There’s no air. There’s no soil. There’s no people. There’s no trees. There are no golf courses, although you could hit the ball a long ways. The internet connection is slow, about 10 minutes to get a signal to Earth (depending on the planetary alignment). There are no cafes and no friends anywhere except for your acquaintances in that little space ship sitting in the dirt. The temperature outside in the winter is -220 degrees F.
Most people don’t want to live on Mars. Most people, if they were up there, would look at that little blue marble in the sky (Earth) and wish they were there. A place where your friends are and millions of other species. It’s a species happy world. They got nothin on Mars. Not even the most die-hard hermit would want to live there.
Of course, hey, I’m all for space exploration and all. We (the US) have landed 5 rovers on Mars: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance - the last one with a built in helicopter.
They crawled around and explored the planet. Now we know alot more about the composition of the earth (well it’s not really earth) and of the air. Well it’s not really air either, it’s 95% carbon dioxide with trace amounts of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon monoxide and a lot of dust. It would kill you in two minutes. If you had a slow leak in your space suit, you might have 4 or 5 minutes, maybe enough time to get back to the space station, get through the double lock doors, back to some fresh air before you passed out.
It’s a big universe out there and we are on just a little planet and we have every right to explore it. But the truth is we haven’t explored our own planet yet. There are millions of species that haven’t even been discovered yet, mostly microbes. There are many, many systems and symbioses that haven’t been discovered yet or have been discovered and forgotten (the ancient wisdom).
Before we destroy our planet, maybe we should try to understand it. Otherwise it’s just a mindless, petty thing - us being in this world. Being on Mars, if we could tame it and bend it to our will, would just be another ruined planet in time. We wouldn’t appreciate Mars either.
Not hard to do, really. Elon Musk has a plan to get to Mars with his Starship rockets and I just wonder, does he have a plan to get back? Because if he does that means there is something more valuable here then there is out there. Right? Otherwise they would just stay out there, in heaven or something
Maybe they can build it, build a heavenly city out of Mars dust. Huge golf courses. And then . . . and then what? Go out of the solar system to another star and visit their planets? We could conquer and pillage virgin planets not even in our solar system.
That’s my point, Elon, explore this planet first. Understand this planet first before you attempt to understand another planet.
This planet is incredible. It has moveable continents that create mountains that create rivers that create biospheres, civilizations. We have so much water we call it oceans. 20% oxygen in our atmosphere. That’s not too shabby. Able to support respiration for large organisms. Like us. Photosynthesis creates more oxygen all the time while inhaling carbon dioxide - exactly the opposite of us. A symbiosis.
Our inner core is still molten from the fires of first creation: asteroids raining down, collisions with celestial bodies. It was chaos. Water, it is conjectured, accumulated from meteorites containing ice. Which makes sense, since the earth and all the planets and the sun were born from the same cosmic dust cloud and there was lots of water out there. Thank God for icy meteorites.
It’s a beautiful planet. We saw that on Christmas Eve, 1968, when the Apollo 8 astronauts swung around from the dark of the side of the moon and saw the Earth, rising like the sun above the horizon. We had never seen our planet like that before. It started Earth Day and people began to realize that we were on a planet floating in outer space.
The astronauts held a broadcast from their Command Module and shared the pictures with the world. They ended by taking turns reading from the book of Genesis, all three astronauts: Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders. "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring”, said astronaut Lovell, looking out the window, “it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth."
So if you want to go to Mars with Elon Musk and start a new era in human history - go for it. I’ll stay here on planet Earth and chronicle your journey.
Most people don’t want to go to Mars, including me and the wildebeest.
most people don't want to live on Mars