Prologue

My name is Alejandro Martínez Foronda and I am Spanish, this is my second year studying physics in the University of Seville and my main hobbies are observe the night sky through my telescope and the practice of alpinism. I am in love with the space and the universe since I can remember. My parents have told me that when I was two years old I always was looking for the moon in the sky and getting hypnotized by its shape. But I do not only like to observe stars and nebulas, I would like to go out there someday, my dream of becoming an astronaut has been always there and is this dream which inspire me thinking about a future where there are humans in other celestial bodies. Once you know my dream of stepping in another world someday, you can imagine what the work is about.

In this work I tried to replicate how the world could be in the year 2100 and its evolution to the final state in the most realistic way. Every fact is calculated or extracted from verified sources and every event or technology mentioned are under study or physically possible. Some of the names are invented and others were picked from future real future projects from space agencies. It is my vision, but I do not like empty dreams, I like those that can become a reality, and this is one of them. I go over some of the key moments that lead us to my futuristic vision, so the reader can understand what series of event took the world of today to the world that I have written here. I thought I knew nearly everything about the problems of living in other planets but I have discovered by writing this that there are much more difficulties than the few I first thought. I ran out of space to tell you all of them, but did you know that mars had sandstorms that can last for months? What I have learned while creating this is unbelievable. Thinking about all the details of space travel has intensified my aims of becoming an astronaut.

I would like to impress the reader with facts that they maybe had not thought about the future before. From the small details of being in a spaceship for months to how the mankind was able to reach the ultimate frontier. But my main objective is to make the reader ask himself: “why don´t we do that?” and then unlock their ability to imagine how the world would be in the future. I have inserted some invented fragments from well-known newspapers and other media that tell about other possible aspects in the future, aiming to cover non space related topics too. I hope it is to your liking.

The truth behind the reasons that result in the most dangerous travel of the entire history remains unknown. We are facing a rebirth of the old heroic exploration era that, time ago, took the most fearless people to explore the Antarctic, to reach the south-pole and to climb the most deadly mountains, some of then rising nearly the nine thousand meters above the sea level. Names as Ernest Shackleton, Roald Amundsen or Edmund Hillary always have inspire and encourage people to reach the most recondite places of our planet. Their stories… Who could have imagined stories as the one of the Endurance ship if they had not happened. Who can be so crazy to embark himself on a suicidal mission, where the chances of coming back alive are less than the chances of getting a six by rolling a dice. A mission where you will be exposed to the most hostile environment, where everything, from the air to the ice, seems to be waiting the right moment to make you die. Even the risks and the most horrible form of death are unimportant compared to the glory of reaching where no man or woman have set foot. Over  time, the risks were decreasing as the technology increased. This ends up with the destruction of the first heroic exploration era, which cost so many lives.

Not so long time ago, about the year 2026, the Antarctic was crossed in winter by foot. A Russian explorer called Adrik Sokolov went in to the darkness of the southernmost continentˋs permanent night to attempt the five-thousand kilometres walk. Later on, the K2 was summited in winter (Taking advantage of the warmest winter in earth due to the climate change), and the Muchu Chhish was climbed for the first time. When this happened, the most challenging feats on earth where beaten. Then, lots of courageous people started looking out of the planet.

