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US Government Issues NASA Demand, ‘Get Humans to Mars By 2033
Hell yeah! Finally!
“A Mandate For Humanity. Both chambers of Congress just passed the NASA Authorization Act of 2017. With this transformative development, the space agency got a lot more than just $19.508 billion in funding. They also got a very clear mandate: Get humanity to Mars.“
Why the Lunar South Pole Is the Next Giant Leap for Human Exploration
Summary The lunar south pole has become one of the most strategically important destinations in modern space exploration. Unlike the Apollo missions that focused on equatorial landing sites, current and future lunar programs are increasingly focused on the Moon’s polar regions because they offer a combination of scientific value, environmental stability, and resource potential that could support…
Technical Prowess and Operational Mastery: The Core of Human Space Exploration @neosciencehub #TechnicalProwess #HumanSpaceExploration #SunitaWilliams #neosciencehub #Sciencenews
Death in Space: মহাশূন্যে দীর্ঘ পথ পাড়ি দেওয়ার সময়েই মহাকাশচারীর মৃত্যু হলে কী হবে?
জি ২৪ ঘণ্টা ডিজিটাল ব্যুরো: ইদানীংকালে মহাকাশে মানুষ পাঠানোর প্রচেষ্টা বন্ধ ছিল। ২০২৫ সালের মধ্যে ফের চাঁদে যাচ্ছে নাসা। পরের দশকে মঙ্গলে পা রাখার পরিকল্পনাও করেছে তারা। ফলে, আগামী কয়েক দশকে মহাকাশে ঘনঘন যাবে মানুষ। আর এই সময়েই একটা প্রশ্ন ফিরে ফিরে জাগছে অনেকের মনে। ভাবছে নাসাও। মহাকাশেই কোনও মহাকাশচারীর মৃত্যু হলে কী হবে? আরও পড়ুন: Switzerland: গলে ক্রমশ পিছিয়ে যাচ্ছে হিমবাহ, সেখান থেকেই বেরল…
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A chapter closes; a new one begins
It's been quite a year, huh? I was originally going to do a year-in-review type post, but I was travelling over the winter break and honestly it was good for me to take a break from the computer screen for a bit, so I just have a couple of general updates.
The main update, and one that may not come as a surprise if you've been following it closely, is that Mars One is officially finished, following failure to get investment for any further stages beyond the latest candidate selection round. This has not been too surprising to me either—there's been a long time without any forward motion, and getting enough money was always going to be one of the hardest parts of this project. Though I am disappointed that Mars One wasn't able to get further than it did before having to give up—I was at least hoping for more concept studies to come out of it, and the in-person selection round.
Still, I think that a lot of good came out of it—the idea of humans on Mars is in the public consciousness in a way that it wasn't ten years ago, and Mars One played a big part in putting it there. Whoever comes next will have a wealth of lessons learned and, hopefully, an easier time of it. For my own part, I've had so many opportunities to talk to the public and in schools about human space exploration and Mars settlement, and I’m hopeful that people can continue to be inspired by this goal. And on a personal level, I’ve made friends around the world with some incredible people who share the outlook on life that personally going to Mars would be a great idea, and they remain some of the coolest and smartest people I know.
The state of Mars settlement going forward is currently uncertain. SpaceX, while developing the rockets that could eventually get people to Mars, has repeatedly stated that they’re only interested in supplying the transportation to Mars, not any other aspect of a Mars mission. However, there don't seem to be any serious organizations at the moment ready and willing to actually go (or anyone capable and willing to fund the ones that might be, in the case of Mars One). With that said, there’s still plenty of on-going research in all sorts of fields addressing the various problems that will need to be solved to allow people to live on Mars. How it will all come together in a future mission to take human life to Mars remains to be seen.
