To be fair to Musk's attempt at motivation, "because it's there" has only ever applied to exploratory expeditions, and even then only some of them: most expeditions were surveying the land looking for mineral resources, arable farmland, or navigable passages for trade. Actual colonization has almost always had an economic motivation - fishing settlements, plantations, trading outposts - with a few colonies (e.g. the Puritans in New England) having ideological motivations.
There is absolutely no economic motivation for Mars settlement. The closest one might find is mining, but asteroids are much easier. Thus, the only possible motivation is ideological. Musk goes with "protecting the species from extinction by asteroid bombardment", probably partly sincerely, and partly tactically: it sounds better than "Earth governments are insane and we need outposts beyond the global prison grid they're constructing". Which, incidentally, is almost certainly why our governments are so utterly disinterested in building a permanent, self-sustaining off-planet presence. Over time those colonies will become independent, and therefore potentially hostile, and since they have the high ground and can drop rocks on Earth (see: The Expanse) to build those settlements would be a very expensive way of screwing yourself in the long run.
As to liberalism: for a whole lot of reasons, many of which you mention, this is likely maladaptive in space. But, on the other hand, there's another kind of freedom. Space is impossible to control. It's too big. People can always just go somewhere else. It's the Infinite Steppe. The freedom it offers is more of the sort enjoyed by nomadic steppe tribes or high seas pirates than that of liberalism. And that might not be a bad thing.
I do tend toward the idea that space would cultivate an entirely new civilization, rather than the logical extension of ours. I had a brief stab here at outlining what the metaphysical cast would be within which it would be forged, but that is perhaps a subject to return to another time.
They are very good points. I think the "because it's their" rationale might really only apply to the highest, the deepest, the most inaccessible etc when it's perhaps fused with some people's wish for immortality.
Indeed, the transhumanist yearning for eternal life, at least amongst adherents of the WEF, does dovetail with a scenario in which they reign forever over an eternally locked down world. The only function for space in such a scenario is spy satellites.
"Moreover, the sense of abandonment is compounded by the realisation that the dulled attention spans of those on Earth have already forgotten about them entirely and care not one jot about the ordeals they’re facing."
The above quote is I think horrifyingly the nub of the problem and shows we're clearly a different culture from the Apollo era.
Our destiny among the stars seemed certain to me as a child. Now I'm doubtful. To paraphrase Greta, "the world has stolen my dreams."
We are now more likely to dissappear up our own brainstem into virtual reality than conquer the Galaxy.
As someone who served in the military during the 90s, I can tell you first hand what it's like to be thousands of miles from home on a mission that no one back home cares about or even knows is happening.
If I were Musk I’d drag a bunch of largish rocks back into Earth orbit and start dictating terms. Do that right and colonizing Mars would be done in no time at all.
This was sort of the plot of the Daniel Suarez book "Delta-V" where an eccentric billionaire funded by begging, borrowing, and stealing to send a crew to recover an asteroid. All of it was misdirection too...the mission was heralded as a Mars mission, but the real intent was to bring huge amounts of resources home and proof-of-concept for industrial level building of things in space.
Premise was that colonizing planets was ridiculous. Space factories, with asteroid resources, could build habitable colonies in space (think inside the asteroid.)
My take: What Elon Musk really wants to do is start his own country with like people. That's not easy to do, but it has been done throughout history. (And new countries will be set up in the near future, bet on it.) Colonizing Mars is far more difficult and expensive than setting up a new country on planet Earth.
Western civilization is collapsing and is now, today, rapidly going the way of Rhodesia. Who wants to live in Zimbabwe? I don't. This is my takeaway: Elon Musk is going through a process. His family went through the collapse of South Africa; he escaped it. Elon Musk has a very clear understanding of what happened in Rhodesia and SA. When he realizes how difficult a Martian colony is, the richest man in the world will turn his energies elsewhere. Elon wants to survive--and he has children to protect. He wants them to have a safe and happy future. They won't be safe in a failed state that was once called America.
I believe Elon Musk is rapidily coming to this conclusion, too (if he hasn't already) and so are a lot of other first world people--a lot of first worlders clearly understand that western countries now have a choice: break up or breakdown.
