Category Archives: Fiction Writing

Astronauts with Personality — Please!! …Following the Mars Society Convention 2010: STURGISSSSS!!

Immediately after the Mars Society Convention we’re going to Sturgis to party, drink hell and shoot machine guns — depending upon how much money we have left after whiskey. If you don’t have a bike — no problem. You can rent from a Harley dealer in Ohio or on the way. We’re camping along the side of the road. Basically, this is a balls reenforcement project for Men who are WORKING HARD to see humans on Mars in their lifetime. If you want to go incognito that can be arranged (for example, if you are James Cameron)…no women invited. They will meet us in Sturgis.

Rebels only.

It’s not personal, #ItsNotYouItsDefinitelyUs. If you’re tired of marriage to or dating a passive characterless ass-kissing academic limp-dicked system-worm give him a few days riding under the stars to Sturgis. We’re ramping testosterone among advocates of Humans to Mars. It’s become a requirement of our passionless world. This is an unsanctioned event without supervision very intentionally fatal to betas. Have bail ready.

Update: get a motorcycle license now from your local Harley dealer following a two day lesson for less than $200.
Since artists interested in promoting ‘humans to Mars’ are of any gender, it is encouraged that women either form a girls-trip to Sturgis or meet us there. In theory it would be possible to meet periodically along the way, but, that would be unlikely. Impossible, in fact. If you look like Angelina Jolie you could try, but it still won’t help. There’ll be enough women along the way.

Google Search:
“Masculate” 14,900 results.
“Emasculate” 309,000.  This is part of the problem.

(If you show up with anything other than a Harley or KTM 950 Adventure you’ll be disinvited. No exceptions. That includes you and your bullshit Triumph Angelina.)

Oh God I love this blog

What the Hell Happened to Our Space Program?? Can you imagine the Right Stuff generating these fucking headlines??

ONN: NASA Scientists Plan to Approach Girl by 2018
“Our backup plan: using the Hubble Space Telescope to take high-resolution photos of her and
then masturbating furiously while hating ourselves for it.”

NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission
“These new suits are veneered with a protective silver lamé to complement the multicolored lightning bolts emblazoned across the helmets’ sun visors. They’ve also been updated with several improved components to ensure the team is completely safe when it’s time to leave the capsule—if they dare.”
NASA Is An Industrial Subsidy In Disguise
I grew up with the romantic notion that NASA is not merely a government agency, but an organization dedicated to bravely propelling the human race forward into a glorious future of scientific advancement and discovery […but…] NASA exists largely to provide an economic boost to the American aerospace industry, particularly Boeing. NASA gets away with this thinly veiled pork-barrel politicking, the piece contended, by distracting the public with “bread-and-circus” space missions that emphasize thrills over genuinely useful scientific discovery.>
Consider the hoopla surrounding John Glenn’s return flight to space. He got a ticker-tape parade and front-page coverage, but what did science actually gain? …it’s time we started making NASA accountable for its wasteful, PR-driven expenditures.
NASA Baffled by Failure of Straw Shuttle
$68 billion straw space shuttle [… ] “It was nice and crisp and dry,” Toshikima said. “Which is the best condition for straw headed away from the earth’s gravitational pull.” The Explorer 2, like its predecessor, was headed for the sun, where it was to be the first spacecraft to land on a star. “We’d hoped to bring back and study sun rock,” Toshikima said.”
NASA Announces Plan to Bring Wi-Fi to Its Headquarters by 2017
An ambitious mission to make Houston’s Johnson Space Center wireless-Internet capable within one decade. We are not content to rest on our laurels. It may seem like an impossible task, but if we commit all of our focus, technology, and resources, we can get Wi-Fi into NASA’s offices and research labs within our generation.”  Griffin was confident that NASA’s estimated $655 million plan to install a wireless broadband router by 2017 could reap huge benefits for the entire space agency.
NASA has suffered from a public credibility crisis in recent years due to perceived incompetence, a failed mission to Mars, the damaged and dormant Hubble telescope, and its inability to procure a long enough USB cable to reach all the way over to engineer William Chen’s cubicle. But NASA officials argue that a secure high-speed line could prevent disasters such as a 2005 incident in which an employee attempting to download the movie trailer forCheaper by the Dozen 2  crashed the Mission Control Center mainframe computer for two weeks.
NASA Embarks on Epic Delay
The unprecedented delay has reportedly brought together the nation’s foremost aerospace engineers, whose combined efforts have already added 18 months of rescheduled meetings to the daring mission. “Delays of this magnitude were once the stuff of science fiction,” Scolese told reporters during a noon press conference Monday that actually started around 3:15 p.m. “But now, thanks to a number of long-overdue technological advances, this historic delay will stretch the very limits of what humankind can push back indefinitely.”
“Never before has man dared to fall behind on such a sweeping scale,” said Brenda Win, head administrator of the newly established delay-management team, which is expected to be named sometime next month or maybe the month after. “A postponement like this only happens once in a lifetime. This will be the series of setbacks you’ll tell your grandchildren about.”

