1.
The Solis
The sleek new Hermes-class shuttle completed its descent to the Martian surface on a hundred meters of thundering orange-tinged blue flame, throwing a cloud of dust and snowflakes high into the air. The flame cut out and the vehicle bounced slightly as it landed at the center of the bullseye of landing pad number six. The Ma’adim was on Mars.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Will Elliott asked his twelve year old son Marshall, who was watching from the back of the control room.
“Beautiful!” agreed Marshall. “How much taller than the old shuttles?”
“Three meters; nineteen meters instead of sixteen. It’s all in the longer cargo bay.”
“It does look different; more like a bullet and less like a capsule.”
“Yes, that’s a good way of putting it,” agreed Will, impressed by his son’s observation.
“Welcome to Mars, Ma’adim,” exclaimed Rostam Khan, their capcom.
“Thanks, Mars Control, we’re delighted to be here,” replied the captain. “Initiating shutdown of the propulsion systems.”
“We copy.”
They sat in the control room silently, watching the data come back from the shuttle’s systems. A team in one corner began to inspect the exterior of the vehicle via long-range, high-powered cameras to make sure it looked safe to approach.
A half hour after landing, Rostam gave the “all clear”; the propulsion systems were totally deactivated and the exterior was clean. Two mobilhabs—large mobile habitats—approached, one docked to the shuttle, and the other docked to the mobilhab. Meanwhile, inside the shuttle, the twenty-four passengers had been suiting up, though the transfer technically did not need pressure suits. Once the docking was complete they began to exit with their luggage.
“Let’s go,” Will said to Marshall. “Time to greet the first arrivals.”
Marshall nodded and jumped out of his seat. They headed out the door. “This is the first of four passenger flights, right?”
“Well, more or less. The Solis complex has 56 people on it; the Hellas complex arrives next month with 52 more. The Ma’adim will make two flights and bring down 50 altogether. The Hellas arrives with two big shuttles, the Kasei and the Nirgal, and the Nirgal is also outfitted for passengers, so it’ll make two round trips and bring down 50 more. The remaining eight people will come down on the ten cargo flights.”
“Dad, when will I be able to fly in a shuttle? I want to go to Phobos.”
Will had to smile. “Shuttles are rated for adults, so you’ll have to be eighteen. Just six more years now.”
“Six years!” Marshall sounded disgusted.
“Hey, kiddo, be thankful you can use a pressure suit! We don’t live in Houston.”
“I know.” Marshall did not hide his disappointment.
They crossed Riviera Biome and entered Yalta, their oldest biome. In the last year it had been renovated to accommodate the larger population; the cafeteria kitchen was doubled in size, the food serving area was more than doubled to accommodate the greater volume and variety and was reorganized, and “the Patio” where the tables and chairs were arranged in open air was expanded. On the south side of the biome, Silvio’s Store had tripled its floor space. A tailor shop, beauty salon, craft shop, and a lawyer’s office rounded out the services available in their nascent commercial center.
They exited Yalta and walked along two corridors—underground tunnels—until they reached the debarkation area. They didn’t have long to wait; the two mobilhabs soon approached the facility and docked to the outside. The hatches opened and Mars’s newest residents began to step through the airlocks. Will stood next to the nearest hatch and shook hands with each arrival, formally welcoming them. The persons coming out of the other hatch came over and stood in line to shake hands with “the Commissioner,” as he was often called, the person in charge of the entire Mars Commission. Marshall stood and watched, drinking in the scene excitedly, wondering who was the young man standing nearby with an older man and woman of similar skin color and appearance.
When Will finished shaking hands, they approached him. He looked at them, then smiled. “Dharmapala, Maya, and Rahula Peres, I presume?”
“Correct, Commissioner,” replied Dharmapala, the father. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I’m delighted. It took a series of small miracles, but here all three of you are here! So marvelous.”
“Thank you, we’re very grateful,” added Maya, the mother.
“And how do you feel about being on Mars?” Will asked the son.
“Oh, delighted!” Rahula replied. “Who would have thought that, one month before departure, the three of us would suddenly get the call! It’s a marvelous opportunity!”
“And a historic one; you won’t be the last family to emigrate,” noted Will. “This is my son Marshall, by the way. He just turned 12 two weeks ago.”
