Over the next year, between marriages and baby-making and more immigration, the Mars colony continues to grow in both population and diversity of activities. And it continues to surprise.
One surprise is that Adrian, Skyler, George-776, and Phil-422 come up with another Tharsis project to rival Andy’s resort idea, and this time it is a mining project. Thanks to Andy’s scouting around Tharsis, they find commercially valuable concentrations of uranium and cementerium -- a distinctly Martian mineral -— on two slopes of Arsia Mons, one of the shield volcanoes on the Tharsis. At first their presence in such high concentrations was a mystery. After the deposits had been found, an immigrant Argentine geologist explained why they are there.
“The dust on that side of Arsia is created by blasting grains off the basalt which is Arsia’s flank. This basalt contains a bit of uranium, as all planetary igneous rocks do, but as part of basalt it’s too diffuse to be commercially interesting. But ... these grains blasted off the basalt are pushed into dunes by the prevailing wind, and then pushed upslope. But because the dunes are being pushed up a steep slope, they periodically slump back down again. After that happens, the winds reform them and push them upslope again. This goes on over and over, and in the process the uranium-rich grains, being bigger and heavier, slowly collect and concentrate at the bottoms of the dunes. The cementerium grains, being lighter but not smaller, collect in the lee areas on the high side of the dunes. The smaller, lighter particles that are not either just keep flying up and up, over the top, and end up on the plains downwind of the volcano.
“This process is something of a fluke. It takes special circumstances, and it’s not going to happen in many places, so we are lucky to have found these examples. ... And I’m going to get an honorary degree from somewhere for figuring this out. Thanks, Andy and others, for finding this,” he grins, “and where is the line for investing?”
Mineable uranium means nuclear power. Cementerium is the ingredient in Martian dust that makes our suits so hard to clean. It can also be a key component in powerful adhesives which we can export back to Earth.
Cementerium is nice, everyone agrees on that. But nuclear power is something that separates Martians from Earthlings—separates them in a big emotional way. Mars has no fossil fuel; there is no equivalent to oil, coal, or natural gas on Mars. Importing petroleum products such as gasoline makes as much sense as importing water: none at all. Not only is it heavy like water is, it would consume valuable oxygen that has to be manufactured on Mars, and running a gas-powered engine indoors would directly add to life support infrastructure requirements. In a sentence, “No, no, a thousand times no.”
So solar power from solar panels is the primary energy source on Mars. Up until this mineable uranium was found, it was essentially the only source. (The other source is imported uranium from Earth.) Solar is a better fit on Mars than on Earth. The atmosphere is thin and there is no ozone, so we get a lot more UV in the solar mix than earth does, and this makes the panels more efficient. The only weather is dust storms which only affect solar intensity—the wind is too thin to blow anything but the finest dust particles around—and the storms are much more predictable than Earth weather. So solar works a bit better than on Earth. But it’s not helpful for mobile power—the power that runs cars, planes, and things humans wear.
Batteries are almost as bad to import as gasoline, they are so heavy! (This is one of our first importing lessons we learn as rookies.) Manufacturing them here on Mars is also prohibitively expensive because of the “crustal abundance problem” on Mars. Rare earths and heavy metals on Earth are concentrated into veins by billions of years of plate tectonics and water-dominated weather. Mars has never had plate tectonics and only the briefest eras of water-dominated weather. On Mars “crustal abundance” applies everywhere as far as commercially-interesting Earth-style minerals are concerned. There are no veins. Profitable “mining” on Mars consists of scraping interesting stuff off the surface after it is created by the UV baking.
Prior to exploiting this uranium discovery, the dominant portable energy technology was fuel cells run by hydrogen dissociated from water using solar power. It works, but it is so expensive!
This is why the discovery of uranium being concentrated by the slump dunes on Arsia Mons is so Earth shak ... uh, Mars shaking! This is an incredible cheap energy breakthrough! It is a game-changer!
But ... on Earth nuclear is still a panic-inducing energy form. Most people, and it seems like every media person, still equate nuclear power and those mushroom cloud pictures of the 1950s. So when we Martians announce that we are about to have a nuclear bonanza, the Earth media freaks out and a lot of human concern is generated. (George-776 tells me the creations quietly applaud the nuclear as a huge cost savings.)