“When we have finally finished here, the universe will see there is no end to what man can entangle in red tape,” Scolese wrote in the stirring statement. “Even as we speak, our top people are dragging their feet on what will become the longest and most profound delay in the planet’s history.”

 

“Mark my words: In our lifetime, NASA will delay putting a man on Mars,” Scolese continued. “Well, maybe not in my lifetime. I’m almost 50.”
Vows to Put Man on Moon Before It Disappears At End of Month
The president went on to propose the construction of a lunar capsule that could land on a concave surface.
NASA Delays Shuttle Launch Out of Sheer Habit
NASA To Send Earth Into Space

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/35905

People Living On The Moon
“Golden throne so tourists can have their pictures taken as the Moon King.”
Scientists Ask Congress To Fund $50 Billion Science Thing
I have always said that science is more important than it is unimportant,” Committee chairman Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN) said. “And it’s essential we stay ahead of China, Japan, and Germany in science. We are ahead in space, with the NASA rockets going to other planets, so we should be ahead in science too.”
“Now, I’m no science major, but if I’m being told by a group of people that the protons, neutrons, and electrons need unifying, then I think we owe it to the American people to go in and unify them,” Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) said. “After all, isn’t a message of unity what we want to send to our children?”
Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked
According to Armstrong, he was forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos, and reading several blog posts on conspiracy theorist Ralph Coleman’s website, OmissionControl.org.  “This is all just common sense, people,” he added. “It’s the moon. You can’t land on the moon.”
NASA Announces Plan To Launch $700 Million Into Space
fficials at the Kennedy Space Center announced Tuesday that they have set Aug. 6 as the date for launching $700 million from the Denarius IVspacecraft, the largest and most expensive mission to date in NASA’s unmanned monetary-ejection program. “This is an exciting opportunity to study the effect of a hard-vacuum, zero-gravity environment on $50 and $100 bills,” said NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who noted that prior Project Denarius missions only studied space’s effect on fives and singles.

Marsipan, The British Mars Exploration Programme: "As we know, Mars exploration needs funds, even if it’s low budget!"

Keeping things light-hearted and fun Nikolay Moustakov’s clever, endearing stop-motion series Marsipan expands upon our theme of humanizing Mars through art. The pilot episode for this clever series of videos and “pubcasts” was selected for The British Council Short Film Showcase and also screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival 2005. Nikolay most recently worked as a storyboard artist on Fantastic Mr. Fox and owns his own production company, Earthly Delights Films, with which he and co-creator Liz Rosenthal are developing a slate of animation and live action projects. Marsipan leads the way in exploring Mars and beyond, bringing to you the search for life on the Red Planet in monthly videos showing “what is really happening on Mars for you to watch for free!”
Be sure to check out Marsipan’s super clever — very, very well developed — website for the British Mars Exploration Programme. For instance, this is the dialogue of the “countdown” spoken by the Flight Director when his image is clicked upon (in Marsipan HQ’s Mission Control; written and voiced by Nathaniel Tapley):
“Right, right, I’m bored with ordinary countdowns…so…today I’m going to have a poem…ten is the fingers on your hands…nine for the planets in the solar system, on each of which you might land although we prefer Mars…eight of you will leave us when the booster rockets burn…seven at least we expect to return…six are the tanks of coolant upon your outer-shell….five is the number which need to operate efficiently to stop you from being burnt to hell…the other is a back-up its there for your own safety…four…is what Mars is from the sun, fourth…three…is…a number…its two higher than one…two hands we are using to wave you goodbye…one is the single-minded belief that you will fly to Mars.  Well, not fly so much as be flown, but I — so blast off!  You cosmic sentry!  And try not to burn up…in…reentry.  Godspeed.”
Take that “3 2 1” NASA! Would that more engineers took such liberties with their Muses!
Explore Mars further via the British Mars Exploration Programme here:  http://www.marsipan.co.uk
“Martians beware! Marsipan, The British Mars Exploration Program is sending its space probes in your direction! Here is British engineering at its best, exploring Mars like nobody else.”
“NASA spends billions and can only show you a pile of rocks, or a computer animated reconstruction. Is there life on Mars? Of course there is and our monthly missions can prove it! Come in and see for yourself.”
Archived “Pubcasts” of Marsipan missions by the “Greater British Space Empire” may also be viewed on this YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/MarsipanTV
Thank you Nikolay and Liz for making Mars so fun, human, and accessible!