“So, am I the only teenager on Mars?” Rahula asked Marshall.
The younger boy nodded. “For eleven months, anyway; then a year later my best friend Sammie turns thirteen.”
“Nice to meet you.” Rahula extended his hand and Marshall, excited by the attention, shook hands gleefully. Dharmapala and Maya shook hands with Marshall as well.
“Where’s your flat?” asked Will.
“Cochabamba,” said Dharmapala. “Unit 6C.”
“I think I know where that is,” said Will. “We’ll walk you over, okay Marshall?”
“Sure!”
Will walked to a corner and grabbed two metal luggage carts. The Pereses were surprised that they looked like standard carts at a terrestrial airport. They loaded their luggage onto them and began to push their possessions to their new home.
“The corridor that goes around Yalta and Catalina is the most direct route,” Will said, pointing to a ramp leading to a new underground corridor.
“And the sign even says Cochabamba!” added Dharmapala. He steered the luggage cart down the ramp; Will followed with the second cart, which he had taken from Rahula.
“How was your flight?” he asked.
“Pretty good, I guess,” replied Dharmapala. “It had lots of nagging problems, as you know; I think every single docking unit leaked at one time or another. The Solis complex lost about a tonne of oxygen.”
“Yes, it was quite an embarrassment. We switched to cheaper manufacturing processes and saved two hundred million new dollars on the flight hardware, but the leaks were very bad press.”
“It was worth it. We lost a negligible fraction of our life support capacity. I wouldn’t want to fly to Saturn in the Solis, though.” Dharmapala shrugged. “I’m still impressed that we could get to Mars in 141 days; that’s really amazing. Of course, the aerobraking made for a pretty rough arrival. We kept busy; everyone was almost constantly training. The zero gee gym was very popular.”
“So were the zero gee bedrooms,” added Maya.
“I think every couple signed up,” said Dharmapala.
“And it was nothing exciting, either,” noted Maya wryly.
“So, do we have a lot of marriages on the way? The flight out often gets called ‘the love boat,’” noted Will.
“Some engagements can be expected, I think,” said Maya, nodding. “We also had some nice cultural events; plays, skits, poetry, concerts. It’s a talented bunch that’s arriving.”
“And younger than us,” said Dharmapala. “I think two thirds of them went straight through to a Master’s degree or a doctorate, worked for the Commission for four years while training for a flight here, and now at age twenty-eight to thirty are on their way to Mars.”
“Yes,” agreed Will. “That’s been the pattern for the last few flights. We get a dedicated ground support team and when they arrive they know exactly how our operation works. Meanwhile, half of them have married other trainees or get married here, so two years after they arrive they start a family.”
“What is our population, anyway?” asked Maya.
“Two years ago it was 226. Since then we’ve had 20 children, so before your arrival it stood at 246. Add 108 from Columbus 9 and it’ll be 354.”
“Wow!” said Dharmapala. “You’ve now blown away the moon.”
“Well, the worldwide depression slashed their tourist income. That’s recovering now. But they have no children, of course; we’re a colony, they’re a base.”
“I’m looking forward to experiencing the difference,” said Dharmapala, who had spent sixty-seven months on the moon over the last sixteen years.
Will turned to Maya. “I’m delighted we finally have someone here with a doctorate in the humanities, and a professional poet as well.”
“Thank you,” replied Maya. “I’m already faculty at the Mariner Institute of Technology, as I’m sure you know; I’m the entire Department of History and Culture! I plan to write a lot of poetry as well, and I’m trained as a horticultural specialist in order to help in the agricultural sector.”
“And Rahula’s trained as a welder and riveter,” added Dharmapala.
The eighteen year old nodded. “I’m taking two courses at MarTech and will be working thirty hours a week in construction as well.”
“Good. Take care of yourself,” said Will. He stopped outside the airlock leading into Cochabamba while the door opened automatically for them. They stepped inside and the outer door closed, then the inner door opened.
A sunlit open space appeared before them. Dharmapala stood looking out, impressed; Maya said “Wow.” Rahula stood a moment, then pushed past his parents into the open area. “Fantastic,” he said.
