MARS - Not for Your Winter Vacation

Sci-Fi Deak Style
by John Deakins

In our SF tour of the Solar System, Mars holds a prominent spot. It’s our most Earth-like sister planet. There’s actually some water present; temperatures are sometimes above water’s freezing point. If we travel to another planet, it’s the first choice. A human colony could potentially survive there.

We aren’t going: not with current technology. The projected trip is a minimum two years, one way. The astronauts would arrive with ten percent of their brain cells dead and developing cancer, from cosmic radiation. We’d need a perfectly recycling ecosystem onboard that would last five years. We haven’t sustained one on Earth for six months yet.

Though writers have created unusual native Martian life, no Martians will be waiting when/if we land. We’ve tested repeatedly. Martian water was once abundant; the temperature is in the right range. Life just didn’t happen. There’s no Martian life now and no trace of any past life-forms. Though it sometimes hits 25ºC (80ºF) on the Martian equator in summertime, there’s no Mars surface that doesn’t fall below freezing nightly.

Humans would be limited to warmed suits, with oxygen, and sealed bases. Nevertheless, Mars can be terraformed. The polar “ice” caps are mostly frozen CO2, but there’s water, too. We need solar-powered Martian satellites that convert sunlight to microwaves. Microwaves beamed continually at the polar caps would release both water and CO2. We can give Mars a greenhouse atmosphere.

Excess CO2 is Mars’ friend; colonists would still require respirators for possibly centuries to come. Hardy lichens that grow on Antarctica would grow there now. We simply seed the polar areas; photosynthesis begins. Unfortunately, the photosynthesis that ups oxygen content steals the heat-holding CO2. We have to get the water content up, too, to produce more oxygen. Perhaps we could generate another greenhouse gas, such as methane, as we lower the CO2 content.

Good news: There’s plenty of water out there (but not on Mars). We’d need automated ships to the Asteroids. (Some have a high water content). With an attached rocket, a water-bearing asteroid could be crashed into the non-settled side of Mars, raising the temperature and releasing atmospheric H2O. There may be mountain-sized icebergs in Jupiter’s ring; Saturn’s rings are an unlimited supply of ice chunks. We could nuke Europa, blowing icebergs into space, to be steered toward Mars.

You may have been hearing a background sound like rupturing a hippo. We pause while the shrieks of the science purists die down. Would we dare to violate the pristine purity of Mars and/or Europa before they’re studied? You bet your bippy we would.

We’re SF writers. Of course we dare! That’s why we can’t quit writing. If humans are going to the planets, we’ll be going for human reasons. Profitable adventure is ‘way ahead of scientific purity. Those afflicted with the Mt. Everest Syndrome (“Because it’s there.”) aren’t going to wipe their feet before they step out on a new world.

John Deakins, B.A., M.S.T. is a four-decade veteran of the science classroom and lives in Arkansas. As an author, John has fantasy novels in print from the Barrow series.

To read an excerpt from Barrow book one, please click HERE.