Mars can wait. I believe Musk really wants to colonize the galaxy, but he needs stability and a meritocracy to do it. Once new countries are established, Musk can resume his space exploration unfetttered.
We will all be unfettered.
Elon Musk is not my only hope. There are others.
The 'hard slog' has been having to endure the horrfic fallout of wokery, DEI, and political correctness. I believe the hard slog is coming to an end. Implosion will make things easier.
I would like to add that the formation of new countries is not far-fetched. In 1992, around 20 new countries emerged; a year later Czechoslovakia broke up. In 2004, Montenegro broke away from Serbia, thus finally ending Yugoslavia. 2008 saw the independence of Kosova.
And a few years ago there was the failed UDI of Catalonia. There were attempts by Ingushetia and Chechnya, which both failed.
In Canada, Quebec's independence referendum in the 1990s failed narrowly, possibly because of the ethnic minorities voting against it. And here is something worth noting: while minorities vote to maintain the status quo, they have become the catalyst for new independence movements. This is what is now spurring on separatism in the West.
In movies, it's usually African countries breaking up, but in reality, since 1992, 90% of the the new states created have been in Europe (or Eurasia). Most are still going strong, and some, like Nagorno-Karabakh, which lasted around 30 years, have been totally destroyed,
I expect Germany to breakup soon. The country is largely made up of former monarchical states and run by municipal civil servants (these states have strong local identities). With Russia stirring the pot~ and providing support~ I see East German breaking away.
Here's hoping! These huge, ossified, soulless nations run by horribly faceless bugmen need to break up. I'd prefer America breaks into at least five separate nations. It'd be much healthier for us and the world at large.
There are probably lots of reasons why we will never plant a colony on mars. All of them have to do with the fact that our bodies were made/evolved to live on earth. It is amazing how attuned our bodies are to everything earth: 24h rhythm, light levels, dark levels, main color of our surroundings, moon cycle, year cycle. gravity, air pressure, microbes and I am sure there must be more.
We can suppress some of these dependencies for a while, but we probably cannot do without at least partial support for most of these dependencies. Without them, physical and psychological resiliency will probably decrease over time until they simply all die.
A day on Mars is only 40 minutes longer than the Earth and the light levels not too much different.
I think the biggest problem other than air pressure and lack of oxygen would be as Buzz Aldrin's first words on the moon described:
"Magnificent desolation"
It's all dry, ochre red. Everywhere. Who knows the psychological damage of never seeing the blue ocean, lakes and sky and the ubiquitous green of trees and grass?
PS I hate myself for "ackchuallying" you, but there won't be any "sucking people out the dome" in the event of a rift. If anything, they would be blown out, but since 1 atmospheric pressure isn't enough to cause an explosive decompression, the air would just slowly push itself out into Mars' extremely thin atmosphere. But every good sci-fi need a few steps of voluntary suspension of disbelief from the reader/listener/viewer, so you'll get a pass ;)
You're only half right, you are indeed "blown out" rather than "sucked out".
But one atmosphere is 14 pounds per square inch. Apply that to a human body and you'd be blown out and likely dismembered if the decompression was explosive rather than a steady but rapid leak.
Hmmm. In the events of an explosive decompression your body will suffer severe effects akin to the bends, just worse. The whole body of a person being blown out tho? I’m not so sure. The cause of such an event would either way be dependent on so many hypothetical variables, so not sure where to even start to argue against it.
But yes - I guess, if a hole big enough where to suddenly appear in a dome of sufficient size, and dependent on the fact that a person of the correct size-to-hole to distance-to-hole and the speed-of-the-widening-of-the-hole-ratio was at the exact right condition, it could possibly happen :)
Sorry, I thought I was arguing in the context of a small rift caused by rubbing in a Martian dome structure (which I took for granted that won’t be made out of party balloon-material).
