by Eric Klein
“In nineteen forty-nine Robert Anson Heinlein wrote the first of his Mars books, Red Planet, about a high school boy and his pet bouncer, Willis. In Heinlein’s Mars, like Burroughs’ Barsoom, Mars is inhabited by natives with their own ancient cities before Earthmen show up. The story takes Jim and Willis through one such city in their quest to thwart the Human governor’s efforts to prevent the annual winter migration. Heinlein would return to Mars twice more with Stranger in a Strange Land, about a Human that was born on Mars and raised by Martians before being found and returned home to the Earth, published in nineteen sixty-one, and then Podkayne of Mars, a book about a teenage Human girl from Mars, published in nineteen sixty-three. During this time, Ray Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles in nineteen fifty.” The image changes to show clips from the movie adaptation, with the tall, ethereal Martians ignoring the Humans. “It was a collection of stories describing the colonization of Mars. Then came Dr. Isaac Asimov’s novella The Martian Way, which in nineteen fifty-two told a tale about a Mars being threatened over the water used to maintain the Mars colony and the reaction mass used in the rockets flown to Mars. One of the colonists convinces the governor and a few other Martians that all the water they need is available as ice in the rings of Saturn.” The image changes to an orbital path and then an approach towards Saturn’s rings. “This was a foreshadowing of the technique used today in the Martian and Venusian terraforming projects.”
“A less positive view of Mars and its governor was in Philip K. Dick’s psychological thriller We Can Remember Wholesale published in nineteen sixty-six and adapted into a movie titled Total Recall in nineteen ninety. Here, Mars is little more than a penal colony where the residents do various jobs around the main business of mining. The tale of revolt is intermixed with precursor technology left on Mars.” The image changes to that of an alien artifact and the main character fighting to activate it, with him and the governor being sucked out to the surface, complete with an inaccurate rendition of unprotected exposure to the thin atmosphere. “Then in a similar vein as Bradbury’s chronicles, Kim Stanley Robinson told of the colonization and terraforming of Mars in his series Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars; the first of which was published in nineteen ninety-two. These were some of the first stories that looked at the moral and philosophical issues of terraforming Mars, and how some people were willing to circumvent the discussion by moving ahead secretly. The following year Greg Bear released Moving Mars. Again, it was a philosophical story relevant to our modern world. In it, we follow a young university student as she parallels the growing political maturity of Mars as it tries to move from independent cities to a unified, self-governing entity, and the interference from Earth. In the end, as the title implies, it becomes necessary for them to move the whole planet light years away to prevent a bloody conflict.
“Then there were two novels that took a more realistic view of exploring Mars. The first was The Martian Race by Gregory Benford, which extrapolates from the early exploration prizes like the Orteig Prize or the XPRIZE. In the Martian Race, a foundation offers a prize for the first manned mission to Mars, with bonuses for completing different scientific experiments or bringing back samples. Then in twenty eleven, there was the debut novel by Andy Weir, The Martian. By this time, conditions on Mars were well known, and the story was lauded for its scientific accuracy. Unfortunately, it was released only months before NASA confirmed the presence of liquid water on Mars.
“One of the last exploration stories, before robots gave us clear indications of running water and the living conditions, was Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli’s twenty twelve Red Desert series about the first attempt to colonize Mars.”
The room seems to have changed into the Ophir Chasm cave; even the air seems to have moisture.
“We will not delve into the long list of the rest of the radio and television shows, movies, and holos made about Mars, Martians, colonization, return, and even wars. There are enough that just describing them would take more than an hour. In the corridor on your way out, there are depictions of each, if you would like more information about them.
“Now, let us look to the actual attempts at finding the real Mars. During the nineteen sixties, as part of the space race, the Soviet Union and the United States of America each made several attempts at flybys or landing here on Mars. In the end, the USSR had eleven failures from nineteen sixty to nineteen seventy, while the United States managed several successful flybys with the Mariner program. It was from these flybys that the first real close images of the surface were seen. In the following two decades, the Soviet program continued to have problems with eight additional failures or partial failures from their orbiter and lander programs. Again, the United States was the first to successfully put a craft into orbit in nineteen seventy-one, and then had two successes in landing Vikings One and Two in nineteen seventy-five.” The image changed first to the Viking craft themselves, and then some of the images that they had sent back to the Earth. “These craft each survived for eleven months on the surface, and managed to collect and beam back to the Earth scientific information and images.
“This is not to say that NASA always had success, and several of its orbiters also failed. It was in the nineteen nineties that Japan joined the attempts to learn about Mars, with a failed mission. By nineteen ninety-nine NASA had succeeded three out of four times in landing on Mars, one of which included the first rover, named Sojourner, in nineteen ninety-six. It is worth noting that in nineteen ninety-eight NASA had a failure of its Mars Climate Orbiter. In this case, the orbiter crash-landed when there was a mix-up due to a mistake in metric-imperial units. The software provided data in pound-seconds instead of the SI units of newton-seconds as specified in the contract. In two thousand three the European Space Agency succeeded in their first attempt at an orbiter and lander mission. But in the end, the lander was a failure as the Beagle Two failed to completely deploy the fourth of its solar panels.” The image changed to the actual Beagle 2 site. “It is interesting to know that once someone reached the Beagle Two and connected it to power they were able to retrieve almost two years’ worth of scientific data that it had collected but that it was unable to transmit back to Earth.