James Cameron: The Last Hope for Hollywood

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James Cameron personally attended the International Mars Society Conference in 1999. He delivered the Keynote Address then spent the entire weekend moving from panel to panel with his camera crew, sitting in the audience alongside other attendees while taking extensive notes on a yellow legal pad with a ball point pen. That was before laptops and only a year and a half after the release of his record blockbuster “Titanic.” It was a bold dramatic meaningful appearance which said: I care about Humans-to-Mars; I want to get this right. For the next two years he continued to send teams of videographers to record every presentation. Then, two purely idiotic movies were released — “Red Planet,” “Mission to Mars” — and Cameron wisely decided to shelve his project until the cultural debris settled. Periodically interviewers will ask, “What about Mars?” The most important consistent reply he provides with confidence is: “I have done the research. I know Mars. When the time is right it will happen.”
James Cameron has not only laid the foundation for making one of the most important films about Mars in our generation, for a time he even sat on NASA’s Advisory Council – a panel of experts and advisers appointed by the agency’s administrator. He remains on the science team for the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory. The Mars Science Laboratory, known as Curiosity, is a NASA rover scheduled to be launched between October and December of 2011. One can only hope this window of opportunity is not corrupted by competition from less informed directors, once again.
“I’ve been very interested in the Humans to Mars movement—the ‘Mars Underground’—and I’ve done a tremendous amount of personal research for a novel, a miniseries, and a 3-D film.”
These very rough drafts of Mars mission equipment were created by Digital Domain nearly ten years ago to accompany Cameron’s Keynote Address. Although they were of high-quality for CG at that time, he nevertheless apologized for not being able to bring final renders. The point of showing these images though was to demonstrate his support for Mars Direct and in particular humans to Mars; Cameron wanted to show fellow space enthusiasts he could be relied upon to “get the facts right” and — that this is important. (As an aside, during his keynote the name for Factual Fiction was conceived: if we could get the facts right a “New Mars” in the public’s imagination might lead to a rethinking of humans to Mars.)
“Exploration is not a luxury we can’t afford; it’s a necessity we can’t afford to lose. Pushing farther into the unknown is our greatest endeavor as a civilization and our deepest responsibility to future generations.” Near-term, realistic — without aliens, laser, or guns — someday James Cameron will change the way we think about Mars. No doubt there are many right now saying, “Come on Cameron!”

The follow are excerpts from his Mars Society keynote address:
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“People are always saying … we need to solve our problems right here on Earth before we go spending money out in space. It makes me want to vomit frankly. [applause!].

Check back in five hundred or a thousand years. People will still be talking about all the problems that need to be solved. We are never going to reach some utopian plateau where everything is solved so we can then, with lordly confidence, look around us for worlds to conquer as some kind of hobby. Not spreading ourselves outward into the solar system now, when we have the capability to do so, is one of the problems we have to be solving right here on Earth. [more applause].

We are really at a turning point. Go forward, or go back. By stopping, by stagnating, we go back. I look around at the turn of the millennium and see a prosperous, powerful, technologically unparalleled society which, collectively, has no purpose but to feather its own nest. It is a goal-less, rudderless society, dedicated to increasing security and creature comforts. .

Our children are raised in a world without heroes. [!!!!!!!!!!]

They are led to believe that heroism consists of throwing a football the furthest, getting the most hangtime during a slam dunk, or selling the most movie tickets with your looks and boyish charm. This is not heroism, and these are not valid tests of our mettle as an intelligent race.
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Young kids need something to dream about, something to measure their value system against. They live in a sea of mind-numbing inputs, a point-and-shoot videogame world where it is hip to not care, where death and violence have no meaning, where leaders are morally bankrupt, and where the scientific quest for understanding is sooo not cool. Going to Mars is not a luxury we can’t afford … it is a necessity we can’t afford to be without.”