First, I think we have to see the Mars expedition as yet another exploratory expedition like: the Viking expeditions; the European oceanic naval expeditions that navigated the globe. However, this expedition is to a planet a vast distance a way that is not habitable for human life. This means that the resources required will be reliant on the colonizing planet. Indeed, the European expeditions to the New World would never have succeeded without massive logistic support from the home colony. Success was utterly reliant upon a vast chain of quality people; from the King to the auto-didact scientists to the serfs each holding up a civilization with the surpluses, stability and high trust and cathedral building ability and aspirations of an entire continent of peoples with high IQ and tremendous grit and spiritual fortitude. Without that substratum Drake, Magellan, Columbus, deGama, Cortez and the countless voyages that followed would never have recovered from the initial and ongoing hardships and disasters. This was an act of will undertaken by an entire continent of people over a vast period of time.
You don't have that now. And those were oceanic voyages to locations teeming with life and wealth and at a latitude and longitude perfectly mirroring those of the Mother Continent. I think from that standpoint this space project is doomed. You don't have the support network. Worse, the people and their homelands are under seige and their societies are being willfully and systematically dismantled by a treasonous ruling regime. They are hyenas set upon an overwhelmed and lost pride of fallen Lions.
The other aspect of this project is that it is steeped in Musk's ideological roots of Any Rand. This and Thiel's seasteading are Galtism. What is Galtism? It is cutting and running. It is a conflict avoidant man who won't stand up to bureaucrats. He is supposed to be some great organizer of capital and the best men, yet he won't organize them to fight this bureaucracy of low lifes and vermin. He will only organize to enrich himself and when he can't he just comes up with an escape plan and finds some stutterers and stammerers to go on about how a CEO is a King.
Nonsense. Kings crowned themselves and they mowed down their enemies doing whatever was necessary to place their thrones, take their seat and hold the scepter. Their coronation was forged with steel and fire and the will to dominate and win ultimate pitched conflicts. The ceremony afterward was the pageantry after the real work was done.
These too are last men. They too are running away and shaking their heads and complaining that the baddies are not following the rules. Kings make themselves and then they make the rules.
I love the idea of exploring space. I think we are gravely mistaken by adopting this Star Wars pajama nerd fantasy as our aspirational point of departure. The battle is here on Earth, the kingdom Our Gods have bestowed to us and made in their image that we will rouse ourselves to make ourselves in His image. The battle is here. It is begging for real men to take it up in a more healthy masculine fantasy - earthly conquest by cunning, daring, bravery and valor in open conflict.
Until Earthly ground is taken and held to form up a civilization that could even support a Sir Francis Drake we can't even contemplate the Sir Francis Drake of Space Colonization and the civilization that will be required to support him. How would Musk handle the mutiny's Drake had to handle? Does he even have men on his crew who have the spirit and ego and drive to mutinty in vying for control and dominance? We are neither ferile nor civilized enough to sail the seven seas much less fly to Mars and plant life upon it.
God bless you Morgoth and God bless the European peoples of the Earth. Let's start by getting back to 1492 levels of quality and little boys dreaming of being in mannerbunds of Lions right here on Our All Father's blue and green Earth.
Forget Mars. Let's get back to 1492 or Rome building the roads that still serve as the highways and roads that cross all of Europe, North Africa and the Near East. As it stands now, that would be miraculous.
Any off world colony will depend on a high functioning world of mining, engineering, transporting by high competence people. If the elite's idea is a a class of stupid consumers (I mean why? Control?) with AI high competence, then who does the dreaming and human visionary accomplishments? The forgetting of distant colonies is explored a lot in sci-fi and the establishment of new identities is perhaps framed as children growing up and leaving home. The forgetting though is already happening here (the ridiculous insertion of negroid Africans into our heritage eg) and It deliberately forces a lack of old identity and search for a new one. There is a restlessness abroad whether deliberately invoked or the natural consequence of the current dysfunction. While certain populations are transplanted from their own dysfunction into our functional lands like "skin suits", we are pushed to explore unknown spaces. Who else could do it? Excuse my muddled but first thoughts on this absorbing topic.
"It isn’t that I do not want to colonise Mars; I do, but to achieve it, we would need to peel ourselves out of the feminised, politically correct, Bugman drudgery that saturates our civilisation at present." This is just the best!
This was a wonderfully imaginative piece. I like the idea of colonists of Mars coming back into Earth's orbit and demanding that governments give us our countries back or be taken out by spaceship weaponry.