Back in the first years of the century, the private space companies started to rise and compete against the governmental agencies. Competition is the maid of the development, so the cost of pushing one kilogram in orbit decreased substantially. When the ISS was retired from service, these advancements in rocket science allowed the construction of a new station to replace the old ISS. It was called the IOB (International Orbital Base) and this made possible the construction of the most advanced structure up to date, the LOP-Gateway (Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway) by NASA and Roscosmos. The LOP-Gateway was built to be used like a gas-station in a future travel to Mars. Believe it or not, some private spatial agencies merged and built others platform for their own business and, the old empire of China become one of the most advanced spatial power in the world in spite of having the most individualistic space program ever created, nobody knows what takes place inside a Chinese space station and probably nobody will ever tell. With a total number of twenty-one space stations in orbit for the year 2038, the advancements of the space travel were enough for a manned flight to Neptune, but no one was set foot even in Mars. Then, the history-changing event happened. A modification in the Outer Space Treatment allowed a very small start-up to become a billionaire company in the course of two years. It is normal to feel curious about what were the series of events that caused this, I will try to explain it, but I admit that it sounds unreal, even more than fifty years later. The start-up called Bennu got an incredible inversion when they announced their plan to commit a subtle displacement of the asteroid Bennu which is an “NEA” (Near Earth Asteroid) in its closest approach to earth in the summer of 2045. In space, a minimal force applied to an object will change his status of movement forever. For example, if an astronaut is in orbit, staying close to his vehicle and he suddenly sneeze (imagine that he is not wearing a helmet), he will start to move in the opposite direction of the sneeze and will never be able to reach his vehicle again. This is called the third Newton´s Principle and is what made possible for Bennu to modify the orbit of Bennu (you will forgive the redundancy, I am not the one who names the companies) with a kind of rocket landed in the asteroid, and guess what, the orbit of Bennu was minutely altered to redirect it towards the earth. But they were not a bunch of lunatics that wanted to destroy the planet, they calculate it precisely to set Bennu in close orbit to the earth like a second moon. Two years took to Bennu for changing its orbit, the media was burning against the company, accusing them of endanger the earth and its inhabitants, but the plan could never have failed, the maths of orbit calculation never lies. The asteroid linked up with the earth´s orbit. The initial plan was to move the asteroid to L1 (Langraniang point 1), at 1.502.000 million of kilometres from earth, this was good for calm down the media, but what Bennu do really wanted was to set the asteroid in close orbit around the Earth, which was more dangerous but acceptable for the company. The kids always ask the same, Why they spent billions of euros in moving a big rock? Well, that “big space rock” is like a entire gold nugget, a huge gold nugget. It is a enormous space ball made of high valuable metals. But we have metals in earth, why should we pick them from an asteroid? The problems that the metals in the earth have are that they are in the earth! In the mid of the century, the cost of setting a kilogram in orbit was a lot cheaper than in times of the Space Shuttle but it still around some thousand dollars by kilogram. If you have all the metal needed for the construction of spaceships already in orbit, the costs are way lower, but the technology of those times was light years from being able to do “space-mining”. That was not as important as the fact that the human being had been able to move a giant rock to the orbit, as a new moon, visible in the night sky like a very bright star (three times brighter than Venus) that crossed the firmament at high speed. This fact do not only propitiated the most quickly growing start-up of all times but acted as a propaganda campaign for space exploration and inversion, like the one by Elon Musk´s red Tesla floating in space. Was the start of the commonly known as the “space bubble”. Suddenly, the space related topics become interesting for people that never have even know what the Hubble Telescope was. Some multinational companies from nearly every market segment (Apple, Microsoft Corp, Amazon, Toyota, Visa…) were investing in the space industry and this made possible that in just 6 months, Spacex was ready to launch his Mars mission, the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) program, the flux of money kept going so, the development of the technology was able to promise a totally safe travel through the 227.9 millions kilometres that separates us from the Red Planet. The travel was at first sold as a one way journey, this means that the crew from the first space flight to Mars maybe will not see their home planet again. Lots of the most influent people of the world wanted to take place in the colonization of other planet and the space tourism was some kind of usual in those times, so the crew was thought to be mixed between astronauts and tourists or adventurers, obviously after a proper three years long and intense training. Nobody will ever imagine where those naive ideas of Mars and space exploration will lead us.

“the nuclear energy will be our only hope in a near future. But

we can not lead with these amount of radioactive waste

in our home planet, we need to bet stronger, we need to

master the nuclear fusion before it is too late. The temperatures

of the globe are reaching the maximum that our scientist

told us half a century ago, maybe it is too late now,

maybe the dinosaurs thought they had time too. Cities are

getting under the sea level, polar…”.

 

New York Times, 14th December, 2029.

