Chapter Eleven/OUTPOST (more about Mars)

CHAPTER ELEVEN
OUTPOST
By Julian Phillips
From the story by Tom Luong /Tom Luong Films
Dec. 20, 2009

“Three enormous volcanic mountains line up northeast to southwest, the Tharsis Montes. Each one is about twice the size and height of the volcanic island of Hawaii. Almost hidden in the shadow of Olympus Mons, an even larger volcano. Above it, wisps of water ice-clouds hover. Farther north, the pole displays a shrinking cap of carbon dioxide snow typical of early spring. East of the Tharsis Montes is a system of giant canyons that stretch some 5,000-kilometers, east to west.”
-Roy A. Gallant, Our Universe, National Geographic, 1980

Such was the Snikta-Ridge Volcanic Basin region, where the US-Mars base was built. The Snikta Ridge was a minor formation, and not particularly impressive, and of course the builders needed a hospitable, level, ‘flat’ or non-mountainous foundation, where the construction, approach of man-power or staff, and goods, would function. The view from within the base, or anywhere nearby, was quite beautiful, though barren and formidable, even deadly. Mars was hard to love, or hard to enjoy, or find lovely. But the staff and workers who lived at the US Mars-base, almost to a man, eventually realized that they were among the very few ever of the Earth, to live and work on another planet, and this alone endeared each person in dreams and reverie.
The red planet clearly once had a very active geological past. The volcanoes were dead, but not the deadly dust storms, which could be vast, even planetary-scale events, as the ancient reddish sand and dust was swept aloft by ‘winds’ that created huge clouds of terrible power, and could be seen from Earth by telescope.
By comparison, Deimos, the red planet’s outer of two moons, is only 15-kilometers wide, at its broadest point, which was irregular in shape and not perfectly globular. So Deimos, an orbiting moon, was only one-fortieth (1/40th) as broad as the Olympus Mons volcano on the planet surface.
Mars was the Roman ‘god’ of war, stereotypically represented by the ‘circle-and-arrow’ sign, often used to portray the male. And 'macho' it all was, for a planet where anyone would dwell or live, certainly compared to Earth, far more nurturing and feminine, with it’s near-Paradise of plants, life, water, people, food, cities, oceans, creatures, and so on. Only the strong could survive on Mars, it might have been thought. Yet, with the help of science-technology and good old know-how, many of the residents at the US-base, were women, and even a few children (who had visited temporarily in the past). The planners of the US space-program knew well, that with women joining together with men, as they voyaged into space, that morale improved overall, and depression and anxiety decreased. Yes, strong and healthy, athletic---but all-woman, feminine, nurturing, the second half of mankind’s Adam-Eve dichotomy, which was eternal for human-kind.
A ‘Martian Year’ would last for 687 Earth-days---almost two Earth-years. The planet has ‘seasons’, which are also irregular in length of days---in other words, the Northern Fall season can vary almost 60 days longer than the spring season. The planet is significantly smaller than Earth, about one-third as large, and one-tenth the mass (weight) of Earth, and less dense internally. Thus, gravity on Mars is just slightly more than one-third the pull of gravity on Earth. A 200-pound man, on Mars would weigh only about 70-pound. Like astronauts who first walked on Earth’s moon, this was a delight, or, at least, an ease and convenience when carrying heavy loads, or thick, heavy space-suits, or gear, etc. In a strange way, as their hearts yearned to play or glide and jump or leap, or fly about, or do incredible athletics, in the lesser gravity, the staff and workers on Mars at the base knew they never would be able to do so, for fear of the deadly atmospheric conditions. Naked, or in running-shorts on the surface of Mars was not an option, except in dreams.
At the closest point between the two planets, Earth and Mars, as they move in the dance of orbits, are about 56 million kilometers apart. This solar-system intimacy, or closeness (about 45-million miles or so), could take as long as two years to happen, and was purely a natural event, caused by the orbits and positions of the planets. A Martin ‘day’ is just slightly more than 24-hours, oddly enough, providing the Mars-base staff with a sense of Earth-like normalcy.
For what water there is on Mars, nearly all of it is found frozen beneath the ground. Both planetary poles had ice-caps. The polar caps are actually ‘dry ice’, or frozen carbon dioxide, with only a little actual ‘water-ice’. And, of course, much of the planet-surface is pock-marked with craters, large or smaller. The soil is somewhat like that of the soil on Earth, with silicon, iron and magnesium. The famous reddish color is apparently from iron-oxide.
The Tharsis Montes region is 1,000-times the distance from New York to Los Angeles, in its longness. The four giant volcanoes are three times higher than Earth’s Mount Everest. To the east is Valles Marinarus, with canyons deeper than America’s Grand Canyon, but longer than the US itself from coast-to-coast. Petrified lava-flows, sedimentary canals long dried and turned to dust, endless vistas of barren rocks, sand and rises, and many other formations, are everywhere. Yet not a single tree, bird, lake, grassy field, cow, horse, natural waterway, fish, beach, or indigenous life-form, anywhere on Mars at all, that had ever been found since exploration began.
Maps of Mars show formations called such as Chrysae Planitia, Sinai Planum, Arsia Mons, Hellas Planitia, Elysium Mons, Du or Martheray. There’s no liquid water anywhere on the surface of this entire world. The atmosphere is very dry, and any water-vapor that does exist, will not turn to liquid (like rain does on Earth). Even if all the water-vapor in the atmosphere of the entire planet of Mars was reduced from air-born mist to liquid, the entire volume of it would only fill a small lake. By comparison, of course, Earth is host to vast oceans over most of its surface, which though salty, condense and lifts into the moist atmosphere of the Earth, eventually turning into rain, or other water-forms, providing the basis of life. Mapping, measurements, geology and innumerable observations and records continued without end, as one of the US Mars-base’s principle objectives---to learn and record all there was to know about this ‘new world’.