“They’ll never have anything like this on the moon,” exclaimed Dharmapala. He pushed the cart onto the concrete pathway outside the airlock. Cochabamba Biome was their first “B-75,” a pressurized enclosure seventy-five meters in diameter and forty meters high. The sun was just three hours above the eastern horizon and still slanted across the space; the western third of the dome was still covered by a silvered blanket that bounced extra sunlight downward onto the ground.
Will stepped out with the other cart. “It’s still rather bare in here. The trees, grass, flowers, and vegetables were planted just three weeks ago and they have a long way to go. A third of the building sites are still bare, too.”
“Those are the places for the annexes we brought, right?” asked Maya.
Will nodded. “Some of them. The Solis and the Hellas are bringing a total of eight annexes and each provides the building bubbles for three condo cylinders. We have five construction sites in here and seven more in Columbia Biome. The other twelve building bubbles we’ll use for Columbus 10, two years from now.” He pointed. “The condo cylinders are in numerical order; the first cluster here has 1, 2, 3, and 4.”
“Then let’s go!” said Rahula, and he ran down the sidewalk. Marshall hurried close behind. Will smiled and pushed the cart along the sidewalk as well. The biome floor sloped downward to the north, which was the direction they were moving in. The northern escarpment marking the edge of the Mariner Valley system reared up before them, a kilometer and a half tall and raw with landscape scallops and building-sized boulders barely visible from a dozen kilometers’ distance. They all feasted on the view as they strolled toward the Peres’s new home.
The second cluster consisted of four cylinders, two in front and two in back, with a narrow passage between the front two and a garden in the middle. All four shared a rooftop agricultural area with a skylight to bring sunlight down to the central flower garden in the center of the four cylinders. They crossed the garden and approached a light green cylinder ten meters in diameter and ten meters high with a central door, which opened automatically when they reached it. In front of them was a tiny lobby with a door on the right, a door on the left, and a spiral ramp behind them. The doors were labeled “A” and “B” so they pushed the luggage up the ramp to the second floor, where they found “C” and “D”.
“Dharmapala Peres. Open please,” exclaimed Dharmapala, and door “C” immediately unlatched. He smiled, pleased that the outpost’s computer had his voice print in it already. They pushed the door open and entered a living room with a kitchenette in the far corner. A spiral ramp led up to their second and third levels where they had bedrooms and offices. Dharmapala turned to the wall and tapped it; it was drywall, like most terrestrial construction, bolted to metal supports.
“We’ll leave you now,” said Will. “Enjoy your new house. See you tonight at dinner.”
“Thank you, Commissioner,” said Dharmapala.
“Please call me Will. Delighted to be of help.” Then Will turned and headed back to his office, with Marshall at his side.
They went back to Mars Control, where Marshall said goodbye to his father and went to find Sammie, who was playing in the yard between the two buildings with Marshall’s sister, Lizzie, and her friend Corrie. It was Satursol—the first sol of the weekend—and thus they had no school. Marshall and Sam hung out, talked, played a computer game, and worked a bit on homework together; they constituted Mars’s entire sixth grade. Just as Sam had to join his father, leaving Marshall alone, Rahula entered Riviera Biome.
“Hi,” said Marshall.
“Oh, hi. I’ve been exploring the outpost.”
“Did you go all the way to Columbia?”
Rahula nodded. “And I went via the agricultural biomes. Wow, the air in there is thin! I had to walk very slowly and breathe hard.”
“Yeah, it has one half the oxygen of the residential areas. It takes some getting used to. The people who work in there, though, don’t wear pressure suits; they’ve adapted.”
“Really?”
Marshall nodded. “It’s rough the first few weeks, I guess, and they start out working in there no more than an hour or so. I’ve been going in there a lot lately; dad and mom said I couldn’t explore them alone until I was twelve.”
“And when was your birthday?”
“Seventeen sols ago.”
“Say, which way to the Patio; that way?” Rahula pointed to the airlock at the eastern end of the biome.
“Yes. I’ll show you.”
“Okay.”
Marshall jumped up and walked next to Rahula. He was obviously excited to have the older boy’s attention. “What was the flight like from Earth?”
