MUSK ON MARS
Elon Musk, the worlds wealthiest eccentric, has famously said “I want to die on Mars, just not whilst landing..!” He also wants to send “millions of colonists” to Mars in case of nuclear war on Earth, so that “Earth could be re-populated from Mars”. Colonisation of Mars is a ludicrous ambition not just for the foreseeable future, but possibly for all time considering conditions there – a freezing desert with an atmosphere only 1% as dense as earth’s – mostly Carbon Dioxide. Barring the discovery of a revolutionary space-propulsion technology which does away with wasteful inefficient rockets, any “colonising” mission this century would probably number no more than a few score colonists, if even that many, due to the difficulty of sustaining them once there, assuming they didn’t arrive in the fashion Musk fears the most. And they would probably have to live underground. And its a one-way trip, there is no coming back – so why would anyone in their right mind want to go and live there?
ELONS AGO AND FAR AWAY.
Maybe Musk knows something us mere mortals, who don’t want to die on a frozen barren airless planet, are not privy to? Maybe he has secretly invented a time machine and intends going back in time to when Mars was habitable? Stranger things have happened – at least in sci-fi ..! It would certainly make far more sense as, many Elons ago, Mars had oceans and seas and rivers, so it may have once been habitable and even have evolved advanced life forms. It has often been speculated – counter intuitively – that the lower gravity of smaller planets would tend to favour the evolution of bigger creatures, so maybe Mars was home to giant carnivorous lizards similar to T-Rex and other huge dinosaurs which roamed Earth millions of years ago. So let’s assume Mars – or the Mars of Musk’s imagination – is still like that. Let us further pretend he, by then, has the technology to send 10,000 colonists – perhaps not all at once but over several years. So, assuming they have all the necessary materials and manufacturing facilities, etc, what sort of homes would the Mars colonists construct to live in – bearing in mind that Martian creatures are both enormous and highly dangerous?
2050 headline – MARTIANS MURDER MUSK
Musk’s Mars of his imagination may also be home to cannibalistic human-like creatures, only much bigger than us. In 2050 the first large group of colonists, led by their 79 year old patriarch Elon Musk, land safely on Mars, to their leaders great relief..! But, in a re-play of the Roanoke Island mystery, the colonisers disappear without trace soon after..! Some years later a relief expedition found evidence that they had been killed and eaten by Martian aborigines who spurned “cultural enrichment” in favour of the “culinary enrichment” of “earthling-on-the-spit”..!
Back to the future (or is it the distant past?) – would our 10,000 plucky pioneer colonists scatter all over the planet, establishing a number of smaller colonies in several places – or would most of them remain in one big home colony? Mars being a very hostile environment in every way, most of them would want to settle in a home base, both for personal security and to conserve resources. So would they construct a typical earth townscape? The usual mix of individual houses, small to medium-sized apartment blocks, with separate buildings for factories, offices and shops, etc.? If so, then power and water would need to be piped to all the separate buildings, which would also need to be linked by a road network, requiring cars and delivery vehicles, maybe even a public transport network? And then there’s the issue of waste removal, human waste for starters.
When you stop to think about everything that is needed to create even a small conventional townscape from scratch, it does seem rather a daft idea doesn’t it?
There can be little doubt that the colonists would be housed in ONE LARGE BUILDING in which they could safely, securely, and comfortably live under one sheltering roof – a big roof that could also harvest water, wind and solar power..! Not only would this be much safer than being scattered around in many individual buildings, it would conserve resources whilst greatly simplifying maintenance and the provision and distribution of water, energy, food, etc. It would also make waste re-cycling – including the human variety, which would be needed to fertilise the barren Martian soil – so much easier..!
Was there ever a bigger no-brainer..?
IF ABOVE THEN WHY NOT BELOW..? (IN HEAVEN AS ON EARTH..!)
OK, enough of the Sci-Fi. I was surmising about what kind of habitat would make a suitable home on another planet, but the idea of large numbers of people living under one roof also makes enormous sense on earth..! EVEN MORE SO, since there are so many more of us down here, and our conventional 2-dimensional sprawls consume far too many resources and generate much more WASTE than necessary..! And the biggest waste of all (although rarely thought of as such) is the TIME WASTED rushing to and from workplaces, shops and schools, etc. If everything we need is under one big roof, everything would then be far simpler and operate more efficiently. Maintenance and repairs, public utilities, delivery of supplies, conservation of energy and other resources, re-cycling and sustainability in general, . Accuse me of being alarmist but, what with ever increasing terrorism and massive illegal immigration, future cities will need SECURITY and DEFENSIBILITY..!. Hopefully I will be proved wrong, but it is something we should plan for and something that would be virtually impossible to incorporate into conventional sprawl cities with their countless uncontrolled entry points.
Enclosed shopping malls were considered futuristic when they first appeared in the late 1950’s. So, given that our shopping experience has already evolved from noisy, windy, and untidy streets to enclosed shopping malls – which most of us prefer – why stop there? Why not go the whole hog with enclosed cities..?
Surely that is what any ADVANCED CIVILISATION would build..?
Its the no-brainer of no-brainers..!
So why aren’t we doing it NOW..? The Jeremiahs will opine “what makes sense on another planet doesn’t apply here on earth..!” But why not? An enclosed habitat in which several thousand people can live is not NOT ROCKET SCIENCE but common-sense..! The idea is simplicity itself when compared with the technical complexities of many other technologies, especially that of getting a small unmanned probe to land on Mars. The Jeremiahs will then opine that most people don’t want to live in such close confines because we will fight amongst each other..! Counter-intuitively, the prevention of “fighting amongst each other” is one of the best arguments in favour of the concept, as I will explain later on..!
Of course we DO NOT YET have the technology to get large numbers of people to Mars, regardless of whether it be the habitable Mars of the distant past or today’s frozen lifeless desert. BUT we DO have the technology to build large all-purpose habitats such as just described, and in fact we have already built many such habitats.
The most massive of these are the 5 “Oasis” class (no relation) ships, which can accommodate 6000+ in luxurious “staterooms”. Admittedly most cruise-ship staterooms are quite small and don’t have cooking facilities, as nobody lives in them full time. But many people would want to live in them if they could..! And how much simpler it would be to construct such habitats on land where all those expensive “extras” like steel double hulls, watertight bulkheads, huge engines, lifeboats, navigational equipment, etc., not to mention thousands of “crew” – would be totally irrelevant..!
Such facts strongly support my belief that Oasis Cities would be affordable for everyone, not just a wealthy elite..!
The “city” under one roof – aka “enclosed city” – is the obvious road for any advanced civilisation to take
