The First Guys on Mars: Big Sacrifice

Mars is a desolate place of bleak desert (a great big one)
temperature extremes and too many big dust storms.
The first Americans on Mars will have to put up with
a lot of boredom. Other than staving off death
and running geological (Marsological?) experiments,
what else is there to do during your time off?
Thay better bring some good books.
There r no decent restaurants up there; no theaters.

To put up with that, u have to be a real self-sacrificing hero.
There IS a lot of free real estate, but its kind of out of the way.

I would give up anything to be on the first expedition.
It would be so interesting and thrilling on that planet

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Mars is a desolate place of bleak desert (a great big one)
temperature extremes and too many big dust storms.
The first Americans on Mars will have to put up with
a lot of boredom. Other than staving off death
and running geological (Marsological?) experiments,
what else is there to do during your time off?
Thay better bring some good books.
There r no decent restaurants up there; no theaters.

To put up with that, u have to be a real self-sacrificing hero.
There IS a lot of free real estate, but its kind of out of the way.

Start here -


Somehow, I doubt I would be too bored, being one of the first people on Mars.

Cycloptichorn

U coud bring that book along,
and Ray Bradbury 's book.

it's funny, i don't really like fantasy (ie sword and sorcery), but at the same time, i don't like a lot of science in my science fiction

i'd go with bradbury

The real problem that Mars would present is what would happen if we colonized it. With less than 40% of our gravity, there is a strong possibility that any children born on the planet would not develop the same heavy bone structure we have to deal with the gravity of this planet. It is entirely possible that over time, with a Martian colony, the people being born there would diverge from terrestrial humans to the point of being a new species. Any natives of Mars who came to the earth would be nearly immobilized by what would be to them crushing gravity, more than 250% of what they were born and raised in.

Of course, there is also the problem of them not being shielded from cosmic radiation, so their entire lives would probably be spent underground.

The first visitor to Mars will have to travel for several months in a high radiation environment, deal with significant lack of gravity issues, land on a very barren planet, get back into orbit and make it back home in the same high radiation conditions, then get back to the ground on Earth. Good luck with that.

Quote:

The first visitor to Mars will have to travel for several months in a high radiation environment, deal with significant lack of gravity issues, land on a very barren planet, get back into orbit and make it back home in the same high radiation conditions, then get back to the ground on Earth. Good luck with that.

That fact alone is one reason i am doubtful that we will see interstellar colonization at any time sooner than the very distant future. It is also one of the primary reasons that i find the so-called Fermi paradox to be rather naive.