“The Russian Space Agency continued to have problems with a joint project with China. NASA continued to have success, landing three additional landers or rovers, and India succeeded in its first orbiter mission. The ESA had another mixed mission in twenty sixteen, with the orbiter being successful and the lander failing and crashing onto the surface.”
“The twenty-ten-to-twenty-twenty period also saw the start of private space agencies, which declared their intentions to bring humans to Mars. These include SpaceX, The Mars One Project, and Inspiration Mars Foundation. Government-backed projects by NASA, China, Russia, and India, begun as well. In the end, it was a joint NASA and SpaceX project that landed first. Once Commander Anna Persson took the first steps on Mars on the second of October twenty thirty-five, the responsibility fell to the Americans for future administrative control of Mars under The Space Colonization Treaty. NASA then became the lead in coordinating the various colonization projects into a joint effort. And thus Elon Musk’s SpaceX plan to build up a fleet of a thousand ships to carry people and Mars One’s efforts to recruit people came together. It was another ten years after Commander Persson’s first steps that the first colony was established on the site where Helium now sits. It was named for the capital city from the Barsoom series and is as closely situated as was possible by extrapolating from the maps created by Boroughs. Surprisingly, his location was ideally located, allowing for a spaceport and central location for building the city and initial farming.”
Next comes a half-hour lecture about the terraforming projects, both para-terraforming and actual efforts to increase the atmosphere via the ice from Saturn’s rings, but also via using liquid carbon dioxide taken from Venus and released along with the ice frozen at the polar caps. Apparently
, they were progressing well enough that the outside temperatures have risen five degrees and the pressure is almost that of the high Himalayas, meaning that the yaks may be able to roam outside of their domes one day soon.
Leaving the exhibit after three hours, we are ready for lunch. This time Fay opts for a Thai Mexican fusion. Over lunch, I describe to her the meal I had before winning this cruise. As expected, the pico de gallo and salsa are wonderfully spicy and heavy with fresh cilantro. The yak fajitas were great, and they were some of the leanest and juiciest strips of meat I have ever eaten. Alongside, rather than the traditional corn tortilla chips, they served what they called The Martian Potato Chips. These were more like French fries than the chips I grew up on, but they were the best chips that I have ever had, firm on the outside while light and flaky inside. When I commented on this to Fay, the waiter interjected, “This is because they are cooked at three gravities, where you get genuinely crispy fry with a nice thick crust and a soft warm inside. This makes for the scientifically perfect chip.”
Fay and I sat down at a table near the front so we could people-watch. A group in one of the back rooms is loud enough for us to hear - not the words, just a sort of angry buzzing. As we finish our meal and sip the locally-grown agave tequila, Dodge rushes past us from the back of the restaurant. Less than 2 minutes later a large group of security police come into the restaurant and check everyone’s ident chips. We are questioned as to where we have been all morning and how long we have been in the restaurant. The owner vouches for the fact that we were not part of whatever group it was that was meeting in the back.
Reluctantly, the security team leaves with only one young woman whom they pulled from the bathroom, who could not prove she was not there.
As we are walking out Fay asks, “Do we have time to take a quick visit to the Atkinson and Houtermans’ fusion reactor? After hearing Carroll speak about it, I would love to see how they are progressing.”
We catch the maglev out to the research site. We take the standard tour, and the guide starts with explaining that they are working to generate power the same way that a star does, by heating up hydrogen into a plasma so that two positively charged nuclei combined to form helium. “We are having some success at containing the plasma using extra-strong gravity plates to shape it. By using a combination of near-zero gravity plates with ones at almost a hundred gravities we are keeping it from damaging the conduit walls. Our configuration has exceeded the best results that have been achieved on Earth, and we are now getting about a hundred times the input energy. The Martians are stable and self-sustaining for more than six months at a time. Then the system is cooled down and everything is checked for safety.”
Returning to Helium, we have just enough time to get to our seats in Helium’s main auditorium before the pageant event begins. This time, the women are being run through different outfit competitions. There are the same bathing suit and evening gown competitions as 200 years ago, but this year there is a special Martian pressure suit competition and a cultural display. The variety of ethnicities, heights, and bio or cyber enhancement or replacement is surprising. They range from last year’s’ winner, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, with her replacement hand and scar, to Mason Weaver, Miss Earth, a 1.57-meter-tall blonde with no enhancements, to the 1.9-meter-tall Miss Titan, Jean Wawatai, of Māori descent with a brushed silver metal right arm. (There is a small Titans Spaceball team logo on the inside of her metal wrist.).
Returning to the security area after the competition, it seems that everyone from the ship who could attend had come ashore, with only a skeleton crew left aboard. Everyone else is waiting their turn to pass through security. Anticipating this rush, there are extra security agents working to handle the increased flow. Even so, it is almost two hours before we are back aboard ship.
