Facebook is not on Mars
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
~ Winston Churchill
Human life on Mars likely will not look like the above photo. While I appreciate the enthusiasm, I promise you it’s not the reality. Far from it in fact. I’ll get to that in a minute. But, first things first, the facts are in. We’re going. Anyone who watched Elon Musk’s presentation last Tuesday certainly must know that this is a new frontier in Technology and in the quest for human progress. His company Space X is doing it. This isn’t a pipe dream or random chatter. This is common knowledge. WE. ARE. GOING. TO. MARS. I’m not sure everyone is really hearing this yet. We are focused on Trump and Hillary, what movie is coming out this weekend, who’s winning the NFL Games Sunday, what to post on social media, what car to buy, or what’s on TV tonight. But there is something much larger happening that we are not fully recognizing. Assuming things go as planned, soon (actually very soon if you think of time in millenniums) the human species will have a new colony. And that direction is not west over the Atlantic as it was in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Here in the 21st Century we’re we’re going all 3-D. We’re going up.
As I sat and watched Elon’s Multi-Planetary exploration presentation, though I was blown away, a variety of things occurred to me. Some things to have in mind while Space X, NASA, and the rest of our futuristic engineers & technicians work their magic. Keep in mind it’s October 2016 and we are still a few years away from this actually happening, however I quickly realized that there are 4 big items we need to recognize and be aware of in the current moment.
My 4 BIG ITEMS:
- We need to start paying attention to multi-planetary activity more and get excited about it
- Mars is no party. This will be hard work, endless amounts of failure, blood, sweat, and tears
- Be ready for various and possibly rather large surprises
- Combining point #1 and #2: Keep our eyes on the prize and while going through failures, keep the enthusiasm & excitement (per Mr. Churchill)
I want to first off wake people up to the fact that is even happening. I’m just not sure we are grasping how big of a deal this is. The media would rather talk about what is happening in the present. And that is natural. But in Summer 2018 when the Dragon departs for Mars with it’s first batch of cargo I promise chatter will begin. It will gradually ramp up and by early 2025 when the first massive shuttle carrying people heads to the red planet for the first time (assuming all goes as planned) it will be massive international news. For those who have not watched the brief video from Musk’s presentation please take a look now:
I don’t know what excites most people and we all obviously have our interests but I can tell you right now two big things that excite me are 1.) Creativity 2.) Innovation … And this excursion across the galaxy is an experiment of grand magnitude in both.
Let’s talk about the plan for a moment. The plan is to get 1 million people to Mars. A rather large number. 10,000 flights of 100 people and the first of which will take place in 2025. Space X does not have a name for the rocket yet but let me just say it is a VERY VERY VERY large rocket. To give you an idea of scale I would refer you to an excellent article written by Tim Urban on his wonderful website Wait But Why. Below is a photo to give you an idea of the size of this beast. It’s gangbusters.
Yes that is the size of a football field. The rocket is massive. Beyond massive. It’s gigantic. If you have not read Mr. Urban’s article please do. It is a terrific rundown of everything happening with this venture. It brings light and awareness to what is happening in a clear and concise breakdown of the facts. As Obama said in his speech at the DNC “Don’t boo. Vote.” I would like to say don’t wait. Read. I intend to merely extend what he wrote about as I (like him and Musk obviously) understand the importance of this venture. I still don’t think many people do. But that’s fine we all will in a few years.
The second important note element we need to get on par with is the fact that Mars is no party. This is not fun and games. It’s exciting. But it’s a lot of work. The history books (not sure they’ll be in book form forever) will refer to Space X and Elon Musk in the 21st century as not only a game-changer but a life-changer. It’s rather frightening yet exciting to think about these first 100 people taking this voyage in 2025 (as is currently planned). I can only imagine the risk and mindset. One terrific scene from a film that comes to mind is from the Michael Bay’s terrific ARMAGEDDON. Not because I like Animal Crackers (I do — film reference sorry) but because Bay is one of my favorite directors because he pushes the envelope in his own way. But that’s a story for another time. Most people (including the great Roger Ebert and others) loathed this film. I loved it. This is one of my favorite scenes in film:
If that doesn’t give you goosebumps, I don’t know what will. While going to Mars is not “Armageddon” obviously, the day we go to Mars we will be undoubtedly be watching in similar ways to this. There are definite similarities. I can feel the excitement now.
