Recently discovered lava tubes under the surface of the large Martian volcanoes offer more opportunity for human exploration and habitation upon Mars. A scientist interviewed by the Planetary society remarked that exploration of such areas may be retarded by the concern for contamination by humans of life on Mars if it exists (that seemed to be the concern). The Lava Caves National Monument of Northern California and Haleakala of Maui provide examples of solid areas that could readily be transformed into areas for shelter.
Human beings landing on Mars could build permanent living structures in lava tubes, if at all possible, in order to have some room for expansion and caching of supplies. The United States from Vietnam to Afghanistan and perhaps destined for Mars too has a tradition of production and wastage of materials rather than a conservative interest in delivering durable goods. Government contractors earn money by resupply after materials wastage-that is why the Russian Soyuz program will be delivering hitch-hikernauts to the space station when the Space Shuttle has passed its expiration date-the Russians and formerly the communists were more conservative at getting use out of existing materials, while the United States delivers billions and billions of expensive equipment and then lets it rot as they withdraw in order to produce profit for materials flow-through for insider and favorite contractors for defense and N.A.S.A. N.A.S.A. in order to be conservative should thus create a special hitch-hikernaut Martian troglidyte corps with high unit esprit. They rightly out to become the first extra-terrestrial human spelunkers to work on foundations for the future.
The geologist mentioned that presently limitations exist for accurately delivering robotic explorers to particular locations of Mars with accuracy. Therefor the electro-magnetic Martian mortar is required to launch accelerated rounds to particular locations given g.p.s. coordinates sent from Earth for aiming the mortar remotely.
A variety of different kinds and purposes of mortar rounds would be designed to withstand the flight in low atmospheric friction across Mars as far as a hundred miles. These would be ground sampling penetrators, close ground surveillance, mouse crawlers inside lava tubes and so forth with packings of photo-taking, data storage, processing and rebroadcasting to the parent mortar facility for rely to the hut at mission control.
Bandoliers of mortar ammunition with special robotic crawlers could be designed for ever new missions, and it might be possible to deliver reloads of exploration ammunition to the mortar with a self-propelled ammunition vehicle launched from the Earth. The Mars exploration electro-magnetic metal-storm style mortar would be either solar, fuel cell or nuclear powered,and might be a prototype for rapid lunar surface resupply delivery as well.
The first humans on Mars should have the ability to quickly advance supplies to distant locations in emergencies, and may want to develop large caliber resupply mortars.
Following is an excerpt from a fiction story about a future Martian Colony
Chapter 13…Blarney
Nitrist Blarney left her suite of offices she rated as Department Chairman at the UT Extraneous Physics Building early in the afternoon to pick her drop at the old driftwood log on the Drake Sea shore. The Drake Sea was placed behind Martian Dam in the enormous Valles Mariner to formed, beneath a Vose Shield, one of the largest, deepest artificial water bodies teeming with life beyond Earth in the Solar System. The Martian Seacoast at Novo Lundinium’s northern edge had bergy-bits aground on sand bars and coral reefs designed for cool waters. A chill from cold west winds often brought sea-effect snowstorms. The sea was reconstituted from ice north beyond the flood plain refrozen from an ancient warmer time on Mars. The ice was deposited by comet impacts and contained unearthly additives. Kuiper Belt comets passing into the inner system occasionally brought more ice passing with minimal friction through unscreened regions of a normally thin Martian atmosphere. Much ice accumulated underground and at the North Pole. The Vose molecular inversion field held the Drake to a reasonable rolling wave turbulence caused by the thermal convection currents from seafloor vent holess drilled at it’s creation, and prevented evaporation and etherialization into the thin native Martian atmosphere and the neo-void of interplanetary space.
Chapter 16…The Martian Condition
Nitrist Blarney slurped a Scotch double chased with a Wrangell Dark Ale at the Mil-o-slow Body Shop and toyed with the leftover Mandarin Duck and wild egg fried rice on honeycomb on her hot, oblong dinner plate. The fast service at the Mil-o-slow brought smoked salmon and caviar over to her table by the field screen on the terrace of Canton Towers Building A on Kant-Strollway North with Milton Fripp. Milton simply drank a second Wrangell Dark Ale and considered if Nitrist would command him to overnight again. He was the sixth generation of the account clan of Frips to serve the matriarchic Blarney clan leaders of science and politics on Earth and Mars. Inwardly Frip was drooling hoping he could serve overnight.
“They are getting too close Milton” Nitrist said.
“Both the U.T. Extraneous balance factors and Corporate would enfilade and terminate my project if we allow it. Thanks for your placement Milton. I’ve got something extra in the sack for you tonight. Tomorrow see if you can find anyone else at home.” Nitrist directed.
Chapter 17…Misanthrope Dialectic
In the City of Novo Lundinium Colonel MacArthur felt a wave of ignorance rush over him and discerned that a leading edge of a Lemmingwave field from stooge division of Big-Comm-Psych had broadcast and passed like a tsunami across Mars. Cromwell MacArthur had his brain trained as a social seismograph at Security/Maoz College at Scotchops-Edinburgh in the savage re-iced rocks area of Europe.
Scotchops outward bounce glacial training courses developed by Interplanetary Maoz vectored cadres via enlightenment about the nature of criminal activities versus real organizational power to meet the needs of a Newish World Order’s contractual obligations for Interplan Corporate’s sprawling business empire and subsidiary freight tensoring division throughout the Solar System and beyond. Flourishing piracy,embezzlement, theft and various force-into- proscribed civil Maoz space-time coordinates provided job security for law enforcement and a need for adjudication.