In the meantime, I’m helping out with the problem-solving side of things as a member of the Mars Ethical Settlement Alliance, working on developing a Martian constitution and a series of papers called the Martian Papers. You can watch the presentation I gave at the Mars Society Convention in October on what will become the first of those papers very soon. I’ll be continuing to use this blog to report on my progress with that sort of thing, plus any other Mars-related stuff I get involved in. I also continue to be very interested in topics such as religion in space.
And, of course, if anyone else is looking for volunteers to go live on Mars, come hit me up!
We are making the institutions that will govern a free and independent Mars. Join us.
We can talk big about sending humans to Mars all we like, but how will those humans be governed and protected? I'm delighted to announce a new project I am a part of: the Mars Ethical Settlement Alliance, a group setting out to draft a constitution for an independent Mars.
So far we have released a preamble stating its intent:
"We, the Martians, declare Mars to be a free and independent state. This state and this planet will benefit the people of Mars, for the purpose of making humanity a multiplanetary species.
We declare Mars to be a sovereign entity, separate from the rest of human structures, yet part of the larger tapestry of the human experience.We seek peace and trade with all who wish it, but also choose to establish and defend our own independence.
Mars shall seek to uphold Liberty, the Preservation and continuity of Life, Stewardship of the planet, and the provision of Justice for its people.
We seek to fill Mars with life, and work towards making the planet accessible and habitable for the full spectrum of humanity.
Therefore, we the Martians, establish a sovereign Martian republic, and declare this to be the Constitution of the Republic and its supreme law."
Thoughts? Feedback? Want to join us? Register your interest at themartianpapers.org
Cultivating Mars
I’m resurrecting this blog as somewhere to put my thoughts about sending humans to Mars... since although all has been quiet on the Mars One front for a while now, I still have thoughts, and need somewhere to put them!
The language we use to talk about sending humans to Mars is important—the words we choose have a lot to say about our approach and the goals and assumptions we bring with us. Many people are moving away from speaking about “colonization”, and for good reason. It’s a word that carries the baggage of countless atrocities, of people laying claim to land that was not their own, treating its inhabitants—and fellow human beings—as disposable. But even if there are no living things on Mars to steal from, it still carries connotations of ownership, entitlement, and exploitation. “Settlement/settlers” is often the preferred alternative, but I know that this term has its own problematic associations (in South Africa, for example), and in practice it’s often just a way for people to talk about colonization with a more palatable word.
I don’t think we should settle for “settling”. I think we can make bolder statements about our goals for sending humans to Mars with the language we choose to use.
An alternative that I quite like is “Mars migration/migrant”. I like it because it literally describes what I want to do when it comes to Mars—move from one place to another to live and work there—without the same connotations of control and ownership. Not that a mission to send humans to live on Mars wouldn’t have to establish some form of political control and ownership, at least of the space it lands on and the resources it gathers for its own use, but the scope doesn’t have to extend beyond establishing a successful and sustainable community on the Red Planet, as opposed to the kind of planetary domination and manipulation implied by those folks who get a bit too excited about drastic terraforming measures.
Another word I came across recently while reading this old Slate article is “cultivation”. I really like this one because it carries connotations of the care-taking and safe-guarding of life, a commitment to making Mars flourish rather than exploiting it for all it is worth—a commitment that could apply equally to extant life on Mars and life that has arrived from Earth. What I feel very strongly about is looking after the planet from the moment humans first set foot there, taking on the role of stewards of the place we live just as the environmentalism movement asks us to do on Earth today.
I’ve come across the word “cultivation” a lot in a different context lately as well, having recently started watching a bunch of Chinese dramas. I’m not suggesting that I mean the cultivation of Mars in the same sense as Taoist cultivation, but I do think there is something to be said for cultivation of ourselves as human beings, in the sense of developing the capacity to live well on Mars—not just by developing our technological capabilities, but by cultivating suitable ways of life, social structures, and cultural norms that can meet the challenge of life in such an environment. And perhaps there is something spiritual in that—a bettering of ourselves in the process of becoming Martian.
Looking for meteorites in Antarctica can teach us not only about space science, but also about surviving in harsh environments on other worlds.
