Pilgrim

What a time to be alive. To be making this journey now. I see other families around me and the mixture of excitement, fear, doubt, and absolute certainty for what lies at our destination. A millennium ago another ambitious group set out on this very same journey; three ships funded by three governments on a nine month trip to establish a settlement on a new world. A few of us celebrate the effort that was taken and the faith required to commit to such a task, but for most it is the clearest of cautionary tales for this great experiment experienced a tragically abrupt ending.  The history tells that one ship never made it and has been lost to the blackness, while those ships that did make it had themselves lost a fraction of their passengers to the harshness of the voyage. And although the survivors did not deter from their ultimate goal of establishing a settlement, knowing that there was no turning back, their ambition and desire could not compensate for being disastrously ill equipped. There are debates about how long the settlement lasted and what actually did them in, but all are in agreement that every soul perished on an unforgiving and spiteful landscape. So what once marked the sky as a monument of promise, both for resources and for the expansion of our species, became a grave stone with an epitaph that extinguished humanity’s drive to explore and risk it all to set a foot on a virgin land.

It was a blow to the spirit to be reminded of how fragile we humans are with crushing thoroughness. But while we as a species lamented over the reality that we could not protect the strongest, bravest and most gifted among us, there were some who refused to see anything but promise on that red dot in the night sky. Governments which once competed for that most distinguished of rewards as that which demonstrates the ingenuity and bravery of its citizens, abandoned such projects, deeming them to be frivolous, foolhardy, and wasteful. Even now, as a passenger heading there myself, it is difficult to imagine that any new plan could find a foothold but here we are.

I know that this trip presents far fewer dangers than that first trip had, but I can’t help but place myself into the mind of one of those pioneers. Facing an entire planet that is firmly set against you; a planet that has earned its name: Mars. And yet they faced it all the same. Walking this tightrope between worlds without a net and without a balancing pole they risked it all. We won’t be facing the same god of war when we arrive. It has taken a thousand years, but he has been disarmed and subdued, not to say that there isn’t some resistance yet to prepare for. We are still the invader after all. We are still the provoker.

It amazes me that an ideal can survive for a thousand years.  Nations rose and fell, governments redistributed, generations passed, and corporations that funded this endeavor disappeared altogether, but somehow the project moved forward. There was always someone to carry it on. Whether it was a time for ambitious construction and engineering or a time for waiting and monitoring there were people to take the mantle. My ancestors believed. They invested their lives in a promise that they knew they would not live to receive. And what stays with me now is a massive responsibility the gravity of which is far more difficult to escape than the planet I am leaving behind. I carry pictures with me, some of nameless individuals, others tagged with names of my forebears, all glowing with pride standing next to the newly constructed carbon dioxide and methane pumps, core drills, nuclear triggers, harvester satellites, seed banks, a thousand years of technological evolution documented. They laid a foundation that I will soon build upon and I am at once awed by their conviction and desperate to honor their sacrifice.

I dream of the Martian soils waiting to be trod, Martian grasses waiting to be grazed by the livestock we bring with us, Martian seas, Martian sunrises and Martian rain. My dreams are becoming more vivid the closer we get. Mars. God of War. We will have to change the name.