I grew up on my Dad's copies of E.E Doc Smith's Lensman / Skylark books, and TV shows such as Space: 1999. I am sincerely pissed that the money that should have gone to constructing Moon Base Alpha and Eagles was squandered on welfare queens and EBTs. The last century seemed to have a lot of optimism. I think that colonising Mars seems premature to developing terraforming technology, but I get that it's getting pretty close to the point that being anywhere else - even a hostile red planet - is better than the clownworld formerly known as Earth.
Absolutely brilliant. Your speculative fiction abililties are great, I remember you did something similar about the hypothetical situation of The Authorities banning the colour yellow.
Any chance you could flesh it out into a short story?
Another fine article, and I would agree were it to happen then it would probably end up something like that.
Sadly I can’t comprehend anyone ever getting to Mars in Musk’s lifetime, or anyone alive today for that matter, even if I totally respect the ambition. Maybe AI will change things, but if it’s left to humans I just don’t think we have enough competent people to solve the challenges required, or at least not enough to devote to this challenge over others. Unless of course incentives come into play and this becomes a necessity rather than a pipe dream…
Very entertaining speculation. I fear everything will have to burn down and hopefully be rebuilt before any new age of discovery can take place. Have you ever read Halifax: Warden of the North. 1948? Wonderfully politically incorrect history book.
To be fair to Musk's attempt at motivation, "because it's there" has only ever applied to exploratory expeditions, and even then only some of them: most expeditions were surveying the land looking for mineral resources, arable farmland, or navigable passages for trade. Actual colonization has almost always had an economic motivation - fishing settlements, plantations, trading outposts - with a few colonies (e.g. the Puritans in New England) having ideological motivations.
There is absolutely no economic motivation for Mars settlement. The closest one might find is mining, but asteroids are much easier. Thus, the only possible motivation is ideological. Musk goes with "protecting the species from extinction by asteroid bombardment", probably partly sincerely, and partly tactically: it sounds better than "Earth governments are insane and we need outposts beyond the global prison grid they're constructing". Which, incidentally, is almost certainly why our governments are so utterly disinterested in building a permanent, self-sustaining off-planet presence. Over time those colonies will become independent, and therefore potentially hostile, and since they have the high ground and can drop rocks on Earth (see: The Expanse) to build those settlements would be a very expensive way of screwing yourself in the long run.
As to liberalism: for a whole lot of reasons, many of which you mention, this is likely maladaptive in space. But, on the other hand, there's another kind of freedom. Space is impossible to control. It's too big. People can always just go somewhere else. It's the Infinite Steppe. The freedom it offers is more of the sort enjoyed by nomadic steppe tribes or high seas pirates than that of liberalism. And that might not be a bad thing.
I do tend toward the idea that space would cultivate an entirely new civilization, rather than the logical extension of ours. I had a brief stab here at outlining what the metaphysical cast would be within which it would be forged, but that is perhaps a subject to return to another time.
I’m going to need to write up my own thoughts on this … it’s something I’ve pondered extensively…
Excellent.
Necessity is the mother of invention...To survive in Mars's harsh environment, efficiency will be critical in all things...
They are very good points. I think the "because it's their" rationale might really only apply to the highest, the deepest, the most inaccessible etc when it's perhaps fused with some people's wish for immortality.
Indeed, the transhumanist yearning for eternal life, at least amongst adherents of the WEF, does dovetail with a scenario in which they reign forever over an eternally locked down world. The only function for space in such a scenario is spy satellites.
Regardless of motivation, colonizing other planets is essential to humanity's long term survival...
"Moreover, the sense of abandonment is compounded by the realisation that the dulled attention spans of those on Earth have already forgotten about them entirely and care not one jot about the ordeals they’re facing."
The above quote is I think horrifyingly the nub of the problem and shows we're clearly a different culture from the Apollo era.
Our destiny among the stars seemed certain to me as a child. Now I'm doubtful. To paraphrase Greta, "the world has stolen my dreams."
We are now more likely to dissappear up our own brainstem into virtual reality than conquer the Galaxy.
A very thoughtful piece Morgoth.
