Category Archives: Propaganda

Come on, Get Happy!! (How to Portray Martian Settlement)

Life on Mars will be FUN!  We will have 24/7 wall-sized Skype murals with permanently open delayed stream of whatever you want to see on Earth (if that is an issue).

Please…if you advocate Mars settlement it would be helpful not to emphasize actually surmountable challenges. Phrases such as these pollute the public’s imagination:

“I envision life on Mars to be…frightening, lonely, quite cramped”

“It’s going to be a very long period of isolation and confinement”

“After the excitement of blast-off, and after the initial landing on Mars, it will be very difficult to avoid depression. After all, one is breaking one’s connections with family, friends, and all things familiar”

“Each day will be pretty much like the rest. The environment, once the novelty wears off, is likely to be deadly boring. Despite being well prepared and fully equipped there are certain to be unanticipated problems that cannot be remedied. One by one the crew will get old, sick, and die-off.”

“I do very well with solitude.”

We must make this negative portrayal of Martian settlement incomprehensible.  As strange as if someone were to suggest standing under Earth’s blue skies would lead to feelings of paralysis, suicide, or aesthetic bias toward non-photo blue. (In other words, ridiculous.)

The story of Mars will not be one of danger.  It will not be written by timid academics. The question frightened armchair astronauts should be asked is, “How often does your mom really want to Skype with you — on Earth??”

Humans on Mars will paint, play guitar, raise children, plant flowers, and have vibrant loving families. There is nothing solitary or depressing about the place.

(And they will have great relationships with their moms.)

Ridiculous, embarrassing article from which the quotes above were taken:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/10/space-volunteer-way-mission-mars/#ixzz1jLhRlYvW

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.”

What would Zheng He do?

Lunar Astronaut Buzz Aldrin came out in favor of the HEROIC “Mars to Stay” mission architecture!

“They need to go there more with the psychology of knowing that you are a pioneering settler and you don’t look forward to go back home again after a couple a years,” Aldrin said. But that’s not to say they’ll never return to Earth. Years down the line, there may be the opportunity for a return mission, depending on technological advancements. “At age 30, they are given an opportunity. If they accept, then we train them, at age 35, we send them. At age 65, who knows what advances have taken place. They can retire there, or maybe we can bring them back.”

The full article may be read at Universe Today:

Zheng He was the 13th Century HEROIC Chinese admiral of the largest expeditionary fleet assembled for hundreds of years following his time. Shortly after his death the ships which had carried him to Africa, India, and beyond were burned in their docks by a new reactionary Ming emperor. Within a hundred years Christopher Columbus had discovered America and China began its slow decline into tribute to foreign powers.
In China, 11 July is Maritime Day (中国航海日), devoted to the memory of Zheng He’s first voyage. For more about Zheng He, please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He

Additional free designs and their authoring files may be found here: http://www.titlesequences.com/mac/public_downloads.html

Frustration with the Augustine Committee

The Augustine Committee seems to be embracing heavy lift but oriented toward a space program of lunar missions, with Mars seen as an eventual objective in the indeterminate future. This is a serious mistake. If anyone reading this blog ever wants Mars to be explored, much less settled, in their lifetime, America must not only develop a heavy lift vehicle such as the SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy, or the Ares 5, but, the program must be oriented specifically toward Mars — not the moon. The moon is a siren call. Mars is an entirely different environment capable of supporting human civilization en mass. With a 24 hour day, vast quantities of water, and all the essential elements found on Earth, Mars offers humanity a permanent second home. Martian exploration will use aeroshells, parachutes, and on site refueling; thermal, pressure, and gravitational environments are entirely different between Mars and the Moon. Lunar equipment and procedures will not evolve into Mars missions.
Asteroid mining and Martian settlement will provide the engine humanity needs to sustain a permanently expanding frontier. Mars Direct is a low cost straightforward way to settle Mars. Now!
The Mars Society is an international organization committed to this moral imperative. Products with variations of the “Cowards Return to the Moon” theme can be purchased at cost from Factual Fiction’s online store.
While such a populist theme may seem blunt, rude, or whatever, over the last decade of involvement in space advocacy we’ve observed a remarkably consistent dichotomy between persons involved in the space community: old political timid bureaucrats predictably favor lunar exploration, with their excuse being “safety, proximity to earth”; bold young creative entrepreneurs OVERWHELMINGLY favor Mars Direct, with their rally cry being, “LET’S GO!”
This dichotomy is so consistent, obvious, and predictable a simple biological solution to change American space policy suggests itself: testosterone replacement therapy. No kidding. It is time to view lunar exploration with disdain. Heroes go to Mars. Cowards return to the moon!!!!

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.)