Mars, this time

3.5 billion years ago, an ancient river delta was flooded with water and microbial life, and last week we landed a robot just near, on the Jezero Crater, on Mars.  Scientists are keen to examine the lakebed and shoreline sediments to see if there was ever life on Mars, and NASA are interested to see if it could support life, in the future.

Life is a word our brains invented to describe reality.

Reality is a word our brains invented to describe our days.

What kind of life are we looking for?

We sent a rover called Perseverance to Mars to steal rocks from its surface and it was accompanied by a helicopter called Ingenuity.  I watched as Perseverance sent colour photos and anthropomorphic tweets back to earth, and I marvelled.  

When we start moving to Mars, the journey will take 9 months.  Due to its frantic orbit, we will have to stay for a minimum of 500 days before we can come back to this home.  Assuming we would want to.

The first travellers will be scientists, health workers, teachers and documentary film makers, and they will set up base camps and get things sorted.  Later, we the unessential workers, will follow on and begin our Martian days and cold Martian nights.

I’ve got a lot of good feelings about Mars.

There’ll be no need of money, countries, wars, prisons or politics.  I can’t see the point of exporting all our mistakes, so I imagine a peaceful planet of collaboration and joy.

No one will have viruses on Mars, and equally importantly, no one will speak of them.  Due to the strange atmosphere and eery air quality, there will be no shouting on the planet, or even speaking loudly.  There will be flourishing seasons, and interesting events, and plenty of opportunity for sight-seeing.

I love thinking about Mars, and infinite time and space.  I love thinking of the life that might have been there.  I love to think that it was us.

What if, a long time ago and before the ancient Greeks had a god called Mars, we lived on Mars, but had to move.  What if, due to climate change and super zoonotic pandemics we had to leave our home on Mars and move to earth?

We could be the Martians? 

Can you prove that we’re not?

Everyone thinks this is our first time changing planets, but if we have the imagination and technology to do it now, why couldn’t we have done it before, two or three evolutions ago?  Wouldn’t you love Perseverance to discover a NASA baseball hat in amongst the rocks it’s collecting with a slightly different NASA logo, to the one we’re used to?  I don’t know why, but I love to daydream that we’ve been there before.  Sometimes I daydream that it was Mars from a different universe, not even this one.

Due to the extra days per year on Mars, we would have twice as much time to develop our projects.  Due to the rotational axis, we will become much better fairer people, with no egos and only modest, gracious dreams and ambitions.  Due to the sub-zero nights, we will become much warmer to ourselves and more forgiving of our mistakes.  Due to the two moons of Mars, we will be kinder, friendlier, and just.

I’ve got a lot of good feelings about our lives on Mars, and I think it will be wondrous this time.