Reimagining The Martian Chronicles

[Nathan Brazil]

Except for Mars itself, I'd like to keep it real, in other words realistic technologies we could have in the 21st century, not Space 1999. Artificial gravity is for those shows that wanted to save money in not presenting zero-g but we have an unlimited special effects budget in our imagination. So if Mars had a breathable atmosphere, and Elon Musk were still around, what would we be doing right now? What would be the realistic thing?

Life support: Travelling to and returning from Mars is more an engineering challenge not impossible, perhaps doable. Without gravity tech, landing ON Mars is a one way-trip until infrastructure is built to support return. Life support is the big hassle. Travel time is on the order of months, perhaps merely weeks. But we dont have cryofreezing, so you have to be awake. To breathe, eat and poop. We don't have terribly efficient recycling, so we have to bring more supplies.

We COULD launch unmanned depots, pre-positioned along the route, but that requires more infrastructure and coordination at first, back on Earth. Which may not be sustained after the Earth nukes itself.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Actually ... Marcus House on Youtube just did a video on how SpaceX Starship (link) could be leveraged with fuel tanker services to make "expendable" one-way trips to Mars as well as "reusable" round trips to Mars from Earth (both with and without in-situ resource utilization set up on Mars yet for rocket refueling on the surface).

Travelling to and returning from Mars is more an engineering challenge not impossible, perhaps doable. Without gravity tech, landing ON Mars is a one way-trip until infrastructure is built to support return. Life support is the big hassle. Travel time is on the order of months, perhaps merely weeks.

The above linked video contains lots of really nice crunchy data details on what would be involved with real world tech. Once you've assimilated that info, it makes things a lot easier to imagine how fictional trips to Mars would need to work ... so you can play with Sci-Fantasy tech ideas to accomplish the mission logistics by alternative means.

 

[Werner]

Life support: Travelling to and returning from Mars is more an engineering challenge not impossible, perhaps doable. Without gravity tech, landing ON Mars is a one way-trip until infrastructure is built to support return. Life support is the big hassle. Travel time is on the order of months, perhaps merely weeks. But we dont have cryofreezing, so you have to be awake. To breathe, eat and poop. We don't have terribly efficient recycling, so we have to bring more supplies.

We COULD launch unmanned depots, pre-positioned along the route, but that requires more infrastructure and coordination at first, back on Earth. Which may not be sustained after the Earth nukes itself.

Why would Earth nuke itself? China wouldn't do it, Russia wouldn't do it, the USA wouldn't do it. The Martian Chronicles were written during the Cold War, those assumptions are off. Wars are started by people who can imagine a path to victory, its all too obvious that a nuclear war wouldn't be that, so it wouldn't happen, not even by accident.

 

[Condottiere]

Problem is brinkmanship, miscalculation, and lack of insight of the opponent.

 

[daryen]

Why would Earth nuke itself?

OK, no real world examples here so as to not run afoul of the rules ...

Earth could absolutely nuke itself. Here are just two of the methods it could happen:
1) As Condottiere points out: brinkmanship and miscalculation. One country thinks a surprise surgical nuclear strike will quickly and efficiently decapitate their enemy, and goes for it. Doesn't work out. Things escalate. Nuclear winter.
2) Sore loser. One country is losing and knows it is going to lose and can't win. So, they decide the winner can't win either, and unleashes the nukes. Now also a loser, that country lashes out with nukes. Things escalate. Nuclear winter.

Humans are irrational and fallible. We make emotional decisions that we late regret (if we live long enough to regret it). We aren't willing to let others we hate be successful, and we have lots of hate. It wouldn't take much to start things, and once it starts it would be very, very hard to stop the escalation.

The scenarios are not that hard to write up, to be honest.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Why would Earth nuke itself? China wouldn't do it, Russia wouldn't do it, the USA wouldn't do it. The Martian Chronicles were written during the Cold War, those assumptions are off. Wars are started by people who can imagine a path to victory, its all too obvious that a nuclear war wouldn't be that, so it wouldn't happen, not even by accident.

There were MULTIPLE opportunities during the 20th century for a nuclear war to have happened by accident because of faulty early warning systems. The only thing that stopped it were people of good conscience who didn't want to start WWIII on a possible error as the ultimate mistake ending human civilization.

All it takes is one insanely self-centered malignantly pathological narcissistic personality to- ... and I think it would be best to stop there so as to not bring to mind recent real world events.