On his book Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go
Cover Interview of May 06, 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.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
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.