The Road to Mars is Paved With Fat Egos
NASA, Elon Musk and Tory Bruno should be given credit, but human ingenuity is a more potent catalyst for new civilization
“Why is there so much effort being put into trying to find intelligent life on other planets, when there is a serious question about how much intelligent life there is here?” — Thomas Sowell
Talking about going to Mars, Thomas Sowell would not be particularly right there. Earth was handed down to humans on a platter of gold and we literally had to do the bare minimum for millennia to bend it our way.
Our bodies were literally evolved to fit the earthly cycle and the average human just had to find food, clothing and shelter for the rest of our lives and the world is happy.
Trials in attempt to conquer the rest of the solar system in the last century has revealed that the situation is different for other worlds. We practically have had to think outside the box and be unconventional with Natural Law to conquer outer space.
It is also becoming more evident that Earth can no longer contain human ambition.
Bare minimum living on Earth is getting boring. We have been compelled to explore Mars.
It is time for the interstellar.
As exploring other planets have often rubbished many of the advanced science and technology which are largely governed by natural laws, the laws of relativity has provided us a glimpse into the imbalance of physical laws in the vastness of the rest of the Solar System.
It would take us more than the usual way of thinking to wean us off this comfort zone.
It all started during the Cold War — America and the former Soviet Union went on a wankfest on which of the two giants is supreme world power. In hindsight, we to look back at the Cold War period as needless, but it did bring to the table a host of human breakthroughs and technological advancements.
There were when Yuri Gagarin and his crew aboard the Vostok 1 bested the U.S to the space race in 1961 by being the first set of humans in outer space. After some painful toiling, Neil Armstrong finally succeeded in planting America’s feet on the moon in 1969. A lot more difficult and daring things have happened since then.
With lunar landing unlocked, you’d say the world is even now. No, not so fast. The space race had just begun. Japan, China, and the European bloc would later join in exploratory missions after those pioneering missions.
If anyone at NASA, White House or the Kremlin was asked why the space missions and explorations continued after those successful landings, no one as of 1969 would have been able to articulately proffer reasons why billions of dollars should be sunk into space exploration.
Today, the dream is different. Space is no more being conquered for conquering sake. Many of us now feel like becoming wannabe Astronauts; to briefly escape from Earth on some space joy ride.
As summarized in the Space Policy Directive 1 (SPD-1), the NASA administrator is tasked to “lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system…”
So the return of Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Benkhen to space after a 9 year drought, aboard a maiden SpaceX Dragon crewed flight on May 30, brought more buzz to the possibilities of commercializing space trips via collaborative effort.
Partnering with space junkies like SpaceX, ULA, Northrop Grumman and SNC ended the drought in innovation at NASA. The outliers have now given us new goals to chase and fresh bucket lists to tick.
Increasingly, we are being sold the brilliant idea of supersonic travel within earth too.
We have surely come a long way from the Wright Brothers’ test flight which affirmed the possibility of heavier-than-air crafts back in 1903, and it is time to move on to other thrills.
The transmigration of our souls beyond the precise and gravity-corrected confines of Earth has begun. And so we are going to get to Mars by any means necessary.
We are not all leaving Earth. Not yet. Until global warming is done with all its damage, our world is yet to totally refuse accommodating our fat behinds.
Having taken the upper part of 6 million years of human drubbing without really caring much for it, what if Earth one day says “so long" and balks under us?
On our exodus, God forbid that there are really aliens out there waiting for us to trespass on their world. Perhaps there are even species thriving sub-surface on Mars due to it’s freezing climate.
Mayhaps by a slight extra-terrestrial trigger, the U.S Space Force may find itself fighting both aggressor Nations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and against alien threat on our new colony on Mars .
This is the age of the gold rush over again.
The March to Mars
July was the month a lot more sovereign countries joined the United States on the March to Mars.
In a space of 26 months, there is barely a 60-day window where we could haul spacecrafts in trajectory on a 300 million mile journey to Mars. There is actually a shorter route to Mars but we would need rockets which are capable stocking more fuel than current capabilities or we would have to refuel mid-flight in outer space. Until then, hauling spacecrafts to Mars to sync with the cosmic movement is the only viable option on the table.
Once the 26-month window closes, there is literally no other sensible opportunity to get to Mars.
This was the window which UAE and China decided to jump through for the first time; decades after the United States and Europe had sent a number of exploratory missions to the Red Planet.
As the UAE launched the Hope mission aboard a Japanese rocket on July 19, China joined in on its maiden and unmanned probe mission (Tianwen-1) to Mars on July 23. Then the American Mars 2020 mission sending the rover Perseverance and mini-helicopter Ingenuity on a deeper probe mission shot into the skies on the morning of July 30 to round July off as the month of Mars.
The powerful Centaur craft by ULA drove the cruise ship at a supersonic speed of at least 25,000 miles per hour to send it on its journey into the expanse before separating from the craft heading to Mars.
The heat-shield protected leftover disc of the Mars 2020 craft will sail for approximately 7 months before it lands gently on Mars with the aid of parachutes and other assisted landing systems.