It's nice to return to more expansive themes.
As someone who served in the military during the 90s, I can tell you first hand what it's like to be thousands of miles from home on a mission that no one back home cares about or even knows is happening.
If I were Musk I’d drag a bunch of largish rocks back into Earth orbit and start dictating terms. Do that right and colonizing Mars would be done in no time at all.
One can dream.
This was sort of the plot of the Daniel Suarez book "Delta-V" where an eccentric billionaire funded by begging, borrowing, and stealing to send a crew to recover an asteroid. All of it was misdirection too...the mission was heralded as a Mars mission, but the real intent was to bring huge amounts of resources home and proof-of-concept for industrial level building of things in space.
Premise was that colonizing planets was ridiculous. Space factories, with asteroid resources, could build habitable colonies in space (think inside the asteroid.)
Musk knows this. I wonder, sometimes.
My take: What Elon Musk really wants to do is start his own country with like people. That's not easy to do, but it has been done throughout history. (And new countries will be set up in the near future, bet on it.) Colonizing Mars is far more difficult and expensive than setting up a new country on planet Earth.
Western civilization is collapsing and is now, today, rapidly going the way of Rhodesia. Who wants to live in Zimbabwe? I don't. This is my takeaway: Elon Musk is going through a process. His family went through the collapse of South Africa; he escaped it. Elon Musk has a very clear understanding of what happened in Rhodesia and SA. When he realizes how difficult a Martian colony is, the richest man in the world will turn his energies elsewhere. Elon wants to survive--and he has children to protect. He wants them to have a safe and happy future. They won't be safe in a failed state that was once called America.
I believe Elon Musk is rapidily coming to this conclusion, too (if he hasn't already) and so are a lot of other first world people--a lot of first worlders clearly understand that western countries now have a choice: break up or breakdown.
Mars can wait. I believe Musk really wants to colonize the galaxy, but he needs stability and a meritocracy to do it. Once new countries are established, Musk can resume his space exploration unfetttered.
We will all be unfettered.
Elon Musk is not my only hope. There are others.
The 'hard slog' has been having to endure the horrfic fallout of wokery, DEI, and political correctness. I believe the hard slog is coming to an end. Implosion will make things easier.
I would like to add that the formation of new countries is not far-fetched. In 1992, around 20 new countries emerged; a year later Czechoslovakia broke up. In 2004, Montenegro broke away from Serbia, thus finally ending Yugoslavia. 2008 saw the independence of Kosova.
And a few years ago there was the failed UDI of Catalonia. There were attempts by Ingushetia and Chechnya, which both failed.
In Canada, Quebec's independence referendum in the 1990s failed narrowly, possibly because of the ethnic minorities voting against it. And here is something worth noting: while minorities vote to maintain the status quo, they have become the catalyst for new independence movements. This is what is now spurring on separatism in the West.
In movies, it's usually African countries breaking up, but in reality, since 1992, 90% of the the new states created have been in Europe (or Eurasia). Most are still going strong, and some, like Nagorno-Karabakh, which lasted around 30 years, have been totally destroyed,
I expect Germany to breakup soon. The country is largely made up of former monarchical states and run by municipal civil servants (these states have strong local identities). With Russia stirring the pot~ and providing support~ I see East German breaking away.
Really.
Here's hoping! These huge, ossified, soulless nations run by horribly faceless bugmen need to break up. I'd prefer America breaks into at least five separate nations. It'd be much healthier for us and the world at large.
There are probably lots of reasons why we will never plant a colony on mars. All of them have to do with the fact that our bodies were made/evolved to live on earth. It is amazing how attuned our bodies are to everything earth: 24h rhythm, light levels, dark levels, main color of our surroundings, moon cycle, year cycle. gravity, air pressure, microbes and I am sure there must be more.
We can suppress some of these dependencies for a while, but we probably cannot do without at least partial support for most of these dependencies. Without them, physical and psychological resiliency will probably decrease over time until they simply all die.
The box office failure movie "Ad Astra" had an excellent depiction of a Mars colony:
A cave buried deep underground. The inhabitants could visit virtual sensory rooms showing Earthscapes to stay sane.