 

Those are some of the events that took me here, at this exact moment; 21 of December of 2099, at this exact place; some point between the earth and our destiny, Mars. The space program had a great success creating the first human colony in other planet, but the space bubble collapsed in 2059 after a mixed crew of 102 people all perished because of a problem caused by one of the “tourist crew member” that thought he was trained enough to repair the S.I.D.R.A of the BFR (Spacexˋs ITS main ship). The S.I.D.R.A is a huge device that was used in the ISS to depurate the carbon dioxide from the air and obtain oxygen, the device that was on board of the BFR had not anything in common with the S.I.D.R.A from the ISS, but the astronauts refused to call it with a different name if its function was the same. It is probably a consequence of the practical training that astronauts receive. The negligence committed by this haughty member of the crew caused the short circuit that ignited the oxygen tank, which you can imagine the rest. A twelve millions spaceship converted in one and only big firework that cost lots of lives of incalculable value completely wrecked the investors´ idea of the space industry, this slowed down the process but mars had already a colony that needed constant supply and attention, which mean money. The manned flights to space suddenly were taken more seriously and the space tourism was reduced to its minimal expression. This event was called the Major Tragedy and its known as the most important inflexion point of the space career up to date. Maybe is one of the reasons why I can feel safe inside a thin can floating in space.

 

“the president Barzdevics has definitely

 approved the Only-Son Decree Law, which will introduce

unpayable taxes to those people who want to form

a traditional family with more than one son.

They said that is for the planet, why don´t we just kill

each other “for the planet”? It is absurd”

CNN, 5th May, 2051.

 

The life in this reduced space can be very difficult some times. Nine months confined to a space that will suffocate a mole is not as pleasant as you could think. When I was young, I thought that the problem with vital space would be ended when I come to be a spaceman, nothing could be more untrue. I think that the feelings of being here, flying in a interplanetary mission, has to be so similar to the feelings that Shackleton experienced when trying to go between icebergs, getting closer and closer to the unknown. You just have to change the space dust instead of icebergs, the cosmic radiation instead of the freezing air and a group of expert scientist instead of a crew of sailors. It can sound absurd but a big enough speck of dust could break through the outer aluminium layer of the spaceship, the inner plates and drill a hole crossing the rest of the ship, just is a matter of luck that we do not get killed by one of these. The exposure to cosmic and solar radiation are not a matter of luck, they are a matter of time. Every second, you are being hit with a ton of particles moving closely to the speed of light and you do not even notice it, unless one of this particles hit you exactly on the retina, in which case you will suddenly see a flash of light coming of nowhere which does not happen on earth because the atmosphere stop all this dangerous radiation. This sometimes reminds me that I am surrounded by a environment that could kill me in seconds and that just a thin layer of aluminium separates me from the outer space. It is scary, of course, but amazing at the same time. I would rather not to die but, it would not be so terrible if I lose my life surrounded by stars, in the middle of nowhere, floating adrift forever.

 

We will land in few weeks now, after eight months travelling through planets. I am really looking forward to land in the Martian base since it was founded when the first BFR landed on the planet, this will be my second time in the planet, which makes me to be called as a Veteran. The crew of that mission did a great job raising the first base. It was really hard at the beginning, they had to explore an area surrounding the landing place of about twenty kilometres, looking for a place where they can stablish a solid base. Meanwhile, they deployed a structure around the landing site to have a proper living space. The base was first self-sustainable two years after the first spaceship arrived. The Martian base consists of an metal and plastic skeleton that makes place for few rooms and corridors between its intricate patterns and that are made for holding Martian soil bricks. Martian soil bricks are maid of materials of the surface and a chemical preparation that turns the dust and the small stones into hard bricks that will coat the structure with two layers. This is needed to reduce the amount of radiation that the thin atmosphere can not stop in Mars, so it has to be a really wide barrier to prevent its inhabitants of being safe from the radiation. The final look of a Martian base is really close to a cave-house look, they seem awesome to me because look like a rustic farmhouse just before you remember that was built in another planet. The “plastic” between layers actually is a insulating material that prevent us from freezing under the temperatures that are reached during the night, however wee need heat radiators to keep the temperature at a reasonable level. The base also have a garden which consists in a windowed dome with some Martian rocks inside it that I consider is the best place in the entire base. I can not wait to sit there again and contemplate the horizon of other planet, watching the sunset of a world that is not mine is absolutely magic, few people can live such a pleasure. Telling you as this about living in Mars make it sounds easy and comfortable but trust me when I say that is one of the hardest works. Nowadays the lifestyle is more relaxed, but at the beginning a day in Mars was eighteen hours a day repairing stuff, trying to achieve a stable flux of electricity from the reactors and the panels to the base, and yes, we have not one but two “little” nuclear reactors (they are about the size of a scholar bus nailed in vertical to the ground). They supply the ground power of the base, and are needed because our solar panels can only work during the day, the same mechanism that follows cities in earth. We spent a lot of time doing the infinite experiments and researching that ground control told us to do. They normally consist in measure wind speed, levels of methane, and other characteristics about the atmosphere. The growth of plants and even trees; the analysis of rocks, dust, drilled materials, ice, water and every single weird thing that the commonly known as “ground people” tell us by radio. Talking about radio, can you believe that we did not have radio contact during the Martian night until a while ago? Some of the companies referred to communication services on earth refused to give us satellite coverage because there was not enough population on mars to profit the infrastructure needed, and we can not communicate with another planet with one in the middle of the signal path, unbelievable. Now there is even a holo-news-programme about the things that happens in the Martian base every day. In case you did not know, holo is how people call the holographic evolution of TVs.

