A Note about the blog posts from the future [CE 2224]: In January 2021, with Perseverance due to land on Mars the next month, NASA activated their experimental Quantum Transmitter. NASA designed the transmitter to communicate with Perseverance, without regard to location and at faster than light speeds—near real-time. Unfortunately, they lost the connection after they completed the initialization routine. However, as an unintended consequence, NASA connected with a specific locus in the space-time continuum located on the Moon in 2224. That locus was the storage device of the quantum computer of a popular blog site. It is from that blog site we extract these entries. I hope you enjoy a peek into our future, and hopefully, I’m not violating some temporal directive. So far, no visit from the time cops.
Guest Author: Don Angus, Communications Director, Mars Shield Consortium
Originally Posted: Sunday, January 18, 2224 (Earth Standard Calendar)
The Mars Shield Consortium is proud to announce the completion of Phase 2 of the Mars Shield Facility at L1. With today’s “go live”, the L1 Shield Facility will provide coverage for two-thirds of our planet—to within 30 degrees of latitude of the poles. Only the far North and South will not be covered. But Phase 3 is just around the corner. The panels for the final solar array installation are already in transit from the manufacturing facility at the Point at Luna. They should arrive in about a year and the last phase can begin.
Congratulations to the facility team and all the members of the Mars Shield family that brought Phase 2 into reality.
As most Martian citizens know, the Colonization Board’s team brought the original shield online in 2174. Since that time, the shield has reduced the effects of solar and cosmic radiation, and the impact of the solar wind over approximately 30% of the planet’s surface.
The original colonization plan expected human settlements between 25 degrees North Latitude and 25 degrees South Latitude, focusing on the Tharsis region and low altitude floor of Valles Marineris. For that zone, the Colonization Board deemed the original shield power and scope sufficient. Other parties, the Terraforming Council being the most vocal, have had differing opinions and the discussions continue.
Five years ago, in what some feel was a stroke of luck, Mars Shield Consortium hired Dinsha Patel from the Earth-side Indian Solar Power Company to oversee upgrades to the existing solar array. Fortunately, Mr. Patel saw the opportunity that a larger shield facility would provide to expand coverage of our planet. Using the latest in solar panel technology from Luna and employing architectures from the Indian orbital solar array, the Mars Shield Consortium doubled the power output of the solar array. So today we have more than doubled the planet’s coverage.
On a more somber note, we owe a debt of gratitude to Dinsha Patel and his vision to expand the shield coverage to higher latitudes. We still mourn his loss from the tragic accident at the beginning of the project to install the second solar array five years ago. He has been missed. But his vision of a protected Mars still guides us. He would have been proud of this milestone accomplishment.
For more information, please visit us at MarsShield.tk.Mars/PressReleases.
[Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents in this story are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual institutions or actual events is purely coincidental.]