I realise that all things built on Mars, will come at the point that we have humans working and living on Mars.
I realise that we have excellent test pilots, the likes of recent Crew Dragon test pilots Bob Benhken and Doug Hurley. These folks, as all space-faring astronauts, have resilience, good judgement and a keen sense of the danger that they live among in their work. Being able to manage feelings of fear, anxiety and to be able to use emotions in a beneficial way will be key traits of our Martian crew as they arrive to Mars and being their work to establish a colony there.
Our crew will need to leverage their inherent emotional control, lateral thinking and self-care to make the journey safely to survive and see sights such as this one. Reimagined Dingo Gap at martian night.
Humans have a reputation for adapting quickly to new surroundings, part of this is an evolutionary trait which helps us establish new baselines for our motion-optimised vision. So when something moves, something changes visibly, we can see it. It being a predator or a non-threat. This helped our ancestors avoid leopards and such predators. I By setting a new mental baseline, the people on the ISS are able to live and work in orbit, in a higher risk scenario relative to life on Earth. I think that over time, more astronauts will take to off-world exploration and this will feed back into our and their culture in space.
Similarly for the colonists on the Martian surface, they can look forward to a high hazard, high risk scenario.
For reference, I look to science fiction films. Case in point, the Alien series - by Ridley Scott highlights the potential attitude of space-hardened humans.
At a party, everyone has a friend who brings a plus-one that is sus.
This film shows a vision of a human species distributed throughout the galaxy, and in full command of empowering space exploration technologies.
The swaggering, jokey confidence shown by the crew is clearly critical to the set-up of this film. It enables stark contrast to the harsh catastrophe when the Alien inevitably upsets the balance of their world.
I hope that humans can manifest the confidence in deep off-world exploration and supporting technologies, and yet maintain gratitude and respect for the systems supporting their endeavours. However, this is where culture comes into play.
Culture is deeply grounded in shared behaviours and beliefs, what is accepted, what is frowned upon. This article from Stanford among others, gives a good discussion of the complexity of defining "What is culture?" from a philosophical perspective.
I would view culture as embodying the net position of the values of the people in it. This is tied intimately, in my view, to the profession of the colonists themselves, their expertise and self-sacrifice (altruism?) in accepting a risky mission to lead humans toward a multi-planetary species on a frontier world.
Viewed in this way, as long as we humans continue to explore space, conducting more and more safe journeys out and back into the wider cosmos, we can expect a higher degree of confidence and ambition in our exploration.
Note also that culture is shaped largely by the economic context of the country. In this case, the populace sits on another world. The way that the colony is established from an economic perspective, and how the New Martians interact and relate to Homeworlders on Earth in financial terms will also have a scarring impact if done incorrectly.
Others will point to the deepening-inequality permeating countries around the world, so much so that it is Goal 10 of the UN Sustainable Development goals, requiring effort from countries as a global cohort to fix. Others will cite specific examples of how entrenched poverty can stifle independence at an individual and community level. Some have hoped that cryptocurrency can lead to independence. However others rightly cite the vulnerability to state-actors inhibiting access to such resources. This action could feasibly be introduced by governments appearing to regulate currencies which carry vulnerability to theft.
It is no secret that there has been a recent proliferation of alt-coins, cousins of bitcoin crypto-currency (crypto for short) which made the headlines at many points over the last decade. This is facilitated by new companies offering digital wallets, which offer exposure to crypto. The most comical of these appears to be Dogecoin. Since a recent peak in the currency value, there have been a series of high profile supporters of the currency - including Snoop Dogg.
Snoop Dogg recently came out with support for Dogecoin as an alternative currency. Credit: CoinMarketCap
While this seems bold and unlikely, consider that the ties between two nations on a currency basis can, when that relationship becomes unbalanced, become unstable and fraught.
Take for example the Eurozone, with its single currency currently covering 19 nations, with some notable exceptions - Norway, Switzerland, etc. There was much made of the imbalance between Greece and Germany using the same currency. It was argued that Germany was leveraging the common currency to in fact, enjoy an artificially depressed currency specifically because of its poorer cousin nations in Italy, Spain and Greece. It was argued that this enabled Germany to more easily ship units to importers outside of the.
Looking back there are other examples. The most notable of which were the American colonies of England. Initially bankrolled by rich companies and individuals in England, the colonies in Virginia and Jamestown and New Amsterdam, what became part of Manhattan.
Because the colonies were fed and clothed by the home country, the colonists were forced to endure hardships beyond which even the poorest Englanders could reasonably expect at the time. Quite simply the upper hand was over the lower hand.
Even before the unification of the Eastern United states into the early independent states, there were strong battles between the home nations of England, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain for those rich resources and land titles. This goes some way to show that those countries which were paying for colonial stakes, are willing to make a battleground of the New World.
We don’t need to look far to get a relevant modern example. Look to those countries which have taken Chinese money for development. Take the Ugandans, who have leveraged a deal with the government to build some significant Kampala City bypass projects. However the demands for payment are in, now with plenty of the government budget dedicated to paying foreign creditors for a very long time to come. Not only this, there is coercion toward intelligence sharing with the Chinese, albeit through hidden mics and cameras in government offices. This effectively turns countries to puppet states on the issues of Chinese resource-grab politics.
Tanzania recently rejected quite a punitive deal which would have seen port extension works in exchange for Chinese sole control of the port, and forfeit of rights to build another port: in Tanzania. Now these countries have their promised forex and infrastructure projects but are beholden to Chinese influence. This is sometimes more overt in some countries than others.
“Only A Drunkard Would Accept These Terms”, Tanzania President Rejects China’s $10 bln Loan" - President Magifuli rejects deal. Credit: HW English
Without self-sufficiency political games which could arise and see a Mars beholden to Earth.
Consider however that there is one piece absent of this mission of exploration that was present or purported to be present in previous colonisation efforts: the promise of rich mineral resources to return to the home nation. However, because of the resource dependency-power dynamic mentioned earlier it would be worth the colonies to scale and become self-sufficient as soon as possible.
In this case, there is no promise of materials, and even if there were, there is a stated priority for colonists to pursue In Situ Resource Utilisation for the benefit of developing the colony further. Gold and diamond processing would not help with building a new life support infrastructure or houses into mountainsides. In any case, it should be said plainly, there can be no product from the Martian colony which can be used as an export. In this light, it can be viewed as representing a money-sink which will have an intimate financial relationship with Earth for some time to come.
You can reach me on Twitter: @Ronnie_Writes
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