Chapter 15
“We’re there. We’re in orbit. We conquered Jupiter.”
Lead mission scientist Scott Bolton, with the Southwest Research Institute, 4 July 2016, after Juno spacecraft loops into orbit around Jupiter.
“That’s yet another small step for humans, and a giant ice skating rink in the sky?”
Commander Ben Amherst after slipping and falling on his first to step onto the surface of Ganymede
The morning lecture today is about Ganymede, the most terraformed colony, and why the process was different from any of the other colonies, by Dr. Geraldine Brophy, one of the postdocs who had spent time working with the project.
“You must understand that Ganymede already had a thin oxygen atmosphere before we landed for the first time. When Commander Amherst made his infamous slip, Ganymede was covered with layers of water ice over a solid but geothermally active iron core, similar to that of the Earth. The initial experiments for terraforming started by warming the ice using geothermal heat. The terraforming engineers drove pipes filled with superconducting fluid deep into the core. This went through several layers of ice and water, all of which were warmer than the surface.
“As these areas warmed up and thawed the local ice, some of it naturally broke down to water vapor, and frozen or dissolved elements were released, creating a thickening atmosphere. This atmosphere helped trap the heat, and this started a slow cycle where the frozen CO-two sublimated and added more greenhouse gasses to the mix. The first few years suffered drastic snowfalls, as the water vapor would freeze when Ganymede went behind Jupiter, similar to what you will see later today on Io. But as time went on and more greenhouse gasses and heating sources were released, the atmosphere started to retain the heat, and the snowstorms happened less frequently. When you exit the ship, you may notice a slight rotten-egg smell – it will be less than that in Cloud City, Venus, and after a short while you will not even notice the elevated levels of sulfur.
“Several communities have been set up around the equatorial region. This is both because it is the most temperate, but also for protection from cosmic and solar particles – more of which reach the surface, thanks to the weak magnetic field. All of the communities are on the hills and coasts of new lakes, which in many cases once were craters. Some of these craters, like the one next to Hydropole, are many kilometers long as they were made by comets that broke up prior to impacting the surface. At Hydropole, the various parts hit, forming thirteen connected craters that make a stunning lake. But you can judge that for yourself later today.”
She went on to describe the chemical composition of the atmosphere and land, and how they had succeeded in planting various tundra meadows and forests that over the past 30 years had started to spread on their own.
After lunch, the entire symposium and some of the pageant participants gather in the ballroom to watch a large hologram of our approach to Jupiter and a close-up of Io. “As we are coming around Jupiter on our way to Ganymede, Jupiter’s seventh and largest moon, we are approaching Io just as it is about to go into Jupiter’s shadow. This will be a great opportunity for watching the atmosphere collapse when Io enters the shadow. As the atmosphere rapidly cools it will collapse and go through a transition called deposition. This is the opposite of sublimation, the direct transition from the solid to the gas state.”
We watch the hologram and can see the atmosphere start to get a little cloudy, and stars seem to jump as the atmosphere starts to shrink. In an instant, the surface has changed from pale yellow to white as if someone has sprinkled powdered sugar on it. The hologram changes to allow us to watch the stripes and Big Red Spot of Jupiter as we go into landing orbit around Ganymede.
Unusually, the ship’s time and that of the colony are out of sync. For us it is mid-afternoon, but for Hydropole it is mid- morning; they won’t get to afternoon for another two standard Earth days. Fay and I decide to have dinner aboard the ship and then spend a few hours ashore. Like Luna, Ganymede keeps one side facing its planet, and orbits Jupiter once every seven days. With Jupiter’s orbit around the sun being so long, Ganymede’s day is seven standard days and three h
ours long, and we have landed a day after it left the shadow.
Over dinner, Captain Englehorn announces that he had a communiqué from Luna City. The new ASPD (Armstrong Safety Pilotless Drones) have been deployed, and on their first day they helped two new flyers in the Bats’ Cave. They had a mid-air collision and their wings got entangled. The drone deployed the catching net while they were struggling and managed to bring them to the floor safely, at which point experts came and helped separate them. If they had not been caught they would have pulled each other’s wings off in their panic and plummeted straight to the floor. There had not been time to reverse the gravity, so they would have hit hard.
Figure 7 Jupiter Poster Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
Leaving the ship was very strange. There was no connection tube or airlock. There was an escalator and moving walkway, open to the air, leading to a solid-looking building. It was almost surreal to be outside of the ship without protective clothing.
Even the security area of Hydropole was different from those we had visited before. On Luna and Mars, we came into gray areas with lots of American flags and TSA officers to meet us. On Venus, it was a kind of dull gray-green, with Russian officers to meet us. Leaving the transfer tube at Hydropole we enter a refreshing room with bamboo paper walls, and the lines separated by bamboo plants. The security guards all wear Red Army uniforms and are very efficient. They had four Rapiscan Security Chambers, all manned and ready for visitors. It was much quicker – and more polite – than any of our previous stops.