 

“Today, April the 25th, will be a day that

will appear in every history book as the

day that the human being stepped in another planet

for the first time. The crew of the Pathway BFR 2 mission

have successfully land in Mars without

 any complication…”

CBC, 25th April, 2046.

 

In my first deployment on Mars, the things went amazingly well the first days, I was kind of speechless about being in another planet different to earth but we did not even have time to think about where we were standing, the pace of work was so intense to do so. The soft gravity took my attention at the very beginning, you perceive yourself twice as strong as you was on earth, actually, you are three time less attracted to the ground than in earth, you should be careful with jumping inside the base. We must spend nearly two hours a day doing exercise to keep our muscles active and to slow down some side effects that the low gravity has in our bones and hearts. The crew of about fifty people living in the Martian base never have difficulties to get over problems, as an individual person or as a collective team. We always find the way to repair the reactors or fix the air filter, it seems that there was not a problem that could stop us. Even we knew how to treat a person who had felt in depression (a very common disorder between confined crews). The grind remained as told until that happened. Did you know that Mars have seasons as the earth does? There, in earth, you can enjoy the winter, spring, summer and autumn in the pass of 365 days. Well, here, in Mars we only have four seasons because the rotation axis of Mars is inclined as the axis of the earth. But honestly, we do not perceive any climatic change during the Martian year, which is the maximum period of time that a mission can last. If you ask somebody who has worked in Mars about what are the seasons of this planet, he will tell you that are just two: the bad season and the worst season. The only way to understand this is by living in Mars a long period of time, the “worst season” take place after the perihelion of the orbit of Mars. In the perihelion of the orbit, the sun is closer to mars than in any other point of its orbit, and the difference between the energy that reaches both hemispheres intensifies. The south hemisphere is going through its spring season and receives much more energy from the sun than the north hemisphere and, as we know on earth, a difference on the temperature means a difference in the barometric pressure of the atmosphere, which causes the wind. In earth, a certain configuration of wind and other conditions can derive in the formation of storms and, in the worst-case scenario, hurricanes. If the winds are strong enough to lift up the sand on a desert, is called a sandstorm. In Mars, a desert of planetary dimensions, the wind can freely go over the surface with few obstacles, in addition to a huge temperature difference between the hemispheres, the consequences are obvious. Once a year (sometimes there are two or more) the wind start to flow between hemispheres, this flow rapidly turns into gusts of wind of hundreds kilometres per hour, which pull the dust from the surface of the planet to the atmosphere. Can you imagine what it is like to be in an unexplored planet submerged in a permanent night caused by a powder coating? It reminds me the deeds of people who explored the Antarctic while the winter was hanging over them. Some of them died or went mad during the night. There are some tales about people who started to see ghosts and other kind of hallucinations. In Mars is like living the same experience but years in the future. I clearly remember how was the day it started, the wind was doing much more noise than the day before, how the messages from the earth alerted us about some kind of changes in the weather and that Larry, our canary pet like the ones people used to carry with them into deeps mines in earth, was acting weirder than usual. Mars is normally windy, you are always listening to the soft whisper of the Martian wind stroking the structure where we had been confined for months, so you perfectly know when the things are not going as usually out there without the need of looking through a window. The wind was the first announcement, the dust was the second. The Martian dust, instead of being thin, moves twice as faster as the dust in terrestrial sandstorms does due to the air density. The dust punishes every component surrounding the base such as solar panels, communication systems or even nuclear reactors. To top it off, the communication system often fails because of the electrical phenomena carried by the storm. In some cases, the storm can expand to other regions of the planet and it maybe will cover the entire world with dust, submerging it in the dark, which often lasts for weeks and even months. We have few and narrow windows to communicate with ground control, so we send loop messages to the antennas waiting to one of these windows and sometimes it can take days to get a response from earth. During my first Martian sandstorm (If you want to call it that) there was just one secondary operative nuclear reactor and the solar panels could not provide us of any electricity because there was no sunlight reaching the surface. With just one reactor powering the entire base we would not have lasted long, the surface during a sandstorm gets colder and colder each day because of the lack of solar light which is stopped by the dust in the atmosphere, we can assume the cost of about five thousand watts in heating, but this will increase each day during the storm and can reach the point in what we have not enough power to light or communicate at the same time that we maintain the base at a reasonable temperature.