The base itself was, from the exterior, rather a fortress of technology and survival-means off-world construction. From the ground-level, it seemed somewhat like a common military installation of some sort. There were numerous buildings and gates or entry-ways, large tanks and vats or towers, numerous antenna-arrays with gaudy high-tech spider-webs of dishes and spindly formations that could project radio and other signals all the way to Earth, and many other aspects. There were also glassy, or clear-view formations attached to the base, more or less like plant houses, or patio-like gardens, for restful viewing---but of course the entire inner-world of the base was protected, air-tight, from the harsh outer-world. And in this sense, although ‘home’, the base was also, and always would be, a prison, from which escape into Nature, meant only death for the human creature.
But life at Snikta Ridge was by far more comfortable than life on the transport ships that made the voyage from Earth, such as the one Guy Reisling piloted. The residents enjoyed fine meals, fresh water and air, good plumbing and bathing, regular personal quarters and housing that allowed for sexual relations, and off-hours of even a week or more at a time to relax, or ‘mini-vacations’. There was plenty of entertainment in every form, also a library, and small performance theater. After ten years, the crews at the base started a vocal choir, which then petered-out, to be replaced by a jazz-band and a small classical string-quartet, and other forms of arts, as staff found time and inspiration.
As ships entered orbit around Mars, a standard re-entry, or shuttle-to-surface descent, was initiated---not by the transport pilot, but by a specially-trained ‘space harbor-master’, to whom this process was not a mystery. To the pilots, or any person arriving on Mars, the view from orbit of the Snikta Ridge Volcanic Basin US-Mars Base, was indeed spectacular. Telescopes and magnifiers provided digital-screen views, and the naked-eye was really not much use, even through the thick transparent-aluminum port-views ‘windows’. Maybe it was because after months in deep-space transport, travelers knew that when they arrived at the base, they would again enjoy ‘normal’ gravity, walk around in open-air interiors, have private rooms all for themselves, and so on. Or maybe it was just the wonder of it all.
In any case, what they saw from above, when entering Martian orbit, was a spread of about five or ten square miles, laid out like a patch-work of squares, circles, and other shapes---the same air-tight fortress which from the planet-surface rose up beneath the dark cliffs like a strange specter of the power of modern science and the survival spirit of humanity. There were launch-pads, too, and landing-areas, and roads between the useful platforms or storage for fluids, liquid-oxygen, or H20, and then areas for surface-to-orbit rockets or ‘lifters’. Complex hardly described what was needed to survive in this way on Mars, in the year 2076. As an achievement of human consciousness, Snikta Ridge was equal to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, or any of the Earth’s great cities, or other wonders ‘back home’. Yet it all seemed as lonely as the silent and dead planet upon which it rested, a tiny spark of human life, against the face of the Universe, a fortress of the living, as strong as any ever conceived---an ‘outpost’, in the true sense, as may have been established in the early exploration of the American West, or the early European exploration of the ‘New World’ of the Americas, or Marco Polo’s first voyages to China and the East.
Sunrise on Mars was oddly unique and just as wonderful as the rising Sun on Earth. More distant from the Sun by millions of miles, Martian sunrise was more distant as well from the source of life and heat and warmth---the Sun. So it seemed ethereal, somehow hollow, or lacking a certain familiar mighty blaze, almost like tin compared to brass, or silver compared to gold. The reddish dust and dark-reddish mountain cliffs, the huge volcanoes, higher than any man would probably ever climb, set against the rising Sun, distant to the east in the early hours of each morning---there was no doubt this was ‘another world’, however much one wished to go home. Base staff could watch the sunrise event from glass-domed patios, and at various view-ports, and also on digital camera screens.
As a regular task that needed to be done daily, a base perimeter air-lock seal and atmospheric facility breach check was performed, in three crews of two men each. Comfortable in their Mars-Suits, the men rode on small electric carts suitable to the surface soil and inclines. Communicating by internal radio-links, they were equipped with gauges and detectors that would reveal any oxygen leaks, mostly at various points that were most likely to decay, break down, or release internal air-pressure due to wear-and-tear. As they stopped the carts, at some twenty points along the foot of The Castle (as they sometimes called the base), they looked like rock-hunters, with magnetic metal-detectors in their hands, which in fact were for reading chemicals associated with any leaks.
There were many daily dangers and environmental threats on Mars, but an internal air-pressure breach, or leak, was among the most feared. So the men worked carefully, every single day, to find even a very small leak. A small leak could become a large one, and a sudden loss of internal air could result in many deaths, before it could be controlled or contained, if they caught it in time.
“Nothing here,” said one of the workers, through his inter-suit radio, to his partner. “It’s clean. Not even a molecule. Let’s try the footing seals on Number Two.”
“Got it,” his partner responded. They moved back to the little electric cart, like figures in a dream, against the distant Sun rising behind the giants, tin, not even silver.
“Are you ready?” Bojji-Than, the base-commander, inquired of Karen Tutturro, who he found that morning at the cafeteria. Karen had maintained her schedule meticulously since her arrival, more cautious than perhaps she needed to be. She wanted the other crews at the base to respect her, of course, which was no simple matter. “I want you to meet some people you’ll be working with,” Bojji-Than added.
“Certainly, commander,” Karen said, getting herself up from the table where she was eating breakfast, along with 20 or 30 other shift-workers, at one of the cafeterias.
“Please just call me Bojji,” he said. “Everyone else does.”
“Okay,” she smiled back. “Bojji.”
They walked out together from the dining-area, into one of the halls. The base was alive and vibrant with life, work, and a pulsing truth that sustained them all.

--Julian Phillips
Dec. 20, 2009