New Mars Forums

Update:
For all you SpaceX fans (and SpaceX critics?) here's a short story depicting the first human landing on Mars - in a SpaceX Red Dragon II capsule. So already some of you may be scratching your heads or flexing your critic typing fingers! Elon Musk and his amazing engineers have decided for now that Red Dragon may not be carrying out propulsive landings: SpaceFlightNow article

Here's a quote from that article:
“The reason we decided not to pursue (powered landings) heavily is it would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to qualify that for safety, particularly for crew transport,” Musk said. “And then there was a time when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars, where you’ve got a base heat shield and side-mounted thrusters, would be the right way to land on Mars, but now I’m pretty confident that is not the right way, and that there’s a far better approach.”

“It could be something that we bring back later, but it doesn’t seem like the right way to apply resources right now.”

So they've backed off from the propulsive landings in order to get the Dragon qualified with NASA for crewed missions to and from ISS. Good focus.

But, hey, this is fiction, so I can write what I like! Anyway, my Red Dragon II is the Mark Two - the engineers overcome their problems in a few years and upgrade the RD so that the service module trunk stays attached and provides the necessary power and life support (etc...) so that RD II can land safely on the surface of Mars. But still, it's a hair-raising ride, which I hope you will enjoy.

If there are any comments... be my guest, either here or on the blog itself at Ice And Fire , the new instalment of my slowly-growing epic. If you have solid technical advice on how to make this story more realistic, please, please post or email me and if it's sound advice I will at least give you an acknowledgement somewhere.

Currently I'm writing the back story of two more characters, and should be posted to the blog within the next month or two, summer vacations permitting.

Postscript:
Same article, E.Musk also says:
“Plan is to do powered landings on Mars for sure, but with a vastly bigger ship,” he tweeted Wednesday after his remarks in Washington.
So maybe they are looking into no powered Mars landing until their giant ITS is operational. But I'm sorry, that doesn't fit my fiction plan. 50 or 100 characters at once is too much for my meagre talent. Kim Stanley Robinson managed it, mainly by not introducing us to most of the First 100, but I'm happy starting with small crews who set up base camp for the larger settlement teams in the ITS ships.

Yes Tom that's a succinct overview of the differences as far as I remember. It's fantasy vs fiction. That's also how I aim to write science fiction (at least the short stories on settling Mars) - somewhat realistic, not the heroic, epic approach, but still hopefully enough plot twists and surprises to make a good story.

I started reading Ryley Nickel's story and it's somewhere further towards the epic, space opera style, although there's plenty of realism. An enjoyable read.

Hey Tom, I used to play Traveller. Does it still exist? This was about 30+ years ago! I loved the open-ended adventure, exploration aspect of it. Sadly v few of my friends could see that... they were DnD fanatics!

If a 'company town' or 'university town' can have a governing board of elected representatives, or even that everyone employed there gets a vote or a say on decisions, then that could be a great model to start with and still allow some return on investment if required. Some checks & balances so that people preserve dignity & some freedoms.

Then again, from what I can tell, Elon Musk isn't in this for profit - he's a visionary who needs to make profit in order to accomplish his real goals.

That is fascinating. Yes I had some idea of how medieval architects viewed their work as symbolic of spiritual realities. Until then I had seen them as a misuse of money that could have been spent helping build a better nation and helping the poor.

The '144' thing isn't necessarily a mystic number (with some it would have been perhaps) - it was originally symbolic of God's chosen people - the 12 tribes of Israel, then the 12 apostles. So a building with those dimensions would signify 'this is the place where God's people will live and worship!'

We all know, I hope, how good architecture can inspire awe and reflection, and a sense of order and rightness. My hope for Mars settlements is that people will realise they have been 'chosen' in some way to do something significant with their lives, to build a new society founded on deep respect for others, fairness, restraining self-interest for the interests of all. So whether it's 12km x 12km or 12 leagues x 12 leagues, that's fine. Or some other number that inspires people in the right direction!

Fair enough - it's south and east, not north. But to get to it we drive north, so forgive my confusion!

Definitely a wink! My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81, which came with precisely 1kB of RAM and no hard drive! I studied at uni 1985-88, just when TCP/IP was this brand-new mysterious thing we studied, as if it was quantum computing or something. Anyway, enough off-topic stuff from me!

You live an interesting life.
Well we had Chris Hadfield through to speak at the community auditorium a couple of years ago and I found him to be a pretty good speaker. Then the NASA Planetary Science director Jim (Green?) stopped by a couple of weeks ago at the university to speak about the search for life - but not mainly about Mars, so he had a very wide scope and that was educational, and a very well attended event - a lecture hall and an overflow both crammed with people.

As much as I'm interested in all this, I can't see myself starting a Mars Society branch in T Bay!

Food for thought? I went surfing for some other opinions on how Mars should be governed. It's hard to spot any angles that this forum hasn't covered. Maybe someone here will find a gem.

- The BBC got in there a few years ago with this piece. It mentions Charles Cockell, an astrobiologist at Edinburgh University whose name cropped up as a reference in one of the Blue Marble Institute papers.

- This one's even older - from 1998! Wow, did they even use computers back then? It's a 'White Paper' by Edward L. Hudgins of the 'Cato Institute' and I haven't read it all yet, but his aim is to discuss: 'Thus to ...make it [Mars] another home for the human race, an economic-political system will have to emerge that allows individuals or voluntary associations of individuals to secure exclusive rights to use resources and to exchanges freely with others, and that protects property, and enforces contracts.' Agree? Disagree?

- This question in Quora 'What-type-of-government...' mentions Red/Green/Blue Mars : '...a new model of economics and decentralized political control...' - as well as the example of the US Constitution and scientific bases in Antarctica; also people throw in 'chaos theory', the Wild West, Law of the Jungle, the tyranny of strict control over resources and so on.

A note of interest: When running my search, newmars.com/forum posts came up a few times too, as you'd expect. Getting people thinking and talking about these questions is a healthy thing, I believe.

Very true. Who are we to speak for them. The trouble would be if they are not fine with it. Getting free of 'domination' might involve a lengthy process of dispute, activism, political struggle, even armed struggle. That's great if we want to re-live Kim Stanley Robinson's novels, but not great for the people who have to live through it.

Isn't it better that Mars be free? As has been often stated in this thread & elsewhere, if there's even one Earth-based country, company or group with sovereignty or control over a patch of Mars or the settlers there, soon there could be many, then that leads pretty surely to conflicting claims and division. Much harder to reverse that and unite Mars later.

Is this a clash of visions? Some want Mars to continue what we do on Earth - making money, profits for the shareholders back home, being the best & strongest; others want to start again & try for something better.

Look beneath my name on any of my posts. Click 'email'! I'm not sure I want to put my actual address out there for the public (and spam bots), but on a 1-to-1 basis it's fine.

Yes, interested; able to come: not so much. Our family is already stretched by our 2 sons' soccer (aka football) tournaments. It is great to live in Thunder Bay but it's a long way to most other places apart from the lake & the forest!

A few of the soccer events are in Winnipeg. If one coincides with any of your events I'd surely try to attend.