 

I think it was the second week after the storm began. Captain “Nike” and the electrical engineer Peter Pesquet decided to get in their mars-suits and walk in the middle of the storm to the first reactor to release the power output limitations, which will make possible to the reactor to transfer the amount of energy needed by the base. We do not need to open an epic wide metal gate to get out of the base like in the old space movies. We have a system that allows us to get in our mars-suits without leaving the room. I will explain that: it is a mix of taking a plane and working with delicate materials in a laboratory, when you take a plane on earth, you usually walk through a boarding platform to the entry of the plane and you do not even step in the landing track and, do you know those gloves which can be found in some laboratories that allow you to manipulate substances inside a vacuum or a sterilized chamber where they are stuck to? Here in Mars, there are some mars-suits stuck to walls on the MarsWalk Module (MWM) that allow the people to get inside their suits while are fixed to the wall, so once you are inside the suit, it closes and pressurizes automatically and is unstuck from the wall to the outside with the help of a simple hydraulic elevator platform. This way, the dust and other substances from the surface do not get into the base and there are not uncomfortable pressurization processes. I do not even know why this was not the method for planned spacewalks in the past. We developed this technology when we had to lead with long exposition to lunar dust in some lunar mission, which is toxic for us. The point was that Nike and Pesquet exited the base to perform a Mars walk without permission from ground control (we did not have any communication with them). Modifying a nuclear reactor, with gloves, with helmet and in the middle of a Martian sandstorm was not any kind of easy job, in fact, I struggle to think of a harder activity. Pesquet was probably the most awarded engineer of history, he created half of the circuits that were used in interplanetary ships and most of the electrical installation of the reactor and base. He was an absolute expert. Nike was such a nice commander that was the only person alive that has stayed in mars more time than the limit for normal missions, and even doubled it, so he is known as the first true Martian human in history. It may was the wind, might was an electric shock or a human error. They are still remembered as the heroes they were. When they were trying to manipulate the alternating current output, Pesquet was reached by a huge voltage load, his suit acted as a faraday cage so he did not receive any physical damage but his oxygen load did. The depressurization was unavoidable. The huge spark that reached Pesquet fried the circuitry of the reactor by jumping the fuses and blinded the Captain, who could not do anything to help his dying mate and when he tried to return to base, he found he was completely alone and disorientated. In base we tried to radio contact him, we thought about going outside or drive one of the rovers to find him. Minutes turned into hours and no life signals were received, maybe the electric shock burned out the radio system, the rover did not find anything around the base and the reactor, the visibility was horrible because of the dense dust and wind. We were left without captain, just with the emergency generator which was not able to maintain the power needed for the heating system. Nobody was experienced enough as Pesquet to go out there and repair a nuclear reactor, so we lost the power it was providing. All the operations cease, the emergency lights were the only thing that shinned in that dark and cold base inhabited by more than forty people, scared, submerged into the dark of a hostile celestial body´s storm of planetary dimensions. Those lectures about The Endurance came to my mind, how many time will we survive in such conditions? How did Shackleton make to keep his crew unified when the Endurance sank down under the ice?

 

 

“the 3D bioprinting, the Crispr methods and

other technological advances have achieved

a longer life expectancy, but problems as

the systematic IQ leak of the population or

the decreasing testosterone levels between young

people from new generations due to a

bad alimentation or stress are worrying to the experts.