Record scratch. Hold the phone. Putting the excitement aside for a second I also want people to realize the immensely important darker reality. This voyage and arrival will be intense amounts of hard work with great risk. This will not be a party. Colonizing and advancing the human race doesn’t come easy. I can only help but think of the early colonists who were taking that great journey across the Northern and Southern Atlantic. They wanted to learn and know more. They wanted to see more, discover more, acquire more. Settlers heading west towards California decades later had the same drive. We keep going. We keep advancing. Innovation and knowledge are contagious. But we also must understand the hard work involved especially for the first batches of people venturing forth. Urban writes:
“The early colonists will have a hard job like early colonists always do — and this will be extra hard. Not only will they have to truly start from scratch — digging mines and quarries and refineries, constructing the first underground village habitat with the first Martian hospitals and schools and greenhouse farms, laying down a giant plumbing system to pump water into the village, building that first rocket propellant plant — but they’ll have to do all of this in a place where they can’t go outside without a spacesuit on, and where everyone and everything they’ve ever known is on a pale blue dot in the night sky.”
The next “New World” is in sight. But it will take us time. I think of colonists at Jamestown in the early 1600's. Innovation often brings pain. To advance we often have to suffer. It is a fact of life. Just like failure brings growth, suffering often brings progress. These were not pleasant times. No fun. There were excruciating conditions, starvation, war with natives, and disease. From Wikipedia:
“Mortality at Jamestown itself was very high due to disease and starvation, with over 80% of the colonists perishing in 1609–1610 in what became known as the “Starving Time”.[4]”
Settlers coming from various countries throughout the world faced ways of life they had never experienced. It was not easy. Mars will be the same. We should see this as progress but also embrace it will not be easy. If you think the early days in America were a cakewalk, think again. If you think the 17th Century settlers at Plymouth, Massachusetts celebrated Thanksgiving as we do with massive amounts of Turkey, Stuffing, pumpkin pie, and happy people, you are sorely mistaken. In fact those who celebrated early on were in fact a very small minority. It wasn’t all good food and joy. Early colonists had a very tough time. Joanne Brooks writes on Smithsonian’s website :
“These were not songs of thankfulness — not by a long shot. They were ballads full of ghastly scenes of the rejection, betrayal, cruelty, murder, and environmental ruin that had driven them out of England — and of the seductive but false promises that drew them to America. These 17th-century songs planted the seeds for a new American genre of murder and hard luck ballads that was later picked up and advanced by singers like Johnny Cash, whose ancestors, like mine, were among those early hard luck migrants from England to America.”
An early photo paints a grave picture:
We aren’t just going to step off the spaceship and say “Let’s party.” This is not a football game tailgate. This is a venture into the great beyond that will bring with it much mystery, hardship, excitement, tests of courage, and ultimately above all else test the inner depths of the human spirit. There is truth to that old adage “History repeats itself.” We’ve covered frontiers here on earth by fighting through endless stages of conflict and are now ready to explore the next frontier. It is indeed multi-planetary but comes with a price We will not make progress without great friction. Tim Urban went on to write:
“It’ll be hard, but for the explorers of our world the payoff may be worth it. Elon says: “You can go anywhere on Earth in 24 hours. There’s no physical frontier on Earth anymore. Now, space is that frontier, so it’ll appeal to anyone with that exploratory spirit.”
The growing Mars colony will continue to entice the adventurers — those who read about the great sailing exhibitions of the 15th and 16th centuries and yearn to be there. When I asked Elon about how the small colony will grow and evolve, he said: “Think of the Mars colony as an organism that starts off as a zygote, and then becomes multi-cellular, and then gets organ differentiation — so it doesn’t look exactly the same all the way along, any more than the first settlement in Jamestown wasn’t representative of the United States today. It’ll be the same with Mars — Mars will be the new New World.””
A final item to keep in mind before the journey commences is to recognize that we don’t know it all. There are so many X factors. Just as Christopher Columbus discovered the world is round, there are elements of space we are yet to understand. In other words, surprises abound. What could we discover? We won’t know until we try. The early settlers from all over the world encountered Native Americans upon arriving in America. It wasn’t necessarily a pleasant encounter either. We will learn more, we will grow more, we will discover new ways of life, find out our current way of thinking isn’t necessarily what we thought it was. We will look back on the 20th and 21st centuries to those elections, those movie makers, those houses, computers, cellphones, and televisions, the baseball games they played on “earth” and think “Wow”. Just as we now look at 15th Century Europe. Time and the universe are changing. Winston Churchill proclaimed as we go through failures we have to keep that childlike excitement and desire to explore. Keep that enthusiasm through the failures. Above all else, take note of and be aware of progress and change in thoughts and belief systems. Start paying attention to what’s ahead, realize it’s not going to be easy, and keep your head looking and focused “UP”.
Geoff Pilkington
A recent podcast I was on discussing my theories on ADHD:http://www.seeinadhd.com/adhd-mind/
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