On his book Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go
Cover Interview of May 07, 2018
Lastly
NASA plans to send astronauts into orbit around Mars by the
2030s. Elon Musk wants to send colonists to land on Mars on a SpaceX rocket
even sooner, by 2024. Jeff Bezos wants to use his Blue Origin rockets to put
space adventurers into work in Earth orbit in the 2020s; he then plans to
continue outward to the Moon and Mars. The folks at Mars One want to land
permanent settlers on Mars in 2032. The ruler of Dubai has plans to build an
entire city on Mars no later than 2117. Mars may well represent the future of
humanity.
Readers should understand that the days of science fiction
regarding Mars are over. No more War of the Worlds, no more Martian
Chronicles, no more Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars. Humans setting
foot on Mars, perhaps colonizing Mars and working to terraform Mars – all
of these things could happen within a decade and almost certainly will happen within
the lifetimes of many readers, unless very soon humanity collectively decides that
we shouldn’t do any of these things.
As we gear up for missions like these, we have a
responsibility to think deeply about what kinds of life, if any, may already
inhabit the red planet; also, the potential impact of injecting terrestrial
biota into a possible Martian biosphere. Do we have an inalienable right to
invite ourselves in? I hope my readers will spend some time deeply pondering
their own answers to this question.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
Lastly
NASA plans to send astronauts into orbit around Mars by the 2030s. Elon Musk wants to send colonists to land on Mars on a SpaceX rocket even sooner, by 2024. Jeff Bezos wants to use his Blue Origin rockets to put space adventurers into work in Earth orbit in the 2020s; he then plans to continue outward to the Moon and Mars. The folks at Mars One want to land permanent settlers on Mars in 2032. The ruler of Dubai has plans to build an entire city on Mars no later than 2117. Mars may well represent the future of humanity.
Readers should understand that the days of science fiction regarding Mars are over. No more War of the Worlds, no more Martian Chronicles, no more Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars. Humans setting foot on Mars, perhaps colonizing Mars and working to terraform Mars – all of these things could happen within a decade and almost certainly will happen within the lifetimes of many readers, unless very soon humanity collectively decides that we shouldn’t do any of these things.
As we gear up for missions like these, we have a responsibility to think deeply about what kinds of life, if any, may already inhabit the red planet; also, the potential impact of injecting terrestrial biota into a possible Martian biosphere. Do we have an inalienable right to invite ourselves in? I hope my readers will spend some time deeply pondering their own answers to this question.