Are these problems the next medical challenge?

Health problems derived from social beha…”

 

Science & Vie, 8th June, 2063.

 

The next day, and we only knew that was “daytime” because of the clocks Martian around the base, we reached temperatures inside the complex of under six degrees below zero. Some people was suffering by now the effects of hypothermia, I tried to keep myself moving with the mars-suit on to keep my body heat, helping here and there to all the mates that had some kind of problems. Some of them started to think that was the end of their missions and probable the entire mars colonization project and that they will die there, I do not blame them, the conditions were extreme. That night we all move to “sleep” in the common room which is often used as a canteen and started a fire right in the middle of the instance, burning data papers from past experiments, the heating system was reconfigured to heat just that room and any other system were shut down. When the carbon dioxide started to be high enough to active the sensors, we turned off the fire and went to sleep without knowing that some of us will not awake the next no-sun morning. The emergency reactor which had been working since the accident run out of oil during the night and the responsibility of keeping the heating system rested in the battery installation. When I stopped hearing the sound of the generator I knew that our only way to survive to the situation was the storm to stop. That night we reached the coldest temperatures that I have ever experienced but the wind was less intense than the days before. I remember the feel of my feet getting frostbite, the pleasant feeling of the hypothermia invading me at the end of that night, I was dying frozen but it felt nice to me, such a weird effect that the extreme cold have in our brain. I remember how that only and weak sun ray penetrated the instance though a little window in the ceiling. The next thing I can think off is an immense hot, you can think that this was good for my frozen toes but that was extremely suffocating. I understood what was happening, the solar panels came to live again because the sun reached the surface and all the power that they produced was entirely going through the heating system of that only room. I was too weak to do something more than pray and expect any other member of the crew to be strong enough to reconfigure the systems. Twelve deaths that night speak for themselves. Ground control got horrified by this, we were the headline of every single newspaper in earth, those events shook the world and since then, we have had two nuclear reactors that produce four times the power that we had when everything happened. The corpse of Captain “Nike” whose real name was Alex Duque appeared lying down, partially covered by sand, seven kilometres away to the south of the base.

 

Recently, the life in mars is much easier than it used to be. In earth, at the beginning of the modern history, known as the Anthropocene, when the humans started to seriously modify their environment, life was hard. But when features like medicine, automations, combustions engines and electricity appeared, the life turned much more pleasant and comfortable. This is what exactly has been happening in Mars these years. The base has increased its extension exponentially, is now able to take in more than 1000 inhabitants. There is even a sport complex where people can play sports, yes, a sport complex. As I told before, people in Mars need to do a lot of sport and, instead of acting like an obese hamster and run like if tomorrow does not exists on a treadmill as they used to do in the old ISS, nowadays people can do the sport they need in the complex, competing or doing every kind of sports. The sport centre is called Pesquet Complex in memory of Peter Pesquet and has an indoor court to play aerobasket, athletics, classic football and an outdoor field for playing Martian golf, football 11, running and going for long walks, obviously with mars-sportsuits. You may be interested about how the sports like aerobasket look in Mars. Aerobasket is the known universe´s most important sport at the end of the XXI century (football decayed in the thirties), it consists in a three dimensional court that has the ground or first stage, the second stage which is a dish hanging from the ceiling and the third stage that are where the baskets can be found. Every stage is on the top of the previous one. This make like a classic basket court, but separated in three levels of high that can be reached by jumping with a springed-boots that players wear. This springed-boots allow them to jump up to four meters and easily move between the stages if you are trained enough. The baskets are vertical to the ground, so the ball has to pass through it horizontally and not vertically as in the normal basketball. There are competitions and leagues between sectors of the Martian base and the called MarsLeague which is the most important sport event of the two worlds I would say. It is broadcasted by TV to the earth and has a big audience, it is amazing to see people flying meters and throwing the ball so far that they seem to be super humans. People on earth even choose which sector they want to support during the matches, the interest of people at the space is increasing by moments thanks to the great things we did here and this interest will be the first step to achieve the interplanetary future of the mankind.

