilometers wide by 13,000 kilometers long to shade Venus. Venus is now so hot that it could melt lead. Once less hot, up to one quadrillion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide will rain down and eventually turn solid, which we will later bury under regolith. With enough solar power and fusion power plants on Ceres, we could make bulk antimatter affordable enough for interstellar travel.
“After Mars, we could crash thousands of large iceteroids and comets into Venus to cool it down, hydrate it, and smack it hard along its equator to give it some spin. A Venus day lasts longer than a Venus year and Venus spins the wrong way. Venus needs one quadrillion tons of water, which means lots of large comets. Once cool and hydrated enough, we seed its surface with bioengineered plants to fix its carbon dioxide atmosphere.
“Once we have enough fusion ships, my dad wants to use them as mass thrusters to re-orbit Mercury equidistant between Venus and Earth. He wants to start pushing Mercury just after dawn on its equator, when Mercury is farthest from the Sun, though the temperature may be 300 degrees below zero. By midmorning, 22 Earth days later, the temperature will have risen to 80 degrees. The trick is to move Mercury far enough away from the Sun because at noon, 44 Earth days from dawn, the temperature rises to 800 degrees, which melts most astronauts.
&
nbsp; “Then we give it an atmosphere by importing comets and presto! -- a habitable planet. People may prefer to live on Mercury because for decades Mars will retain a carbon dioxide atmosphere that requires wearing masks, while Mercury could have an ideal atmosphere and gravity if we do it right. Like on Mars, millions of workers will optimize it, like by creating navigable waterways.
“Later, we could re-orbit the larger moons of the gas planets into the habitable zone between Venus and just past Mars – the so-called Goldilocks orbits. The gas planets have six moons larger than Pluto and fourteen larger than 1000 kilometers. We bulk them up as much as possible as they go through the Main Asteroid Belt. Venus, Mercury, Earth, and Mars could each have bulked up moons in their five Lagrange points, with enough mass to retain an atmosphere. We could take trillions of tons of nitrogen gas from Titan to use as filler on Mars and Mercury, for example.
“And that’s why we want hundreds of spaceships,” Jackson concluded. “To maximize the habitability of the solar system.”
Cooper tried his best to hide his true reaction because only as president could he stop this lunatic.
27
“Jesus, Henry, how much money are you going to make? What makes you think you could own the fucking solar system?”
“The real issue is how much you make. What will it take to get your full and unconditional support? Give me a number.”
Cooper leaned over the card table. “A billion dollars.”
Jackson looked at him with undisguised contempt.
“I’ll tell you what. If you win the nomination, I’ll give you $250 million if you make me your running mate; another $250 million if you let me appoint your chief of staff, the top three positions at the DNC, NASA, Energy and Defense; another $250 million if you help me implement everything we’ve talked about today; and a final $250 million if I’m actually elected president. You could be a billionaire within a decade.”