“Oh, how do I answer that. . . exciting. The Solis had an axial cylinder twenty meters long and ten meters in diameter that served as a zero-gravity gym, and we had four volleyball teams who had to hit the volleyball through the small circular opening in a doughnut-shaped net. My team didn’t do so well. Then we had four annexes—big inflatable habitats ten meters in diameter and ten meters long, housing eight people each. One annex also had our cafeteria, another one our exercise area, another our sick bay, and the fourth had a repair facility. They were arranged like two pairs of spokes off the axial module. Finally, attached to each annex was an interplanetary transit vehicle, the old capsule-shaped habs that flew people here originally, housing four people each. We rotated which rooms we had because some had more gravity or more radiation shielding. We also had a spare annex attached to the end of the axis that provided additional housing, and it was in zero gee. Finally, we had the shuttle Ma’adim attached to the end of the zero-gee annex, and docked to its sides were two ion engine pods that shortened our flight to Mars from 155 days to 140. The solar panels were attached to the opposite, sunward end of the axial module.”
“And you had leaks?”
“Yes, constant leaks! And two small solar flares that forced us into shelters a few hours; that was a pain. And constant training; when we weren’t playing volleyball, we were watching videos or discussing how to do things.”
“Like what?”
“Everything. We spent half the time on safety training, including some drills. We also made some spacewalks from the far end of the shuttle when the ion engines were shut off. And we spent a week after arrival on Phobos and Deimos; almost everyone was getting trained to do construction or geology on them.”
“And at Embarcadero,” added Marshall. Embarcadero was Mars’s transit point for interplanetary flight; it orbited Mars once per sol in an orbit that swept to within 400 kilometers of the planet, then rose to an altitude of 34,000 kilometers.
“Yes, most of us spent time there as well, doing routine maintenance and preparing for construction tasks we’ll do there in another year or so.”
They entered the airlock tunnel between the biomes and a moment later opened the door into Yalta, by the swimming pool at the western end. The cafeteria was at the far end, forty meters away. “So, what are you here for?” asked Marshall.
“You mean, my career? I’m probably the only person here who doesn’t have one yet! But I think I’ll major in geology and do construction as well to earn my keep. That’s what everyone wants; construction workers. The alternative is cafeteria work or horticulture, and I don’t think I like either! By the time I get a geology degree I’ll have paid my dues and will be able to do geology. Dad says I should be able to go out on summer trips while in school.”
“Really, Oh, I wish I could do that! I’ve never been farther away than the Dacha.”
“Up on the rim of the escarpment? I haven’t been there yet.”
“There’s a robotic bus twice a sol, after breakfast and before supper. It’s only a forty-five minute drive. I really want to see the rest of Marineris, or the polar caps, or Olympus Mons! And I really want to go to Phobos!”
Rahula chuckled. “I’m sure you will, some day.”
They entered the cafeteria. Rahula looked around and was disappointed by the snack choices. He grabbed an orange and filled a glass with diet Coca-Cola, then looked around for the checkout area.
“Over there,” said Marshall. “You put everything on a tray and push the tray through the checkout tunnel. It scans the stuff, figures out what’s there, and calculates the bill, then you just swipe your i.d. card.”
“Oh, damn, I left it at the house!”
“We can put it on mine. Dad won’t mind.” Marshall grabbed an apple and a glass of diet Coke as well, and they took the tray to the checkout tunnel, which was a bit wider than a tray and a meter long. The price popped up: 20.00 Marshall pulled out his card and swiped it.
“Is that old dollars, new dollars, euros, or what?”
“Euros; we stopped using dollars after the nuclear attack on Houston and the dollar fluctuated in value so much, then lost half of its value.”
“It’s been recovering a bit lately, at least. The prices here will take getting used to, that’s for sure.” They walked to a table nearby and sat. “So, what’s it like to grow up on Mars?”
Marshall considered. “It’s great! We have lots of friends, good teachers. . . and I guess I don’t know what the Earth is really like anyway. Dad keeps telling me it isn’t like television.”
“No, it isn’t. Do you miss Earth?”
“I want to see it sometime, I think. But I’d also like to see Mercury, or maybe Callisto. Everyone here says we’ll be exploring the solar system and I should plan to be part of it.”
Rahula laughed. “That’s definitely a difference between Earth and Mars! Earth teenagers usually don’t aspire to go to Mercury and Jupiter!”
