When science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson began writing his acclaimed Mars Trilogy in 1989, the world was being transformed by a series of non-violent revolutions that spread throughout Eastern Europe. By the time he had finished the books in 1996, science and technology had considerably advanced, climate change was a political concern, and profit-focused neo-liberalism had become a global economic fixture. Robinson’s books aimed to present a utopian vision of a red planet settled by humans and made habitable according to egalitarian, sociological and scientific principles. While an actual settlement on Mars is pure fantasy, says Robinson, the science fiction that was to give life to Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars arose out of an Earthly reality, as the author explains:
Kim Stanley Robinson (American accent): I had discovered science fiction as a literature student. It described [the] reality that I knew better than any other form of literature. It was planetary thinking and really the shot of Earth from the Moon with the Orbiter back in the Apollo days that made it clearer than ever that this one planet is not that huge, given the growing population and technical powers and desire for resources of human civilization. And then suddenly Viking gave us Mars, and what was interesting to me was Mars was both real and empty: real in the sense that on its surface it looked like the American West deserts and it had water, but it was empty.
STARTING AGAIN
Robinson’s trilogy was closely aligned with real world politics of the time, which rested on the hope for a new order based on better principles. Mars is not an escape from Earth, says Robinson, but a thought experiment.
Kim Stanley Robinson: Mars is a red mirror. It’s a space in which you could imagine a different society developing based on scientific principles somewhat from scratch with an attempt to figure out a way to make more equality and sustainability on a very harsh and unforgiving world, where we would actually have to make the biosphere as well as the civilisation. You have to take care of your atmosphere, you actually have to make your oceans and then you have to keep them healthy by a management process. On Mars you call it ‘terraformation’, on Earth we call it ‘geo-engineering’. And we are doing it here on a gigantic scale and the stakes are so much higher. We only really have the one planet. Mars is not a planet B; we can’t live there.
CAN’T MONETISE MARS
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is one of three missions to Mars. Chinese spacecraft Taiwan-1 landed on the planet in May with the aim of collecting samples and data, searching for signs of ancient life and preparing for future human exploration. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates’ probe Hope is orbiting the planet and studying Martian weather dynamics. Concerns have been raised about national rivalries, human exploitation and contamination of Mars. However, as Robinson points out, conditions on Mars are so extreme that Earthly bacteria cannot survive, and the planet has no actual economic value:
Kim Stanley Robinson: There’s nothing on Mars that we don’t have on Earth in larger quantities and in better concentration. Mars never had much of a tectonic plate activity. It got cold too fast. So what gold, what precious minerals, what uranium there is on Mars is so diffuse, you can’t mine it and then you would have to get it home to Earth, which we don’t have a good way to do. So, Mars has no economic value, and that’s one of the reasons that we like it. It is a pure interest that has to do with planetary bodies and long-term possibilities that are more philosophical.
EVERYONE’S SPACE
The Outer Space Treaty, following the Antarctica model, ensures that there are no territorial claims in space.
Kim Stanley Robinson: Antarctica is an international commons and nobody has territorial claims there because of the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. That was the basis for the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which is now controversial because of private desires to exploit resources on the Moon and elsewhere, but in any case the Outer Space Treaty is a good model; it should be a commons, it should be international.
THE LIFE OF SCIENTISTS
So, what will a scientist’s life on Mars be like?
Kim Stanley Robinson: Scientists will go to bases on Mars that will be like the South Pole. They’ll do some studies; it will be bad for their health, they will have to live underground most of the time. People back on Earth will be not that interested. People are interested in what we can’t do and that edge of possibility is what makes Mars interesting to us now, but the scientists will then come home and the bases will grow and they will be an agglomeration of miscellaneous buildings with some very high-tech laboratories.
PRIVATE AMBITIONS
Billionaire entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk have made extraordinary claims about colonising the red planet. But while Musk’s company SpaceX makes great rockets for NASA, the rest is pure hype, says Robinson.
Kim Stanley Robinson: Elon Musk has a tremendous electric car company. He has formed a tremendous rocket company and makes some of the best rockets on Earth. These are great achievements and also they can become part of a greener economy. On the other hand, his statements about Mars... they’re distorted. The private expressions of interest in Mars, like we’re going to go there and start our own little town on private money, these are fantasies. Landing on Mars is much more difficult. Setting up a base there is expensive beyond even the wealth of our billionaires. Let’s stick with the programme of scientific progress. There will be more support for it if the public believes that it’s their space rather than been privatised and turned into a fortress mansion.