Singing the blues for the Red Planet

In his book "Pathfinders" Felipe Fernandez-Armesto notes that one of the historical consequences of climate change has been the migration of populations. One has to wonder if global climate change will drive humans to make the leap from an increasingly less hospitable Earth to an even worse locale like Mars? And who would be crazy enough to do such a thing? Well, oddly enough, Walter Sipes, a NASA psychologist at Johnson Space Center in Houston gets it right. To answer that question we have to look to history.

What history suggests is that the risk takers go first, followed by the homesteaders. What history also suggests is that the poor, prisoners and never-do-wells, and those with more conservative values lead the pioneer pack. Later, they in turn are followed by the developers and speculators, especially if you find something valuable like gold, spices or oil. But those expeditions with government or corporate backing usually have personnel with a mix of abilities, and they get sent with everything their backers think they'll need with the expectation that the rest will be provided by the new land.

Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct has the feel of Capt. Christopher Newport's Jamestown expedition. Of course, Newports' mission control was the Virginia Company of London and they were looking over his shoulder from the beginning seeking monetary rewards to make back their investment. They didn't want another Cortez on their hands. The ancient Greeks were much more hands off with their colonial expeditions by comparison. And while those pioneers didn't know what the expect, they could still count on being able to breathe the air, drink the water and till the land. None of these things will be immediately possible on Mars. And while the journey to their new world took weeks, the journey to our new world would take months. But when one looks at the Mars Direct conceptual modules, one can't help but think of the relatively tiny caravels Columbus used to cross the Atlantic.

In 2000, I wrote a review / think piece on Gregory Benford's "The Mars Race" for the Post-Tribune. Benford was heavily influenced by Zubrin's "The Case For Mars." I had ended that article with a hope that humans might one day turn Mars green and that unlike the pyramids, which are monumental marvels to the dead, Mars might become a monument to the living. Sadly, it was only later I would discover that with Mars being essentially geologically dead, it was only the most wishful of thinking. Still, the history of human colonization on Earth is a good guide to the likely future of Martian colonization. And while we've not yet discovered Martian natives, as such, the past provides as much cause for concern as it does for optimism.