Category: In the Shadow of Ares

One occasionally sees opinion pieces or activist rants about how “space billionaires” – guys like Musk, Branson, Bezos, or Bigelow – are somehow ‘ruining space’ by commercializing access or turning it into a tourism destination or filling the ‘space lanes’ with megaconstellations.

And that’s bad, oh so bad.

I would ask, how else do you think expanding civilization into space or sending humans to colonize Mars or the like is going to happen? Who do you think is actually going to get it done?

Civil space programs have had fifty-plus years to do it. Civil space agencies have demonstrated that they can’t create the technology and self-sustaining, large-scale space infrastructure necessary for permanent presence in space. Civil programs “spend that money right here on Earth”, where it lines the pockets of contractors and Congressmen and constituents while slowly accomplishing nothing useful towards actual space settlement. These agencies have also shown that they won’t do it, demonstrating through mission selection, technology development, etc. a bias towards space as a sort of nature preserve where civil servants and academics pursue Science(tm) – not a frontier where mere hoi polloi pursue their own interests (or worse: profits).

Military space programs have not led to settlement, either, but they have distinctly different priorities and make no claims otherwise. These priorities may, eventually, lead to an expanded human presence in space (through manned platforms or technological breakthroughs or the like), but given the nature of military applications and national security protections it’s unlikely that this will happen soon, or quickly, or develop in a direction that makes it self-sustaining. While developments helpful to space settlement could emerge from military programs, they’re not the purpose or end goal of those programs and so their appearance (or availability to civilians) can’t be depended on.

Which leaves the people who are want space settlement to do it for themselves somehow. Which is what has been happening over the past twenty years with the emergence of a truly commercial space industry – one which is systematically developing the pieces necessary for future space settlement.

What has proven essential in this is the combination of adequate capital and motivation. And this has appeared in the form of a few billionaires – Musk, in particular – having the money to invest in building the technology and sustain the effort until it becomes profitable, and deep personal interest in space settlement as a goal. And their undertakings – Musk’s, in particular – have created new millionaires with motivation who are in turn building new space startups of their own, building on the technologies and infrastructure established by these pioneers. This is gradually expanding the depth and breadth of the commercial space industry, which will gradually lead to self-sustainment.

Could space settlement have emerged without “Space Billionaires”? Possibly, eventually. Breakthroughs in (say) manufacturing technology or AI-assisted physics/engineering research or the like might someday have brought down the cost of space activities, enabling the far-more-numerous individuals having the same degree of motivation but lacking the resources to follow a “mom-and-pop” business approach. The “D.D. Harriman” strategy leapfrogs that long evolution and makes the “mom-and-pop” environment emerge sooner than it would have on its own.

Which is a long way of saying: you don’t actually want space settlement if you’re bitching about “Space Billionaires” leading the charge, because nobody else was going to get it going any time soon.

Speaking of Bob Zubrin:  Statement of Mars Society President Dr. Robert Zubrin Concerning the Election of Donald Trump

Ooh. That’s grandiose. Sounds like an official communique from someone important. Let’s see what’s inside…

Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States. The Mars Society is non-partisan and does not endorse any candidate. Many of our members and other space advocates supported Mr. Trump’s election, while many others opposed him. For reasons I have amply explained elsewhere, I have always been a member of the latter group.

The first two lines are neutral statements of fact, but already in the third there is a problem: the simplistic and dishonest division of the Mars Society membership into those who supported Trump and those who opposed him, when those are not the only two possible alternatives. What about those who supported Harris on her own merits, for example, or those who opposed her for same, or those who voted third-party, or those who sat out for whatever reason?

Mr. Zubrin’s monochromatic monomania about Donald Trump excludes those possibilities. It’s black and white: the election was about Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump alone, and either you voted against him, or you voted for him. Kamala Harris who?

The fourth line is what gets me. It’s wholly unprofessional for the head of an organization having nothing to do with politics to insert his own political opinions into the organization’s official communications (however cleverly oblique he imagined he was being when he did it). I suspect his intent here was simply to signal his membership among the righteous, as he sees it.

I get it – I’ve been there. It jumps out at me because I’ve had to edit personal editorial statements like this out of my own organizational PR. As the head of an organization, when you speak in that role you are speaking as the organization, ex cathedra, and so you never say things that show condescension towards the membership over matters unrelated to the organization’s mission.

And if you expect to keep your organization viable and recruit new members, you don’t make half of those who are or could become members feel unwelcome by signaling to them that you consider them inferior. (This signal is more apparent when one reads those ‘explanations elsewhere’.)

That said, whatever we think of the various policies that Mr. Trump has put on offer, there is one that I and the vast majority of Mars Society members certainly support: his promise to initiate a program to send humans to the Red Planet. We will therefore support that initiative, not because we agree with Mr. Trump, but because on this issue, he agrees with us.

Having made it clear over the past few weeks that he did not see a potential humans to Mars policy as anywhere close to being an acceptable reason to support a second Trump presidency, this is an interesting about-face. I suppose it’s pragmatic – making lemonade from the orange he’s been given, so to speak – but it’s an odd willingness to cooperate with a man who Mr. Zubrin has been demonizing as Hitlerian for the past several months.

One would expect someone with such self-regard as a man of principle would regard cooperating with Mr. Trump on sending humans to Mars as just as unjustifiable as he did voting for the man to achieve the same end. While the former, coming after the fact, doesn’t assist Mr. Trump in getting elected, how can it not connote support for the new Trump administration – regardless of pious, self-serving disclaimers to the contrary?

(And yet again, he can’t resist the urge to editorialize, in this instance couching this pragmatic direction in slanted language – a disingenuously “objective” framing that in fact reads as Even though all his other policies suck and it’s very important that you know that I don’t agree with any of them…)

But the cherry on top is the clichéd re-framing at the end. To the extent Mr. Trump is interested in sending humans to Mars, it’s a harmony of interests, a parallel, possibly indirectly influenced by the past quarter-century of advocacy by Mr. Zubrin and the Mars Society but not due to having been persuaded to accept his/their position, as implied. I’d be surprised if Mr. Trump even knows the Mars Society or Mr. Zubrin exist. (It’s far more likely that Elon Musk is the origin of any interest in Mars on the part of Mr. Trump.)

The point is significant. The age-old dream of endowing human minds and hands access to the cosmos does not belong to Donald Trump, nor should it be considered the exclusive possession of any particular political party. It belongs to humanity. It is essential that we make that clear, because the fortunes of political war are always changing. Should the Mars project come to be regarded as the mere hobby horse of a controversial politician, business leader, or partisan faction, it would surely face cancellation the next time the winds of power shift. We cannot let that happen. Precisely because we are not followers of Mr. Trump, we need to step up and help explain why all Americans, regardless of party, should support this initiative.

Yes, yes, okay, we get that you despise Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Mr. Zubrin. Everything in this paragraph could have been stated, and better, without scratching that insatiable itch to sneak in your disdain for them.

Indeed, the rest of the piece is decently written and free of this kind of editorializing. Unfortunately, the rah-rah effect of the statement is dampened by the preceding paragraphs…and the recognition that it was only written at all as a working out of the author’s disappointment at the election results.

…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?