Category: In the Shadow of Ares

…continues, albeit slowly thanks to family visits and summer activities.

I started out by scanning and reviewing my collection of index card notes from about 2009 on, during which exercise I kept finding observations that worked as Silas Hudson quotes (indeed, I found the origin of a few of them that were ultimately used in Redlands). Amused by this, I worked backwards through the (then) five notebooks covering 2022 through 2024, then through the margin notes in several books I had read on topics relevant to the character. Those sources alone filled four books like these with fictional quotes from Silas Hudson:

At some point, I decided to go back to the beginning of the journals (or at least to 2006, when I became a lot more diligent about writing down ideas) and work forward systematically. Which turned out to be interesting for several unexpected reasons.

First, a lot of the content from 2006-2013 related to the citizen journalism project (People’s Press Collective) that I was involved in at the time. Almost one entire 140-page notebook was nothing but descriptions of argumentative tactics I had encountered online, information I had intended to use in training classes for activists. (When we closed down PPC, I had already created over 600 charts worth of class material. There are probably a few hundred more in the notebooks waiting to be written up. Even after combining and culling duplicates, this would have been a somewhat long training class.)

Second, there was a major shift of content in 2014. From about 2011 to 2013, writing-related notes gradually increased from about 15% of each journal to about 30%, and general ideas and observations went from maybe 5% to about 20%. For some reason, this shifted to about 30-35% writing-related and 50% or more ideas and observations starting when I started a new notebook mid-July 2014. I don’t recall anything happening at that time to cause it, but it’s night and day different from the one notebook to the next.

Prior to this point there were maybe a dozen Silas Hudson-relevant notes (very different from the index cards). After this point, they started appearing regularly, albeit nowhere near as often in the 2022-2024 notebooks.

In contrast, there was a constant trickle of Jedediah Thoreson-relevant notes throughout. But these too became noticeably more frequent after July 2014, though not yet as common as those relevant to Silas Hudson.

Third, there are a lot of good notes originating ideas or scenes or details that ended up in various Dispatches and in the second book – and many that did not. Some of the latter are really interesting as different potential paths these stories could have taken, or which future stories may use. Documenting all of that is going to take a second pass through all of the material, however.

At December 2014, I’ve almost filled book #5 for Hudson, and about three-quarters of one book for Thoreson (who gets this journal). The latter character is a little more difficult, as I don’t (yet) hear his voice quite the way I do Hudson’s. Probably because I spent a lot of time fleshing out Hudson for Redlands, while Thoreson in his (incomplete) story is intentionally something of an enigma to the other characters.

 

I plotted out a Dispatch involving the first men to summit Olympus Mons, which originally included a dramatic scene on the summit ridge on the rim of the caldera.

Which, further research revealed, is not where the summit actually is.

It turned out to be difficult to find the actual summit location, but in Google Mars (no, the one in Google Earth Pro) it appeared to be on the north rim of Pangboche. Great, I thought: I simply have to move the sequence a bit south, and the descriptions of the ridge still work just fine!

Well, no.

After more research, I finally discovered the summit is likely some 15km to the east of Pangboche. In the middle of a rolling plain.

Well. That complicates things a bit. It’s not exactly the kind of terrain where dramatic, death-defying challenges happen. Unless, of course, there are unexpected dangers lurking in those knolls…

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*- Title stolen from this, which I need to re-read. I liked it a lot more than the reviewer, and picked up on a lot more subtextual commentary than she apparently did (or than was intended, maybe), but I can see her points. 

Perhaps the most effective persuasion against technocracy was its own literature, especially science fiction depicting futures of pure reason and universal brotherhood – the Perfection of Man. These bright imaginary utopias of scientific splendor stood in embarrassing contrast to the drab, stultifying, and corrupt reality that emerged from every attempt to establish in reality the foundations necessary for constructing these fictitious new orders.

What can be imagined cannot necessarily be realized. And realization is all the more difficult when the paradise of the imagination runs counter to the reality of human nature.

— Silas Hudson

Sure, they have mars rover analogues in Iceland.  But this is a whole ‘nuther level.

The scale of the Kharkovchanka puts into perspective what would be required of a rover on Mars capable of what is described in the book and short stories (and especially in the in-work material).

