TO MARS WITH LOVE

The reality of “Looking Ahead” is that my time to “look" is limited. For me, and for millions like me, the reality is that we won’t be around to “see how it all comes out.” Among friends we hear the sad observation: “We’re not going to be around to see it happen.” So I muse about what climate change will do in the years ahead. I ponder the future of high speed trains in Canada. I wonder about what my great grandchildren will grow up to be. We of that age wonder about all these things. I will miss having to miss out. But it does not stop me from wondering, from speculating, from wanting it to happen, from being there when it happens.


I am not a science fiction fan, for reasons I might discuss in a future bog. The reality, not the fiction, of scientific explo0ration has always attracted me. From my father I got an early sense of space, of the planets, of virtually infinite distances. It was tempered with a bit of H.G. Wells, a great futurist who pondered space and life on Mars. Also by a short story I read in high school “The Bogey of Space.”

I noted the other day that the project Mars for 2016 (will I be here?) will be joined by some Canadian scientists. In a rush I remembered a book by Robert Zubrin called “The Case for Mars, and why we must settle the Red Planet.” Zubrin is a reputable scientist who believes that settlement on Mars is do-able and imperative. (See Stephen Hocking remark.) He believes that NASA is on the wrong track. They are held captive by their own beliefs about rocket propulsion. Zubrin believes that adding even more power to get a human-carrying rocket to Mars is folly. NASA struggles with their orthodox concept of putting enough fuel aboard to get there. It is, according to Zubrin, self-defeating. The more weight you add the more difficult the trip becomes. He questions the notion that a station can be created on the Moon to expedite travel to Mars. He is a proponent of the “slingshot” theory – using the gravitational pull of other celestial bodies to speed the rocket along. He proposes that aiming a manned rocket, not at Mars, but at an orbit around the Sun, will propel the vehicle more quickly and economically to the Red Planet.

He visualizes the establishment of a permanent settlement on Mars, using the minerals that already exist there to create oxygen, water, an entire eco-system, and by the way, new rocket fuel joust in case the space explorers want to leave. It can all be done.

I won’t be here to see it happen, but my grandchildren will. They may be among the space travelers who settle Mars. Stephen Hocking said recently that people on Earth had better find another place to live. He is not optimistic about the future of the planet.

I read the Zubrin book in 1996. I was captivated. I’ve searched my bookshelves to no avail. It has disappeared. All I have are the memories, and above it all, my own fantasies about “The Shape of Things to Come,” as written by H.G. Wells.

P.S. It was my father who put me on to H.G. Wells when I was still about eight years old. I am going to resurrect a piece I wrote once about what he has missed by dying far too young. Maybe it’s where my own apprehension, not about dying, but about “missing out” has come from.