mars2

of these plans, or some combination of them, might produce a warmer
atmosphere in anywhere from one to a thousand centuries.
To alter the chemical state of the surface, you might then bring plants
and microbes to start producing oxygen as a waste product from
carbon dioxide. The Martian atmosphere might be breathable for
humans after a hundred thousand years or so.
All this is a far cry from the atmosphere plant constructed by the
inhabitants of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars. It's quite a bit more
clinical, and quite a bit more realistic. In fact it's so realistic that it's
utterly impractical. Few people are willing to wait a hundred thousand
years for Mars to be enlivened by artificial means.
So the purposes of the first astronauts on Mars will not involve
anything on the order of social, political or commercial pragmatism. In
fact it would be more of an ideal undertaking. It would involve simply
being present on Mars to gather up scientific information. A lot of
work has already been done to plan for this presence.
Engineers have drawn up extensive flight plans. In one plan, the Mars
mission would be carried out in two stages. In the first stage of say,
the opportunity that will present itself in 2007, three separate
launches would take loads of equipment to Mars ahead of the
astronauts. The equipment would include descent and ascent vehicles,
an Earth-return vehicle, a two-piece habitat, and a rover, among other
things. In 2009 a six-astronaut crew would be launched with another
two-piece habitat. Two other launches carrying more cargo would
follow the astronauts. The journey time between the Earth and Mars
would be about six months, or as little as three months if a plasma
engine using magnetic fields to create thrust develops. The crew
would stay on Mars for roughly a year and a half.
This is not science fiction. Different instruments have already been
designed for use on the Martian surface, and some things, like the
"Mars Rover," a descendant of the Lunar Rover, have been
extensively tested. The Mars Pathfinder, which landed successfully in
July 1997, sent a micro rover out to snoop around Ares Vallis.
Astronauts at a ground base or in orbit could remotely operate the
vehicle with virtual reality equipment. During the testing, operators
reported experiencing a sense of "being present" at remote sites.
"Being present" is not the goal, maybe, but the impulse behind the
whole project. Mars, despite its desolation, would be enlivened by the
very presence of people. This is of course only an idea in the minds of
planetary scientists, and even after it occurs it will still be only an
idea. As far as we'd know, Mars itself - the object Mars, on which
people once scampered around for a year or two - would continue to
be as dry and cold and dead as anything else. There is no compelling
material reason to visit a dead, useless, remote agglomeration of dust,
carbon dioxide and seasonal ices.

The desire to occupy Mars occurs partly because Mars is the
closest, least environmentally hostile planet, but mainly because it has
been absolutely dead only since July of 1965.
In ancient times Mars, like the other nearby celestial bodies, was a
god long before it was a rock. The Babylonians called it Nirgal and the
Greeks called it Ares, names associated with blood and violence. The
Romans called it Mars, the god of war. The visible planets - Venus,
Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - and the Moon and Sun, it should
be understood, were in ancient times regarded either directly or
indirectly as the gods themselves. The Sun who rose and set every day
was a living being - well beyond the comprehension of the human
mind and the plane of human existence, but alive and present
nonetheless.
The first use of Mars by modern science occurred when Johannes
Kepler showed that its orbit is elliptical, not circular. For Kepler this
was a difficult idea to accept because he began his inquiries with the
ancient idea that the heavens were divine, and he intended to show,
by calculating the mathematical precision of the orbital circles, that
the physical universe reflects divinity. His conclusion that the planets'
orbits are ellipses was, ironically, a major step toward materializing the
planets and the universe in general. It was really, together with
Galileo's descriptions of the Moon, Sun and satellites of Jupiter, the
first step toward a manned mission to Mars in 2009.
Christian Huygens made the first helpful sketches of Mars' surface in
1659. One simple ink drawing shows a lopsided L-shaped patch
across most of the southern hemisphere, probably representing the
dark region now known as Syrtis Major, and a half-circle at the top
representing a polar cap. In 1719 Giacomo Maraldi described the
south polar cap more accurately. And later in the eighteenth century,
William Herschel correctly observed that a Martian day is almost
exactly 24 hours and reasoned that Mars, being tilted on its rotational
axis at almost the same angle as Earth, has seasons accounting for
growing and shrinking polar caps. These distinctly Earthlike features
prompted Herschel and others to speak even of the possible
"inhabitants" of Mars. Mars was no longer a living divinity, but it
nonetheless remained animated.
Nineteenth century astronomers, with better and better telescopes,
began making more accurate drawings of the surface. Giovanni
Schiaparelli, a respected observational astronomer and classicist, drew
detailed maps during the opposition of 1877 and invented names that
came into general use for prominent surface features. He also
perceived and described a Martian surface which has stuck, in one
way or another, in the human imagination since then. Schiaparelli
thought he saw canali - Italian for "channels" - interwoven over the
whole planet.
The word canali was translated in the English press as "canals,"
which implied trenches deliberately dug and filled with water.
Schiaparelli, apparently, did not speculate much on what the canali
were or how they got there. But the American astronomy enthusiast
Percival Lowell did, and he set out to establish as irrefutably as
possible that the canals were irrigation ditches dug by intelligent
inhabitants. Lowell conjectured that the canals carried water from the
ice-bound poles to population centers he thought were defined by the
intersections and groupings of the canals. One of his students,
working with maps of the Martian surface, inferred that the capital
city of Mars was at 30 south latitude, 90 longitude.
Some scientists of the time, including the influential French
astronomer Camille Flammarion, argued on Lowell's side that the
canals were evidence of life. Others simply disbelieved in them, and
some questioned whether Schiaparelli or Lowell had even seen lines.
In 1894, while Lowell was filling in details, E.E. Barnard explained
that the canals were a trick of perception; the lines were simply dark
patches, perhaps craters, which an eager eye could connect together.
Others conducted elaborate experiments designed to prove or
disprove Barnard's contention.
Whatever else happened, the popular imagination was inspired by
Lowell's claims. Educated people commonly discussed the possibility
of Mars being inhabited, or at very least being covered with vegetation
that (Lowell's color observations suggested) bloomed and faded with
the Martian seasons. Edgar Rice Burroughs' popular novels of the
diversely populated and war-torn planet "Barsoom" sprang directly
from Lowell's depictions. In the 1920s and '30s The New York Times
and a skeptical Scientific American frequently carried stories of
attempts to communicate with Mars by radio signals, and in 1924 a
prominent academic researcher persuaded the U.S. Navy, Army and
Commerce Department to observe radio silence during two days of a
close approach between Earth and Mars so he could monitor the sky
for Martian radio signals. By 1938 the idea of intelligent Martian life
was so viable to the general public that thousands of people accepted
Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds as a
literal news report of an invasion by Martians.
Wells' and Burroughs' stories, of course, are science fiction. It's pretty
clear that no intelligent life exists on Mars. The gigantic chasms of
Mars, like Valles Marineris - far longer and wider than the Grand
Canyon - are not canals. But the canals have persisted even in the