How to Silence "Moon First" Advocates

Don’t let the beer and pizza throw you off…this will happen before we return to the moon:
Without using or investing in the overhead of lunar hardware three entrepreneurs in twin Dragon Puffs connected by a Bigalow hab/radiation-shelter will spend a month drinking beer, eating cold pizza, and watching YouTube while floating to a Near Earth Asteroid. Upon arrival, since they are not unimaginative NASA bureaucrats, risk-adverse academics, or scientifically illiterate politicians they will toss the protocol for collecting regolith samples to the solar wind. Instead they will spend a week stuffing every nook and crevice of their craft with regolith, sorted or not, while inflating massive canisters filled with a slurry of volatiles and PGMs set to drift slowly on their own way to L1.
Then these three will do something truly remarkable, something which will be the:
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SINGLE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENT IN SPACE DURING OUR LIFETIMES
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They will transfer their beer and buddies from the Dragon with a cushion base which had landed on the asteroid to the Dragon and Hab which had been hanging out in orbit a slight distance away. Following that, once the beer is safely ensconced, they will use duct-tape, velcro, and a few spare shoelaces to patch up whatever wear-and-tear the Dragon lander may have experienced. Then, just before heading for home, they will initiate the What-the-Heck-Let’s-Give-It-A-Shot-Before-We-Sober-Up procedure: remotely tilt the unmanned Dragon lander with a cushion base on its side, and, as if it were an undersea craft slowly floating across a reef, drift it horizontally to one of the many massive multistory mountain sized boulders strewn across the asteroid surface. After carefully resting its landing cushion perpendicular to the boulder they will gradually apply more pressure until velocities increase from centimeters per hour to kilometers per hour and so on, gently pushing a mountain of PGMs and volatiles to L1. –Without fancy recycling systems, without special equipment, and certainly without anything associated with the moon.
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Our 3 half-witted heroes will have accomplished 2 things, with or without NASA. They will always be able to buy beer and — apart from fantasy future He3 — no one will ever mention lunar resources again. With vast resources at L1 we will finally concentrate on Mars settlement. Dedicated Earth-based simulation of exact Martian thermal, atmospheric, and solar conditions will provide more realistic evaluation of Martian architectures than extremely expensive, unnecessarily dangerous “Martian/ISRU practice” on the moon; future construction and refueling of GEO satellites/interplanetary craft will be much more easily accomplished at L1 than on the moon.
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Key points:
(1) Transit to an asteroid will take between only two weeks to at most two months.
(2) An asteroid studded with enormous surface boulders can be sufficiently assayed robotically prior to the two week period astronauts would work at the asteroid.
(3) Costs are extremely low without lunar overhead, landers, etc; Delta V fuel requirements are minimal since there is no landing or relaunch (the entire operation takes place in Zero G).
(4) Extensive separation of asteroid material can take place on the boulder at L1 and LEO, leisurely, long after the retrieval mission.
(5) Once even a single PGM asteroid fragment with volatiles is at L1 discussion of Lunar resources becomes absurd.
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With massive NEA resources at L1 Moon First advocates will return to arguing for a moon base “for the sake of a moon base.” It will have no value other than to hinder our progress further into the solar system. If you don’t like Mars, drop it — that does not need to be part of the equation. Just work with a massive amount of profitable PGM/volatiles at L1 — between the Earth and the moon — and pet projects involving lunar rovers, lunar greenhouses, lunar overhead of all kinds will be seen as irrelevant.
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Mars seems to be a convenient distraction, a strawman, an excuse lunar scientists use to not discuss Near Earth Asteroids.
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The cool thing about this debate though is that it doesn’t matter what we decide, since, for-profit mechanisms will create a L1 NEA resource depot before anyone returns to the moon — by the sheer force of informed capital.
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Once massive amounts of precious metals and volatiles are already at L1 it becomes ridiculous to speak of transporting “asteroid debris” in the lunar regolith to L1, or, constructing equipment or fuel depots on the moon. It is much, much easier in terms of equipment overhead and fuel to coast out to NEAs than to land and launch from the lunar surface — especially for any serious amount of resources.