“I suppose not. If there’s one thing I’d like to see, it’s an amusement park; maybe Disneyworld. A mall would be interesting too, and then maybe a park like Yellowstone. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be outside and not having something wrapped around you; either a pressure suit or a dome, that is.”
Rahula smiled. “One thing puzzles me; your accent. I’ve heard a few people here speak with the same accent. It’s very clear and educated; no dropped syllables. You said ‘dif-fer-ence’ rather than ‘dif-rence,’ for example. And the vowels are very clear.”
Marshall chuckled. “Oh, that’s Fatima! She was our elementary school teacher; she’s the principal now. She insists we speak very clearly and precisely. I guess it’s trickling outward to the adults, too!”
Rahula laughed. “I guess Mars is acquiring its own accent.”
“You speak with a standard American accent, I think. You don’t sound like other people from south Asia.”
“Mom and dad became American citizens over twenty years ago so dad could apply for the NASA astronaut corps. We’re citizens of Sri Lanka, too. We didn’t get to Sri Lanka more than once every two years, but when we decided to apply for Columbus 9, the Mars Commission approach the Sri Lankan government and convinced them to pay something like a hundred million new dollars to have Sri Lankan citizens on Mars. So we tape interviews every month or so, and do little programs for high school and university classes. It’s fun.”
“And Peres; that’s a Portuguese last name, right?”
“Right. Dad has some Portuguese blood from five hundred years ago when the Portuguese were sailing in the area. But we’re Sri Lankans and Buddhists, and I guess now we’re Marsians!”
“I think so,” agreed Marshall.
Rahula had been peeling his orange; he offered a few sections to Marshall, who took one. Rahula took a sip of his Coke and made a face. “Ooh, this Coke will take getting used to, also!”
“They say processed foods are never quite the same as on Earth. Sometimes the Diet Coke has saccharin, sometimes nutrasweet, sometimes some sugar in it; it depends on what’s available to make it! But everyone says the fruits, vegetables, and meats are much better here, since we don’t have to use pesticides and we can control the climate exactly.”
“That makes sense.” Rahula took another sip, trying to get used to it. “Do you know of any good hiking routes outside?”
“Oh yes, lots! And I can go outside with you; I can go outside with an adult!”
“Well, maybe.” Rahula was hesitant to take on such a responsibility. “But it sounds like there are some things we can do together. I’d like a little help to get adjusted to this place.”
“I can do that!” agreed Marshall. “That’d be fun!”
“Good. I’d like it, too,” said Rahula.
----------------------------------------------
The next morning, refueled, the Ma’adim blasted off for Embarcadero Station, where the Solis was docked. Over the last two weeks, the arriving crew had taken apart the four annexes that arrived with them; they were now packed into the cargo holds of two cargo shuttles that were ready to carry them to Aurorae Outpost. Another shuttle had cargo that the Solis had brought to Mars. The Ma’adim loaded twenty-four more passengers on board and brought them down on Monsol morning, leaving four people at Embarcadero to dispatch shuttles and prepare for the arrival of the Hellas in three weeks.
Monsol evening the outpost witnessed the traditional big welcoming dinner. Rosa Stroger, director of Nuclear Science on Mars, kept a close eye out for Brian Stark, the newly arriving director of the American nuclear power team. When he entered the biome, she waved and he came to their table. “Rosa, good sol,” he said. She stood and they hugged like old friends, even though their relationship had been occasionally frosty last time he had been on Mars.
“Welcome back; the first man to return!” said Rosa.
“Thanks.” Brian turned to Neal Stroger and shook his hand. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you. Dick, Sarah, do you remember Mr. Stark?”
“I do,” said Dick, and he extended his hand.
“It’s good to see you, Dickie. My, you’re big now! You must be ten!”
“Next month,” he said. “And dad says I can go out on an expedition with him this summer.”
“If I can go,” added Neal. “I have to have the eye surgery first, remember.”
“Cataracts?” asked Brian.
Neal nodded. “The new ophthalmologist has about twelve of us to do.”
“I hear the new conestoga design will be ‘child friendly.’”
“We’ll see,” said Neal, with a smile. “I think Dick will be out for just a week or two.”
“Would you like to go out, Sarah?” asked Brian.
“Ah. . . I don’t know,” she replied.
“And you’re. . . seven?”
She nodded shyly.
“Get your food and come join us,” said Rosa.