Granted, most travel would be on “tracks”: the dirt or gravel roads plowed between settlements. But that wouldn’t be the case for the Ares missions or newly-landed settlements, exploration, or other activities taking place in undeveloped areas or in the Wilds. Where roads do not exist, something akin to a Kharkovchanka is needed: robust and powerful, and with a drive system able to tackle virgin terrain. The remoteness of such activities from settlements adds the need for extended self-sufficiency, including carrying supplies for a crew of (say) 4-8 people for several weeks.

When you add to this the living space and amenities necessary to allow them to do productive work while not losing their marbles from the cramped conditions, you get a substantially larger rover than what we’ve seen in the Ares Project stories (so far…).

It’d be tough to fit all this into a package that can be shipped to Mars on a “Mars Direct”-style lander, of course.  On the other hand, rovers used by the fictional Ares Project weren’t intended for extended use or long-distance travel (>500km), especially not with the full 4-6 person crew aboard. Based on real-world NASA conservatism in such things, such missions also wouldn’t land in areas with difficult terrain. Indeed, the fate of Ares III is an in-universe example of why “land in a parking lot” is sound practice in the early phases of exploration.

With the commencement of settlement on Mars, settlers needs quickly outgrow what can be accomplished with rovers small enough to transport from Earth. That the settlements are mostly commercial also means rovers transported from Earth constitute an enormous expenditure of limited capital. With the establishment of an industrial base, rovers become a high priority for import substitution. Larger, more robust, and more capable rovers incorporating local knowledge and experience in their design would be a high priority early on for the settlers, along with not having to break the bank to get them shipped from Earth.

Early on, combining imported high-tech (and high-density) items like power and navigation systems with Mars-fabricated heavy structures and bulky but simple components would be the obvious first step towards a fully Martian rover industry. The industry would be more Rolls-like than Ford-like (hand assembly vs. assembly lines, short runs vs. mass-production). But with a small population and no export market, you get what you get.

In the Mars context, however, rover systems and components have a market outside of the rover industry. A compact life support system, for example, is useful in fixed applications as well. ECLSS for rovers by nature would be transportable to undeveloped locations, making them perfect for startup settlements and oases. Though sized for what amounts to a Winnebago on steroids, ganging multiple small units provides ECLSS redundancy – and peace of mind for those at remote sites. Likewise, the same technology works for small spacecraft, like those needed to retrieve and ferry cargo at Phobos Station. The (literally) vital importance of ECLSS systems everywhere and to everyone on a dead and hostile planet makes them a target for import substitution at the earliest opportunity.

Once industry in general gets off the ground, the high cost of transporting even high-density, high-value components from Earth and Luna would drive import substitution in all areas. Local needs and transportation costs (along with MDA’s pesky port fees) incentivize the rapid expansion of local sources for everything required, not only bulky items like pressurized structures and wheels/treads but electronics, power generation and transmission, and even things like lubricants and coatings.

Could there realistically be a wholly local rover industry on Mars within fifteen years of the commencement of settlement? Something capable of manufacturing a hundred or more small and standard rovers and maybe a half-dozen Kharkovchanka-scale rovers every year? Again, there’s some artistic license involved here, but…why not?

Yes, we need to get back to blogging here. But you know how it is, sometimes other priorities intervene.

Anyway, getting back to writing, we’re (still) finishing up the crime story Dispatch we’ve been working on for a while. We’ve spent the past two weekends restructuring a portion of it to address a draggy sequence that was proving impossible to edit into shape. It’s turning out nicely, with a much more consistently-paced escalation of events following the titular crime.

Meanwhile, Act I of the second Amber Jacobsen book, Ghosts of Tharsis, is complete but for some fact checking on orbital mechanics, Act II is written but for a few additional thematic elements and some additional action, and Act III is written but (frankly) the denouement is still a dog’s breakfast.

I spent most of July in Iceland, which half-expectedly turned into a “location scouting” trip for writing purposes. Drove Kaldidalur, Kjolur, and about half of Sprengisandur, each of which crosses a number of Mars-like landscapes. Also drove the segment of the Ring Road between Egilstadir and Jokulsargljufur that I bypassed in 2010, an area that looked like the Moon and Mordor had a landscape love-child. Once I finish processing the photos, I may do a photo essay on the especially Martian landscapes I encountered.