MOONING OVER MARS

     My obsession with space began about ten years ago, when I first had the idea of writing a novel about a girl with an imaginary moon-sister.  The Hom were an advanced race of moon people who spent their lives in a system of underground chambers and tunnels, from where they closely monitored Earth and its inhabitants.  To write about the Hom, I had to read a lot about the moon, and I got hooked.

    
     The problem was that everyone who read my manuscript tried to convince me that the Hom part of the story just didn't belong in, and in fact detracted from, what was otherwise a contemporary realistic YA novel.  For years, I dug my heels in and refused to listen because... the Hom.  Those ten-foot-tall featureless spheres, each one identifiable by its signature color.  Rolling through their tunnels, projecting their own light, unspooling tubes from inside their bodies when arms are needed to perform tasks, or when they want to communicate with other members of their pods.  I know the Hom.  In a way, I am the Hom.
     It's only this year that I finally accepted reality and banished the Hom from the book.  No more Hom.  (Well, not in the book, anyway.  But you can't tell me they're not still out there.)  No more moon-sister.  But my feeling of kinship with the moon hasn't lessened.  Nor has my belief that planetary exploration is absolutely necessary for the human race, because without a doubt there is going to come a time when Earth is going to become overpopulated, or run out of fossil fuels, or we'll find some other way to destroy it (we're already doing a dandy job in that direction).  Or, even without our help, it will experience a natural disaster that will render it either temporarily or permanently uninhabitable, and our descendants are going to need an escape hatch.  A place to go.
     And now Mars has become the Cool Planet.  The next frontier.

And I want to live there. So then the question becomes: why?  I have a nice house right here on Earth, with everything I need right at hand.  Supermarket a mile away, CVS right down the street.  Fresh water flows through pipes directly into my kitchen and bathroom.  I can make the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer without having to know shit about the science involved.  Reliable WIFI.  I even have a generator in the garage in case the power goes out for more than a few hours.  Why would I want to leave?
     And it's not like Mars is hospitable. In fact, pretty much everything about it is inimical to human life.  Liquid water is great and all - it definitely beats NO liquid water - but then you think about transporting a desalinization plant there, and it gets tricky. EVERYTHING is tricky, beginning with mere survival.  But the night after I dragged my husband to see The Martian, I was too excited to sleep.  I couldn't stop thinking about the habitat, the rover, and the sheer Marsness of it all.  (Although, let's face it.  If you were the commander of a Mars crew, waiting anxiously at the end of a tether to catch a  crew member whom you unwittingly abandoned and who's survived alone on the planet for over a year and who is now in uncontrolled bodily flight in your direction - wouldn't you at least put out BOTH hands???  But I digress.)
     Oh, sure, you went to see THE MARTIAN too.  But did you later download NASA's 36-page report entitled "NASA'S JOURNEY TO MARS: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration?"  If you didn't, allow me to recommend it, so that you too can revel in sentences like these: "Current MAV designs require a minimum lander size of just under 20 mt, assuming propellant can be generated from the Martian atmosphere via ISRU."  Those space scientists do love them some acronyms, don't they?
     But I couldn't pinpoint the source of my Martian obsession.  And then I remembered the Swiss Family Robinson.  (Whose name, by the way, wasn't Robinson.  That was for Robinson Crusoe.) How when I was a little girl, all I dreamed about was living like the Swiss Family Robinson, on a previously uninhabited island, having created an adorable treehouse and ingeniously added all the comforts of home, with (conveniently) someone else there to do all the sciencing.
     The images in my head of this idyll were so vivid, but thinking about it over the last few days, I couldn't remember where they came from.  I was pretty sure I'd never read the book, but had there been a movie I saw as a child?
     I looked it up.  The book was originally written in 1812 by a Swiss clergyman with four sons who wanted to teach them the virtues of industry, resourcefulness and self-sufficiency.  So he invented a family with four sons - go figure - that gets shipwrecked on a deserted island, and is fortunately able to rescue barrels and barrels of undamaged supplies from the ship, not to mention all the miraculously unharmed livestock, and they create their own little paradise.  Over the years, the story went the 19th-century equivalent of viral, and was adapted so many times by so many other writers so that it ended up becoming sort of a public-domain fable. 
     And then along came the 1960 Disney film version.

     Seriously, who could not want to live in that treehouse?  Who could not want to have a pet baby elephant in the front yard?  I know I did.  All this, and window curtains too!!

     Looking at those weirdly familiar 55-year-old movie stills, I know for sure that my parents must have taken 5-year-old me to see that movie, and that scenes from it have been forever burned into my brain.  And that is why I now want to go to Mars.  With a lot of scientists.  And a baby elephant in a customized space suit.  And window curtains.
     Obviously, I'm not the only one to have made that connection with space.

     It's actually kind of a no-brainer.  So.  Want to join me on the Red Planet?  But first - how good are you at practical science?  Because I'm a lawyer and a novelist, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need some help with the tricky parts.

TO INFINITY... AND BEYOND!!