Earth legislators start speechifying that if Mars implements nuclear power, they will require all returning visitors to be checked for radiation contamination. (“And extra heads ... both kinds,” we Martians mock.)
Mars isn’t Earth. We jump into nuclear with both feet.
The surprising part is how quick and simple exploiting nuclear can be! In our Earth existence, nuclear was thought of as only something for making electric power, something that takes huge facilities to use, and something that takes years and years to develop. Here on Mars we learn that most of that cost and construction time is regulation induced. Here on Mars, thanks in part to our new constitution, we find that nuclear power plants can be developed in months, not decades.
That is just the first surprise. The second surprise is how many smaller interesting applications there are! Thousands! Once the genie is let out of the regulatory bottle, there is no end of interesting applications that call for nuclear engines the size of car engines, and even the size of rice grains. And they are good applications!
Nuclear is so good it starts getting really strange —- strange-frightening to some and strange-wonderful to others. It is getting so popular that we are requesting even more uranium imports from Earth to supply the demand for these thousands of different kinds of devices. And the devices we are making are so effective that some Earth people are wondering if they can get or make them, too. This latter deeply, deeply frightens many people and politicians on Earth. “What can these Martians be thinking! Has the radiation addled their brains?” is a common refrain in Earth media reports, and it isn’t the comedy reports, either. The groundwork is being laid for a backlash.
A second big scary surprise is happening about the same time that nuclear concern is growing, but it is totally different. The second surprise is that Mars businesses are taking off like gangbusters. They are getting so successful, in fact, that there starts to be a labor shortage. Well, actually the labor shortage is nothing new —- everyone always stays busy on Mars. What is new is that Martian businesses are contracting to do projects that previously had been done on Earth. I, for instance, find that once I am established, I can get all sorts of design projects from Earth contractors —- many more than I can handle. And it is because I can charge less. At first I hire some Chinese to help. The business keeps growing, so I call in a couple of Argentinean designers who have come over with that geologist. We add a Martian tango line. And that still isn’t enough. We are so busy!
Mars is becoming a faster, cheaper, more flexible human labor source.
This has happened for two reasons. First, travel technology is improving steadily. It is getting faster, cheaper, and easier to travel between Earth and Mars. Second, it is because, compared to everywhere on Earth, we are light on work regulations -— if someone wants to take the work ... why not? And once that is recognized, some people start coming to Mars not as colonists, not as tourists, but as contract laborers. These new workers apply to come to Mars as tourists, but when they get here, instead of staying at the conventional tourist hotels and doing conventional tourist activities, they stay in newly constructed dormitories in the working areas of the settlements and work. (We start calling these new residences motels.) They come to me, and I hire one or two for some rush projects. Then I hire some more...
In fact, we have to change the infrastructure growth plans for Mars quite a bit to put in more motel areas for these transient workers. It is quite strange. Technically they are tourists, and they will leave after a few months just like real tourists do. But you only see them for a day or two at real tourist attractions, usually after their assignments are completed and they are winding down. The rest of the time, they are total nerds, hovering over their work areas when awake and flopped in beds when not.
This transient worker population gets pretty large. When it grows to twice the colonial population and five times the real tourist population, some union leaders on Earth take notice and start complaining.
The tourist areas change a lot, too. The first ones —- the pre-colonial ones —- are expensive and highbrow, like the Marriott, and remain so. But as the traffic picks up, and the colonials respond to market demands, a bunch of first medium, then low-cost tourist facilities are developed along with the motels, which I don’t count as tourist facilities.
The result of this market expansion is that the new tourist areas on Mars are transforming into border towns —- the Amsterdam de Wallens, the Tijuanas, the Las Vegas Strips of Mars. In fact, some of the developers even borrow those names for what they create. Sigh! Not my favorite parts of Mars. What happens in these areas isn’t like what happens elsewhere on Mars, and they have become even more “anything goes” places as time goes on.