Brian nodded and walked to the food line. He went through quickly, loading up his plate; arrival dinners were always free and bountiful, in contrast to their usual fare. He returned a few minutes later with a heap of food. “I stopped at your office this afternoon, but you weren’t there.”
“I was outside,” replied Rosa. “I looked for you after that; I should have just left a message for you. So, you left here 26 months ago, flew past Venus, spent a year on Earth, and flew back. It must have been disorienting.”
“It was interesting. I left thinking I’d never be back and we’d never be developing a big nuclear power project here. The Venus flyby was more interesting than I thought. I figured ‘who cares, two hours of a pretty view out the window,’ but I must say the image of that world has really stuck in my mind. It looked like a big, swirling, smoggy, lifeless Earth. It struck me that this was Earth’s future if we weren’t careful.”
“Huh. Interesting. I saw the video of the flyby.”
Brian shook his head. “It doesn’t do the experience justice. We were glued to the portholes. It’s so bright, your eyes water; I was lucky I had sunglasses along! And what can I say; Venus is beautiful. It really is, just like Earth and Mars, but very different in appearance.”
“So, now you’re here and you’re building a U.S. Navy-NASA-Department of Energy Nuclear Science Facility,” said Neal. “You have enough experience of this place to know about half the residents hate the thought.”
“I know. Everyone says we can’t build our facility a hundred kilometers away for security purposes, and I agree; I want it right here, just a few kilometers away, visible to everyone, so that the workers live here and mix with everyone here on the Patio. And we plan to be as transparent as we can reasonably be. We have to be separate from your team, Rosa, so that your team can be an impartial source of advice and can provide inspection. The International Atomic Energy Commission has sent an inspector, too.”
“Good,” said Neal. “The first phase is uranium enrichment?”
Brian nodded. “The Solis and Hellas each are bringing three personnel and we have twenty-five tonnes of cargo on the cargo flights. There are also four Mars Commission mining specialists coming to mine uranium and other ores. We have both the latest centrifugal separators and experimental laser separation equipment. We should be able to make a hundred kilos of enriched uranium this columbiad, and eventually ten times that.”
“How enriched?” asked Neal.
“The exact amount is classified. We’re not talking about bomb grade, but more than standard light water reactors on Earth. The new space reactors will use a higher concentration.”
“And plutonium synthesis is a later phase?” asked Neal.
“Probably. That’s controversial. In my opinion, it’s a crucial asset for the future of this place. It’ll put Mars in the center of exploring the entire solar system, in fact. Launching uranium and plutonium from Earth will always be controversial; it’s too emotional a subject. I think it can be launched safely, but there are too many emotional people who disagree. Here, our life support system and ecology are separated from the Martian atmosphere, and this planet has vast areas that will be uninhabited for centuries. We can handle accidents better here than Earth can, if we ever have any. So I am hoping the emotional side can be managed better here.”
“Well put,” said Neal. “Because a bunch of scientists with Ph.D.s can be pretty emotional, too.”
“I know. I know this place and I’m committed to it long-term, just like you all.” Brian nodded to the children in particular.
“Well, Brian, I think if anyone can sell the facility to the residents, you can,” said Rosa. “But it’ll be a challenge. The last few years, the United States has developed a terrible reputation on Earth because of its foreign policy, and the reputation here is even worse.”
“I know, I was here, remember! But none of us have any control over any government’s foreign policy. What we have control over is the plan and making sure it’s implemented legally and ethically. So to people who are suspicious of the U.S. and its motivations, I say: good, keep an eye on us, because we have an agreement what we will do and how we will do it.”
“That’s a good answer,” said Neal. “That’s fair.” They ate in silence for a moment.
Some other old friends of Brian stopped by and chatted, then Brian introduced his three colleagues to Rosa and her family. The dinner proceeded smoothly with the sun dropping down below the biome’s rim, then setting. Everyone was drinking their after-dinner coffee when Will Elliott rose and walked to the stage.
“Good evening everyone,” he said. “To all our new arrivals, welcome to Mars. To the crew of the Hellas, who are watching us, greetings; we look forward to your arrival. We’ll have a dinner for you as well, and the cultural program afterward will even be different! But I can’t guarantee my remarks then will be new.