     I'm obsessed with Mars.  More specifically, I'm obsessed with Mars One (www.mars-one.com) and its mission to colonize our planetary neighbor, beginning very soon with exploratory unmanned missions and leading up to the departure of the first team of four people (2 male, 2 female) in 2014 and their arrival in 2015.  Subsequent teams of four will arrive from then on in two-year intervals.  Presumably, the already-established teams will welcome them with casseroles and chocolate-chip cookies.  "Hey!  How was your trip?  Did you guys hit much traffic?" 
     As you may know, Mars One advertised last year for volunteer Marsonauts willing to take a one-way trip.  In other words: live there, die there.  Never return.  The company got over 200,000 applicants.  Perhaps not all of them were serious - I understand some people submitted nude photos with their applications - but, damn.  Who would have thought so many earthlings possess that kind of pioneer spirit? 
     When I first heard about the mission, I was merely intrigued.  My obsession didn't begin until this week, when I read that the list of applicants has now been winnowed down to 1,058 potential team members.  It's not clear to me how many more rounds of cuts will take place before training begins in 2015, but let me put it this way: things are moving along.  An unspecified number of teams will be training simultaneously.  Then, in a totally bizarre blend of Star Trek and American Idol, we, the public, will get to vote on which of six Mars-ready teams will be the one to make history.
     Because here's the thing.  Mars One plans to obtain much of its funding by making its mission into a reality show.  We here at home will get to watch our Fab Four all through their seven-month-journey, and then once they arrive, we will get to watch them go about colonizing.  It is absolutely brilliant.  It is absolutely insane.  I think it could actually work.
     You probably have questions.  I know I did.  And for that very reason, the folks at Mars One have devised a handy-dandy list of FAQs.  For example: what will the colonists do there, once they get settled?  Answer: construction of living quarters; establishment of greenhouses to create independent food sources; maintenance of equipment; and scientific research.  But not to worry - they'll have down time, too.  In fact, the site assures us, if a Marsonaut wants to watch the Superbowl, her or she will have only to ask, and voila!  The Superbowl will be beamed directly to his or her receiving device.  There is one catch, however: there will be a three-minute transmission delay.
     I don't know how you feel about this, but that three-minute delay is pretty much of a deal-breaker for me.  Everything else sounds cool - the never seeing anyone on Earth again, the whole DIY-to-the-max concept, the fact that if you run out of toilet paper it'll take six months for the next cargo delivery to arrive - but unless they can get that Superbowl delay down to two minutes, I'm going to have to send in my regrets.
     And then there's this question: will Marsonauts be able to have babies?  Answer: the first team will be "advised" not to, as the colony will not yet be a suitable environment for raising children.  YA THINK??  I strongly suspect that what "advised not to" really means is "will have to agree to undergo sterilization prior to departure."
     And this: what if a Marsonaut has difficulty adjusting psychologically to the possibly stressful condition of comprising 1/4 of a planet's entire population?  Never fear - they've got that covered.  Long-distance counseling services will be made available.  "I don't know, Doctor, I'm just feeling kind of ... isolated."  "Well, you just need to get out of your rut.  Meet new - no, wait.  I mean, travel - no, hold on.  Um, have you considered a career change?"
     The FAQs are fairly comprehensive in their own peculiar way, and yet some of my questions remain unanswered (probably due to their lack of frequency).  Like: what happens when a team member develops cancer?  (probable answer: s/he gets sick and dies.)   Or: what happens when a team member develops an extreme version of cabin fever and completely freaks out, endangering other team members?  (probable answer: s/he is eventually "neutralized.")  Or: what happens when one team member falls in love with another team member who does not reciprocate those feelings?  (probable answer: life on Mars becomes pure hell for one or both.)
     Speaking of love: there is no amount of training or planning that could eliminate the vagaries of the human heart.  I'd like to think that fact is known even by scientists.  And so, the selection process becomes extraordinarily tricky.  It would seem that an essential trait for a Marsonaut would be the ability to Play Well With Others - what with the whole lifelong team concept and all.  But it would also seem that one couldn't Play TOO Well With Others, or else s/he might have misgivings about leaving everyone s/he has ever known behind on Earth forever.  If I had to do the choosing (and please please, Mars One, don't call on me for this task), I might go with four very goal-oriented, hardworking people who all have mild cases of Asperger's.
     Yes, it's the human aspect that really fascinates me.  When you send four people out to populate a planet, there are so many ways for things to go terribly, terribly wrong.  The novelist in my head can't seem to stop spinning out scenarios.  And yet...  and yet, there's a tiny part of me that wants to go.  Because, let's be honest:  it's the most sure-fire route I can think of to becoming a published author.  I mean, talk about high-concept!  What fool of an Earth editor would turn down a manuscript emailed from Mars?

 

     Leave a comment!  Tell me why you would - or wouldn't - want to be a Marsonaut!  Don't worry, it won't be a binding commitment.  If you're not already one of the chosen 1,058, it's too late to sign up.  So just jump in and blather away, as I do!!