In the August ’09 issue of Ad Astra, Denis Wingo — who has earned admiration as a tireless advocate of entrepreneurial space exploration — writes of a future landing expedition finding on the surface of the moon a large PGM boulder remaining from an asteroid impact. The purpose of the above Dragon Puff story is to point out that if a similar — albeit even much larger boulder — were found on the surface of an asteroid (they are studded with such structures) it would be much easier to transport the boulder to and use it at L1 than to engage resources for similar purposes on the moon. –Especially given that this could be done by entrepreneurs without either lunar overhead or heavy lift or even NASA approval.

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If a massive PGM rock is sitting at L1 then lunar resources become irrelevant to ANYTHING we do in space, anywhere — even, ironically, ON THE MOON. We would actually mine the piece of the asteroid at L1 for resources to be used on the moon. LOL : ) Now THAT is funny! Eventually we will construct many of the heavier components of robotic telescope constellations at L1…future far side L2 radio telescopes in zero G will be constructed and repaired at L1. The moon will not have an extensive permanent human presence until Mars has been definitively settled, if then.
The moon is a Siren’s Call.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/05/nasas-manned-mi.html
http://www.space.com/news/061116_asteroid_nasa.html
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/06/nasa-considers-manned-asteroid-mission/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network

[graphics thanks to Nick Kaloterakis]

“…the machine was only the place in which the human spirit, human curiosity, and human endeavor dwelt”

“It wasn’t the machine itself that we loved: the metals, the mechanisms, the scientific equipment.” Joi says of the Pheonix Mars Explorer’s Twitter followers, “It was the human spirit that had sent it there, so many miles from our home, not for profit or war or necessity, but simply because there was a chance to discover something we’d never known before.”

Joi Weaver is a space enthusiast and copywriter for an international women’s organization. She amuses her coworkers by keeping a pair of 3D glasses in her purse at all times, just in case new analglyphs are posted while she is at work. Her perspective on Mars is refreshing and contemporary. “The dream isn’t about finding aliens, or seeing ancient Martian cities, or any of the specifics from the books and stories. The dream is the Red Planet itself, that bright shining dot in the night sky, the cold barren world of shifting sands and sublimating ice. The dream doesn’t die with the discovery of fact; the dream is the power behind that discovery.”

We will soon have a section of this site dedicated to serialized excerpts from on-going projects of various writers from the Mars Artists community. In the meantime, enjoy more of Joi’s writing on her blog “Dreamer of Mars” and in the following:


In honor of the Mars Phoenix, now silent in the Martian winter.

The frigid wind whipped the icy sand against her helmet as she rounded the small rock outcropping. She staggered for a moment before regaining her balance and pushed forward. Her communicator crackled.
“Eagle1, you ok out there?”
She activated the transmitter, and responded.
“Everything’s fine out here, Eagle2. Just a few more metres.”
“Better hurry. They’re talking about calling you back. They don’t know if you’ll be able to stay in contact once you get there.”
“The only way they’re getting me to come back is to come after me themselves.”
The signal crackled, and faded. She assumed Williams had signed off, and pressed forward.

A glint sparkled momentarily through the dust. She squinted, and adjusted the polarization of her visor. The Martian landscape was still bare here near the poles: no-one had yet found it profitable to construct a dome this far north. Her communicator crackled again.
“Eagle1, report.”
“Eagle2, I think I’ve found the site. Gotta get closer to check.”
“Eagle1, you have been ordered to return to your vehicle and begin the return to base.”
“With all due respect, Eagle2, screw you.”
“Why is this *crackle* important to you? It’s a beatup piece of junk. Went 90 days, then a few more 2 years later, then silence. Even if you find it, it’s of no use to us. *crackle* obsolete 75 years ago.”

She could now see a small structure half buried in dust and ice. The distant sun glinted sharply off several of its surfaces. Though her suit was fully heated, she felt a chill go down her spine.

“Eagle2, my grandmother was one of the people who used the original primitive network. She loved it. She had friends all over the world. She followed the progress of this one. She used to tell me stories, about how she would get excited to see what this machine was doing each day, to look at the pictures it sent from hundreds of millions of miles away. When she told about how it was settling in to freeze in 2008, and the messages that were posted about it…she still got tears in her eyes. It meant something to her.”

A long silence settled in, and she pushed her way the last few feet. Reaching out a hand, she brushed a bit of dust from the surface, and felt an electric thrill as her gloved fingers came in contact with the ancient artifact.