“Every two years I give a welcoming speech where I set out the agenda for the next two years. This arrival is distinct in two ways; we have two passenger arrivals instead of one; and we have made more of an effort to involve the arrivals in Mars society from the point of Earth departure. The Living Well Conference two months ago gave all of us food for thought about our real purposes here—personal development and building strong, stable relationships with others—and allowed the future arrivals to participate fully. The Mars Science Conference, conducted on the Earth, moon, Mars, and on both the Solis and the Hellas, also gave us a common vision of our work here. Our goals are fairly clear.
“But that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth repeating. We are receiving a team of four polar researchers who will be setting up semipermanent stations at the North Pole, then next year at the South Pole. The North Pole will see a deep drilling project that, over the next five years, hopes to recover a core all the way through to the Noachian basement rock. Our exploration and science team will soon be expanded to sixty people and will be visiting thirty locales in six regions over the next two years. Each region will receive an oasis, a semipermanently habited station where future researchers will be based. In a decade we hope to have a network of sixty to one hundred oases scattered about the planet, making research easier and facilitating the creation of future outposts. Notably, we are scheduled to clear only two thousand kilometers of primary roads in the next two years; our road network, for now, is complete.
“Our largest team here is the construction team, which will embrace one hundred twenty people once the Hellas arrives. Its principal goal is to build our first caravel, the new generation spacecraft that will bring settlers to Mars and that we will sell to nations wishing to explore the outer solar system. The design is now set and many of the materials have already been fabricated. We should have a caravel completed in eighteen months. The construction team also must make all the enclosures and structures we need for Columbus 10, which will arrive about twenty-six months from now with 120 or so people. It will also be making solar panels and wind turbines to expand our power output significantly.
“Environmental management is growing significantly, to thirty people, so that they can devote more resources to the Bioarchive project. Next month we will have twenty different ecologies here. In the next two years we will be setting up two biomes exclusively for bioarchive, with divisions into quarters in order to establish four ecologies in each. We anticipate a rapid expansion in our ecological research here, with a larger scientific support team on Earth. The environmental management team is also looking at expansion of its research in two exciting directions: genetic engineering of crops to greatly boost yields, research we can do without fear of contaminating the Earth’s ecosystems; and genetic engineering of species so that they can survive in Martian or near-Martian conditions. The latter effort will allow us to raise food and other useful crops with minimal construction of domes and could lead to terraforming if we ever decide to pursue that possibility.
“Exports are also scheduled to expand and diversify. We are importing a record quantity of items over the next few months: 350 tonnes. We have the capacity to export the same amount. The last columbiad saw gold exports reach almost three hundred tonnes. We hope to do better this columbiad and add to it a hundred tonnes of nitrogen and argon and as much as fifteen tonnes of platinum-group metals. Our carbonyl fractional distillation equipment will make that possible. New supercritical CO2 equipment will allow the gold mining operations to recover silver, copper, cobalt, and other valuable elements from the ore, strengthening the diversity of our manufacturing base.
“The new team here isn’t ours at all: it’s the American nuclear team, whom we also welcome warmly to Mars.” He paused to make sure everyone heard him. “They will be establishing a nuclear facility to enrich Martian uranium for purposes of space exploration. Eventually the facility may include a reactor for making plutonium and other useful isotopes, including isotopes we will need for nuclear medicine. I can’t emphasize enough the complementarity between our caravel project and the nuclear team’s projects, because the caravels will not explore the outer solar system without nuclear power to propel them. Nuclear facilities also offer the possibility of expanding our production of platinum-group metals—an energy-intensive effort-and holds out the possibility nof eventually generating quantities of power sufficient to pursue terraformation via manufacture of greenhouse gasses.
“In summary, one or two centuries ago, humanity became a Type 1 civilization: a civilization spread out across the surface of a single world. In the last two decades we have become a Type 2 civilization: a space faring civilization, spread out over the surfaces of two or more worlds. The permanent settlement of the moon and then Mars moved us into this type. Now humanity is poised on another major expansion to the outer solar system. Mars will play a major role in that expansion. We can make sure that humanity doesn’t suffer another pause in the pace of expansion, like it did in the late twentieth century. Our creativity, dedication, and hard work will move humanity forward into the unknown and change our species forever.”
© 2005 Robert H. Stockman
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