A specially manufactured Iridium nuclear battery which could last for up to 10 years will power the mini helicopter Ingenuity while the rover Perseverance will run on solar energy.
All of these detailing from the craft design to monitoring require precision robotics, special materials and systems with sharp accuracy; or any little thing gone wrong could jeopardize entire operations and cargo safety.
Evidently, some of these technologies being deployed for space exploit are not even available for commercial use on Earth yet.
And this is where the need for a lot more fat egos remain. This is where the crazy ones and the misfits will find fit. These ones believe in, and do, what other men have thought impossible in their lifetime.
What else would it be if not absolutely daring to send a mission into another planet light years away and still be confident of controlling such probes remotely — right to the sequence of the craft’s gentle landing on Mars. That alone takes a lot of gut and balls to execute.
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes … the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo…” — Steve Jobs
Migrating to a Red Planet
Elon Musk has estimated that a trip to Mars is about $250,000. As more reusable spacecrafts are deployed and the economics of flying to space align, the cost of flying to Mars could drop as low as $100,000 from 2024.
In a daring attempt to fine-tune mass space transit, SpaceX has successfully tested a 150m hop on a prototype Starship SN5 which is a larger craft that could undertake and take more humans on intergalactic trips. This is why for now, we are testing for the moon. Next will be to boldly lunge for Mars having learnt from the lunar testing.
There is also that raw desire to be part of the earliest men to colonize an inhabitable planet. This must be part of the reason Japanese billionaire, Yusaku Maezawa, is paying a significant amount of dollars to be part of a crew of artists to fly around the moon aboard a SpaceX Starhopper craft in 2024. Best believe this is part of rehearsals for the move towards Mars.
And to condition Mars for human habitation, we either try to induce an atmospheric pressure close to Earth’s by shocking the planet into responsiveness with explosives or getting the surface ice melted by trapping more carbon dioxide within Mars’ weak atmosphere.
If we could get Mars to warm up a little bit more, cause the frozen oceans to thaw, we would have one-third of the total water currently available on earth and humans could thrive better.
Living Among the Stars
A lot more work still need to be done to make all of the boxes tick for Mars’ and/or the Lunar mission.
This is why we need more crazy thinkers and doers who could make anything possible.
Nevertheless, we may leave that to the likes of SpaceX, ULA, SNC, Northrop Grumman, NASA and their insightful innovators who have been reeling new paths to conquer. By all indications, at this rate of innovative breakthroughs, missions to Mars and other celestial constellations can only get easier and more bearable.
NASA’s Artemis program is already kicking for experimental space-living by sending astronauts via the powerful Orion spacecraft, to live on the moon in 2024.
The Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is already testing moon-adaptive and inflatable LIFE prototype pods/apartments which can accommodate up to 4 Astronauts comfortably.
Living on the moon will come with other survival problems which the Artemis program should be able to simulate.
Water and oxygen which are paramount to man’s existence will also have to be produced one way or another.
Terraforming Mars to make it suitable for human living will be the next biggest challenge for the human race.
Until these survival necessities can be mined and grown on Mars, living on the exoplanets will have to depend largely on material and commodities shipments from Earth.
Creating artificial gravity such that we don’t get to lose much muscle mass is one of the other challenges connected to living in space.
Pressed by this race to be the best nation Earth, the confines of technological limitations are being shifted by the sheer product of willpower and fat egos resident in these innovating economies.
And the pseudo-redundancy of space Sci-Fiction keeps coming alive the more we push these galactic boundaries.
Man-made Paradise
Human civilization is fast approaching a pace where the promise of paradise by God is no more a desire.
Many of us have quietly resolved in our hearts that whether the Kingdom of God is at hand or not, we must experience a paradise in our lifetime. This is why a world of utopia is courted by many futuristic-looking people.
Perhaps, after Mars, burrowing further into the mysteries of the Black Hole and sight-seeing Stars light years away could become the new pastime of the wealthy. Telling tales of the wild trips beyond galaxies and asteroids at Zero G while traveling in vacuum at the speed of light might be the new Enlightenment.
The ultimate bucket-list, in a decade to come, would be to live in one of the sequestered pods on Mars. Perhaps, if we are 300 million travel miles away from God-ordained Earth, we might eventually be free from that divine pressure.
That may be the utopia we never had on earth. It will be the man-made paradise exclusive to the super rich folks.
“You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs
And yes, it is easy to ascribe the kudos of how far we have gone into space to NASA. But these marvelous exploits are brought to life by a host of dedicated thinkers, dreamers and innovators who think the impossible is also feasible.
All of the people working on space-related projects, funding them and the support staff behind the scenes have made all these happen. They stubbornly believed where others have remained satiated.
The new possibilities on the journey to Mars so far have only been made possible by the sheer power of out-of-the-box thinking of the crazy ones, the outcasts and the ones Steve Jobs once called misfits. Only those ones who believe that we can create magic from our limited Earthly supply of resources and limitations, can set us on the road to Mars.
The power which was once exclusive to God — to mold a new world and the zombies which populate them — will now be in the hands of ordinary humans who just dreamt and made things happen.
That is the beauty of human ingenuity and perseverance; powered by a communion of fat egos.