This is why Mars won't happen. You can live in a cave here, right now.
Who in their right mind would want to?
A day on Mars is only 40 minutes longer than the Earth and the light levels not too much different.
I think the biggest problem other than air pressure and lack of oxygen would be as Buzz Aldrin's first words on the moon described:
"Magnificent desolation"
It's all dry, ochre red. Everywhere. Who knows the psychological damage of never seeing the blue ocean, lakes and sky and the ubiquitous green of trees and grass?
Let alone other lifeforms?
Unexpected, but welcome piece of thought.
PS I hate myself for "ackchuallying" you, but there won't be any "sucking people out the dome" in the event of a rift. If anything, they would be blown out, but since 1 atmospheric pressure isn't enough to cause an explosive decompression, the air would just slowly push itself out into Mars' extremely thin atmosphere. But every good sci-fi need a few steps of voluntary suspension of disbelief from the reader/listener/viewer, so you'll get a pass ;)
You're only half right, you are indeed "blown out" rather than "sucked out".
But one atmosphere is 14 pounds per square inch. Apply that to a human body and you'd be blown out and likely dismembered if the decompression was explosive rather than a steady but rapid leak.
Hmmm. In the events of an explosive decompression your body will suffer severe effects akin to the bends, just worse. The whole body of a person being blown out tho? I’m not so sure. The cause of such an event would either way be dependent on so many hypothetical variables, so not sure where to even start to argue against it.
But yes - I guess, if a hole big enough where to suddenly appear in a dome of sufficient size, and dependent on the fact that a person of the correct size-to-hole to distance-to-hole and the speed-of-the-widening-of-the-hole-ratio was at the exact right condition, it could possibly happen :)
*(edit: spelling error)
Check out the Byford Dolphin accident. Yes, that was 9 bar but one guy was essentially reduced to a skeleton.
Sorry, I thought I was arguing in the context of a small rift caused by rubbing in a Martian dome structure (which I took for granted that won’t be made out of party balloon-material).
I would like to add some thoughts here.
First, I think we have to see the Mars expedition as yet another exploratory expedition like: the Viking expeditions; the European oceanic naval expeditions that navigated the globe. However, this expedition is to a planet a vast distance a way that is not habitable for human life. This means that the resources required will be reliant on the colonizing planet. Indeed, the European expeditions to the New World would never have succeeded without massive logistic support from the home colony. Success was utterly reliant upon a vast chain of quality people; from the King to the auto-didact scientists to the serfs each holding up a civilization with the surpluses, stability and high trust and cathedral building ability and aspirations of an entire continent of peoples with high IQ and tremendous grit and spiritual fortitude. Without that substratum Drake, Magellan, Columbus, deGama, Cortez and the countless voyages that followed would never have recovered from the initial and ongoing hardships and disasters. This was an act of will undertaken by an entire continent of people over a vast period of time.
You don't have that now. And those were oceanic voyages to locations teeming with life and wealth and at a latitude and longitude perfectly mirroring those of the Mother Continent. I think from that standpoint this space project is doomed. You don't have the support network. Worse, the people and their homelands are under seige and their societies are being willfully and systematically dismantled by a treasonous ruling regime. They are hyenas set upon an overwhelmed and lost pride of fallen Lions.
The other aspect of this project is that it is steeped in Musk's ideological roots of Any Rand. This and Thiel's seasteading are Galtism. What is Galtism? It is cutting and running. It is a conflict avoidant man who won't stand up to bureaucrats. He is supposed to be some great organizer of capital and the best men, yet he won't organize them to fight this bureaucracy of low lifes and vermin. He will only organize to enrich himself and when he can't he just comes up with an escape plan and finds some stutterers and stammerers to go on about how a CEO is a King.
Nonsense. Kings crowned themselves and they mowed down their enemies doing whatever was necessary to place their thrones, take their seat and hold the scepter. Their coronation was forged with steel and fire and the will to dominate and win ultimate pitched conflicts. The ceremony afterward was the pageantry after the real work was done.
These too are last men. They too are running away and shaking their heads and complaining that the baddies are not following the rules. Kings make themselves and then they make the rules.