“*crackle* over a machine?!”
She smiled, as she rested a hand on the cold, ancient metal. “No. It wasn’t the machine. She said the machine was only the place in which the human spirit, human curiousity, and human endeavor dwelt. Here they were, just learning to reach out to each other, but they still wanted the stars. Think of the time and learning and brilliance it took to put this here. And they flung it out into the stars, knowing it would cease, knowing it would die alone on a distant planet…and they did it anyway.”

With a click, she silenced the communicator. She would deal with Base in a minute. She caressed the metal, and smiled.

“We came back for you.”
The wind whistled.
“Phoenix.”

“Strange to think a single rose-pink snowflake”

To make Mars a living place, a real place, a part of our world with meaning — the poetry of Stuart Atkinson will guide you. Heartfelt and informed, his poetry touches our human mind and soul.
If you are an artist searching new visions, let the words of an astronomer dedicated to educating the public about Mars speak to you, teach you, and share their wisdom. “It’s not science that will get the public to support a manned mission to Mars,” argues Atkinson, “It’s all about life.”
To bring a supposedly foreign place so close, to make it so real, approachable, and full of hope; not something to be feared but met with in wonderment, in celebration, is the work of a Mars Artist. Mars can become as familiar as the mysteries we face every day on Earth — this is a poet’s gift. This is Art in its most important, vital, human form. This is the role of Mars Artists. Our minds need passionately to eat of Stuart Atkinson’s “cinnamon-dusted crust.”
“I watched the Augustine meeting on NASA TV and there was pretty little passion there when you consider we’re essentially talking about nothing less than mapping out the future of mankind’s expansion out into space.”
Hundreds of years from now humans living on Mars will wonder what we thought of their home.
They will read the poems of Stuart Atkinson.
Look Out Below…
 
Strange to think a single rose-pink snowflake
floating from the frigid polar sky could have been
the start. Settling on the silent ice as softly as a sigh,
pressing on the white-capped scarp just hard
enough to send a tickle of a tremor
through its gateau-like layers of rock
it shocked the sleeping stones awake,
setting them shivering and quivering just enough
to shake loose a crust of ochre-dusted snow
and send it tumbling to the world below,
blossoming into powder puffs as it scuffed
each ledge and boulder on the way,
spraying veils of flour-fine ice into the
vacuum-thin air before crumping
into the polar plain and billowing away
from the high cliff’s crumbling base…
Imagine walking in the Great Wall shadow
of that scarp; delighting in the flint-sharp polar light,
rejoicing in the silence, relishing the peace
when suddenly the ground beneath your feet
begins to quake, and looking up
you see snow flaking off the cliff. Soon rocks and grit
a thousand shades of pink and red
are falling from the sky – a dry waterfall
of icing sugar frost and pollen-fine dust,
rushing through the air to strike the ground
without a sound in a martian mare’s tail cloud
of tan and titian fines that huffs and puffs
towards you, a slow-motion Barsoomian tsunami
as weak as the beating of a faerie’s wing…
Such sights our eyes will never see,
and I cannot help but envy those who, in the future, do.
© Stuart Atkinson 2008
Fall further in love with Mars here:

Welcome to the Mars Artists Community

Enough is enough: artists can make Mars exploration and settlement favorable to languishing in LEO or cowardly returning to the moon…simply by making the coolest, most cutting-edge, professional space imagery — ENTIRELY — Mars-centric.

The idea is to establish a model library copyrighted solely for creation of Mars imagery — but, otherwise open to use by any contributing artist or studio. Since 3D modeling is extremely labor intensive an artists’ cooperative centered upon developing Martian vehicles, habitats, and astronauts, will lower the cost of high-quality creative iterations by artists taking advantage of free Mars Only models. With a library of easily modified Mars Only models, through trial and error of creative processes, Mars Only productions will evolve to be of higher-quality, more pervasive, expressive, and cool!

This is in addition to the self-selection of artists who realize a Mars-oriented space program — NOW! — is more desirable than one languishing in LEO or returning to the moon. Not only will the most informed artists work on Mars-Only models — but, they will work together for a greater cause: the promotion of Mars exploration and settlement over the bureaucratic intertia of dream-crushing Lunar/LEO bullshit.
Eventually we will have our own website, blog, and online Mars-Only library, but, in the meantime checkout MarsSociety.org and send us a message if you are interested in hearing more or contributing: [email protected]
(By the way we call the above rover “Temerity None.” Tesla Experimental Motors Excursion Rover I___ T___ Yeti…or something like that.)