Mars—that reddish sparkle in the night sky. Mars—a planet empty (we think), cold, dry, and dusty. Mars—it beckons.
I’ve been reading about Mars for probably as long as I’ve been able to read. I’ve read Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter Mars series more times than I care to admit. In fact, a paper I wrote on the series was one of the few A’s I received on an English paper in high school.
Expeditions to our neighbor and the amazing things we’ve learned have kept me just waiting for more: more missions, more progress, and more movies and more books. I even ventured to Southern Utah last year to immerse myself in all things Mars. (You can read about that adventure at Mars Analog 2: An Expedition to the “Martian” Desert.)
And here we are. Robot landers and rovers are hard at work. Orbiting observatories are mapping and analyzing. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a human landing in the near future. (I keep my fingers crossed for every Starship launch and can’t wait for the next Artemis missions to the Moon as stepping stones to an expedition to Mars.)
At the risk of sounding obvious, the challenges are legion.
As I discussed in my opening page for the year CE 2025, I’ll turn my comments and posts to the idea of establishing a human foothold on The Red Planet. As we proceed through the year, I hope you’ll follow along and that my posts spark some thought on what it would take to get there and what we’ll do when we arrive.
Here are nine top level topics to get us started, in no particular order:
- Rocketry. Getting us off the planet Earth and on our way.
- Transit. Surviving and thriving during the extended trip to Mars.
- Settlement. Living and working in a hostile environment.
- Resources. Supplying the settlement from Earth or locally.
- Agriculture. Feeding the settlers.
- Economics. Making the society self-sufficient.
- Population. Growing the human presence.
- Cultural. Developing a Martian identity.
- Politics. Governing the settlement.
So, over the next several months, I’ll share my thoughts on these topics, provide some sources that reveal what’s being done or discussed in these areas, and, of course, make the occasional reference to science fiction movies and books.
Going to Mars is not a new thing. Humans have been studying Mars for almost four-thousand years, and the earliest fictional accounts of Mars, or traveling there appeared in the late 1800s, including H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds. (Image: UK First Edition, File:The War of the Worlds first edition.jpg – Wikipedia)
There’s lots to cover and no shortage of fascinating stories.
I’ll do my best to be informative and entertaining. If you have a topic, you’d like to cover or have questions as we go, leave a comment, or send me a note using the Contact form.
Buckle up, we are go for launch.
Thanks for stopping by.