I love the idea of exploring space. I think we are gravely mistaken by adopting this Star Wars pajama nerd fantasy as our aspirational point of departure. The battle is here on Earth, the kingdom Our Gods have bestowed to us and made in their image that we will rouse ourselves to make ourselves in His image. The battle is here. It is begging for real men to take it up in a more healthy masculine fantasy - earthly conquest by cunning, daring, bravery and valor in open conflict.
Until Earthly ground is taken and held to form up a civilization that could even support a Sir Francis Drake we can't even contemplate the Sir Francis Drake of Space Colonization and the civilization that will be required to support him. How would Musk handle the mutiny's Drake had to handle? Does he even have men on his crew who have the spirit and ego and drive to mutinty in vying for control and dominance? We are neither ferile nor civilized enough to sail the seven seas much less fly to Mars and plant life upon it.
God bless you Morgoth and God bless the European peoples of the Earth. Let's start by getting back to 1492 levels of quality and little boys dreaming of being in mannerbunds of Lions right here on Our All Father's blue and green Earth.
Forget Mars. Let's get back to 1492 or Rome building the roads that still serve as the highways and roads that cross all of Europe, North Africa and the Near East. As it stands now, that would be miraculous.
Any off world colony will depend on a high functioning world of mining, engineering, transporting by high competence people. If the elite's idea is a a class of stupid consumers (I mean why? Control?) with AI high competence, then who does the dreaming and human visionary accomplishments? The forgetting of distant colonies is explored a lot in sci-fi and the establishment of new identities is perhaps framed as children growing up and leaving home. The forgetting though is already happening here (the ridiculous insertion of negroid Africans into our heritage eg) and It deliberately forces a lack of old identity and search for a new one. There is a restlessness abroad whether deliberately invoked or the natural consequence of the current dysfunction. While certain populations are transplanted from their own dysfunction into our functional lands like "skin suits", we are pushed to explore unknown spaces. Who else could do it? Excuse my muddled but first thoughts on this absorbing topic.
The danger is that the wanderlust is directed inwards toward the digital abyss and not outwards to the stars.
"It isn’t that I do not want to colonise Mars; I do, but to achieve it, we would need to peel ourselves out of the feminised, politically correct, Bugman drudgery that saturates our civilisation at present." This is just the best!
You should write a book based on your "whimsical exploration". Great read!
Well, one day hopefully. Thank you.
This was a wonderfully imaginative piece. I like the idea of colonists of Mars coming back into Earth's orbit and demanding that governments give us our countries back or be taken out by spaceship weaponry.
I grew up on my Dad's copies of E.E Doc Smith's Lensman / Skylark books, and TV shows such as Space: 1999. I am sincerely pissed that the money that should have gone to constructing Moon Base Alpha and Eagles was squandered on welfare queens and EBTs. The last century seemed to have a lot of optimism. I think that colonising Mars seems premature to developing terraforming technology, but I get that it's getting pretty close to the point that being anywhere else - even a hostile red planet - is better than the clownworld formerly known as Earth.
Cybertruck Homesick Blues
Absolutely brilliant. Your speculative fiction abililties are great, I remember you did something similar about the hypothetical situation of The Authorities banning the colour yellow.
Any chance you could flesh it out into a short story?
I actually tired to do that, I got about 10,000 words down but felt it began to feel a bit cliched when drawn out.
At any rate, my attention was drawn to a much grander project.
I've heard a lot of musicians and writers go through the same thing. You have to keep doing it until you find your own style.
Another fine article, and I would agree were it to happen then it would probably end up something like that.
Sadly I can’t comprehend anyone ever getting to Mars in Musk’s lifetime, or anyone alive today for that matter, even if I totally respect the ambition. Maybe AI will change things, but if it’s left to humans I just don’t think we have enough competent people to solve the challenges required, or at least not enough to devote to this challenge over others. Unless of course incentives come into play and this becomes a necessity rather than a pipe dream…
Very entertaining speculation. I fear everything will have to burn down and hopefully be rebuilt before any new age of discovery can take place. Have you ever read Halifax: Warden of the North. 1948? Wonderfully politically incorrect history book.