 

“Japan has become the first country to perform

the change to nuclear fusion, it seems that

the salvation of the earth may come before

 its destruction. But we can´t forget that we

started a chain that is having serious consequences

and the worst ones are above to arrive. The thaw

that we have seen during last decades is worrying

and the impact is irreparable. Would be needed

a new ice age to repair all the damage that

we have done…”

ABC Noticias, 19th January, 2089

 

The space industry has been raising these years, since the invention of the lasetromagnetic extraction tech, the technologies of space mining are developing faster. The extractions on Bennu have started and the metals from it will be used in the construction of a large habitable park in the Martian base and some people talk about a second base at the south. Once the material from Bennu is in the market, privates companies will start to build their own Martian base too. The fact that a crew of people are working in mining a big space rock means the beginning of a new era, called the space age, which is comparable to the importance of the transition to the age of metals.

 

The influence of our Martian world was so strong over the earth that, with the construction of new habitable place in the base, the first space tourists since the Major Tragedy of the BFR ship, moved to Mars this year. The richest people on earth can buy a ticket to a new live in a new world where they will start from zero again, like normal people. Up to that date, the only people who have set foot on Mars were expert in different areas like architecture, engineering, physics, biology and medicine. Now, people with no expertise will be able to live in mars too and this can mean the beginning of a new era in Mars. Greats labels started to create products around this market niche that Mars brought to people on earth. Sport shoes for different sports practiced in mars were produced and, because only millionaires were able to fly to mars, the prices of these accessories were absolutely unreal, the best, obviously was the nineteen thousand ISK (which rounds about twenty thousand old American dollars) Low-G Underpants (patented system). A market created around Mars exploration made huge brands as The North Face, to start producing highly performance mars-suits for private use. Other brands and companies joined the market around Mars and started their own mars-suits production line, which derived in a competitive market which, as we have seen with the space bubble, it entails huge advancements. The advancements were such that this year, a really big group of companies joined to make history with the first ascent to Olympus Mons. In case you did not know about Olympus Mons, it is the highest mountain and volcano on Mars and also the highest of the entire solar system with more than twenty four thousand meters high above the surface, three times bigger than Mount Everest. The infrastructure needed for such a daring feat is out of any concept that you can imagine. It will be the most difficult ascent of any time in history and the first alpine activity that takes place in another planet. As in times of Edmund Hillary, the new heroic exploration era is starting in front of my own eyes, and after a world is explored, the people who live there are more free to move, free to travel and free to live. The Olympus Mons is the beginning that will end with expeditions to the poles of Mars. I hope I will live enough to see how this planet comes to life. At first, the Antarctic was undiscovered, then discovered but not explored and later, when it was explored, some scientific institutions settle there. Mars will be the same, an empire of science and progress that some brave people made it possible.

 

This is not even the start of the second exploration era, Mars is just the guy who lives next to you in the cosmic neighbourhood. We have proved that we can achieve anything we consider important enough to finance it, despite the risks. Just in the colonization of mars I mentioned 116 deaths, but there were much more. Deaths that we will carry in our hearts each time we step in the surface of any celestial body. We know that is possible to continue the exploration, we know that we can land in Titan, the moon of Saturn, we must explore the frozen worlds of Encelado and Europa in search of any living form and keeping in mind that, the more spread out we are, the more strong we get. The techniques of mining will advance and maybe in one century we will have mining ships that will go between asteroids, harvesting metals and other compounds and then use them in the construction of bigger space stations that will someday allow the interstellar travel. It will not be easy, I just have been inside this spaceship for eight months and I was already bored enough to write this abstract of the colonization of the space, can´t imagine being in a spaceship like this for four years. We are building in Mars what we could not build in earth, we are learning of our past errors. In all we have done in Mars, we have shown what we are capable of, so let show now what we are capable of imagine, and then, make it a reality.

 

Epilogue

Speaking clearly, we are driving the planet to a massive disaster, we are living like without thinking about the future of the planet. We have the only habitable planet that we know can house life and we are just destroying it. Other planets such as mars are much more inhospitable to us despite of the structure or shelters we might build on them. This is the reason why we must keep and respect the earth because the only planets that are remotely similar to earth are hundreds of light years away from us. I hope this story to inspire someone to start making the change that we need, to redirect the earth to a sustainable future. Remind that I said everything I wrote here is possible and we only need people to make it happens.

To those who lost their lives trying to push the space exploration to its furthest.