MARS…A NEW WORLD TO CONQUER?
(…colonizing an outback)

Our monster dune buggy, the rover vehicle named – Curiosity – appears to have struck gold, or rather…water, and essential minerals such as phosphorus and carbon, along with hydrogen, nitrogen…all the essential elements needed to support life on that planet.

Which suggests that space programs for the near future, will now focus more on ways and means to establish human outposts on Mars, rather than on just exploring space. While the three year travel time to reach it is somewhat inhibiting, given the history of how we’ve done it here on Earth, that won’t be enough to discourage we humans from making the effort to set up some kind of viable colony there as well.

And the impetus and motivation to do that is very clear. Our home planet Earth is getting a mite crowded, and our resources to provide food, shelter, energy, and so on, for all of us, are getting slimmer and slimmer.

Who knows, some entrepreneurial types with the financial means to put together a large enough conglomerate may just decide to do it themselves. Hiring the best available brains from various disciplines, they just might come up with a workable solution to do it. If so, the steps to achieve it won’t be easy, so we’re not about to see any advance promotions for condos or vacation chalets there any time soon.

A logical first step would be to create a secure base there. Something resembling a clear plastic dome structure (about the size of the Super Dome), Once in place, the next step would be to establish enough plant life within it to create both oxygen and water vapor in sufficient quantities, in effect an artificial atmosphere within that dome enclosure to support a nominal human presence there.  As time went on, further dome structures could be constructed, all interconnected with covered pathways, sustaining a growing human population there. How it might evolve over time, given the gravitational and environmental effects there, is hard to say. No doubt they would have a much lighter bone structure, and become a hell of lot less heavier than the rest of us back here.

And who knows, it may eventually be possible to actually re-establish a real free-flowing atmosphere over that entire planet, as our human outposts there morph into a new Martian culture complex, similar to, but different from our own here at home.

Even so, it will be nice to know our neighbors there are actually…kinfolk.

CENTURION