It is another surprise. From the Earth moralist point of view, Mars is developing a vice industry. From the Mars colonist point of view, it is simply another form of the live-and-let-live, Mars isn’t Earth, attitude. We let people pick their own way to be entertained, just like we let them pick their own way to work. The rest of us are all too busy to worry much about the details of how other people want to work and play. ... As long as they bring money and don’t kill us. Horsing around that causes property damage or otherwise endangers community safety is a harsh no-no on Mars. Earth-style property sabotage to make high-profile statements for political causes is not tolerated. Occasionally, those types come to Mars ready to make a statement. As soon as we get wind of it, they are hustled back to Earth, pronto! Nobody, but nobody, tolerates that kind of happy horseshit on Mars!
Which brings us to the Mars Independence Day Event.
Between the nuclear proliferation (as Earthlings called it) and the motel dwellers and the border town tourist areas, Mars is stepping on a lot of Earth toes. And Earth people care. Mars is suffering more and more from the Curse of Being Important as the population and the economy grow.
In many ways, the Mars colony is an unparalleled success. It does grow. Its commerce grows so much that the shuttle fleet grows from one to ten ships and the communication bandwidth with Earth grows ten thousand-fold. Mars is now routinely creating stuff that has never been created on Earth. It is an exciting place. If Mars had any mineable gold, the streets would have been paved with it by now, and the projections as to when Mars’ human population will hit a million are down to next year or the year beyond.
But the uproar on Earth is growing, too. Growing strong. An unholy alliance of unionists, baby watchers, nukephobes, and “Stick it to the Man” nomads forms and calls for tighter restrictions on how things are done on Mars. They want Mars regulations to be made by an Earth committee.
I guess I should mention that we have accidents, too. Annette dies the third year when one of the apprentice kids puts plug A into socket Z instead of socket B ... thirty people die in that mishap. It is sad, and changes are made, but the Zion Club doesn’t change their ways, and that gets a lot of Earth people upset.
“People are dying! It’s clearly not working!” those outraged Earth people argue.
“What?” say the Zion people back. “We had accidents on Earth, and we have them here. What’s not working?”
What becomes a shadow government on Earth is originally set up by a bunch of malcontent bloggers. They go through the motions of electing a legislature, which elects a president and a cabinet, and they then proceed to remotely pseudomanage affairs on Mars —- they read the news feeds from Mars and blog about what laws and regulatory commissions Mars needs to fix its “problems” as reported by the news feeds, and then they set those up among their people on Earth.
The Earth media eats this up with a spoon. They start adding shadow government sound bites to their Mars coverage.
It is spooky for us colonials to watch. It gets even spookier when a couple of Earth politicians announce at their press conferences that they are consulting with this shadow government before they decide their policies on Martian affairs.
Our government protests when word of this gets to Mars, but those Earth pols just snark back, “Earth isn’t Mars.”
It gets serious when the money flow is affected.
This shadow government sets up a customs house in the Earth-side transfer station where the Mars shuttles dock. It is originally financed by some whacked out son-of-a-bi...llionaire who buys into this shadow government pap hook, line, and sinker. Once it is set up, it starts levying tariffs on goods coming from and going to Mars—tariffs decided by the shadow government’s Tariff Commission, and that shadow government gets the revenues! It is just insane!
The Space Agency is blindsided. When it handed over sovereignty to the Mars government, it was supposed to become just another bureau on Earth that has transformed from running something into coordinating between the old and new sovereign entities. As this crisis grows, the people running the Space Agency simply duck.
The media and people of Earth look upon this as just more social hijinks by some protest group. They laugh it off. The media features it! We on Mars don’t see any humor in this at all. Our government is being dissed. If this had been the 1700s, we would have been bringing out the muskets and dumping tea. As the Martian hotheads blog, “It’s time to show Earth our government has a pair.”
I sympathize, but we have to come up with something 22nd century, and that takes putting on some thinking-caps.
Being polite hasn’t worked. Cooperating with the powers-that-be on Earth who handle commerce hasn’t protected us from this humiliation. So it is time for some fighting fire with fire.
Anton is still on Earth, the creations still want to see Mars be a big success, and we have other followers, well-wishers, and wannabes as well. The Mars government consults with Anton. He advises against cutting off our noses to spite our faces. In this case that means any kind of retaliation boycott.
“There are plenty of angry people on Earth already. You don’t need to add to that list,” he says. “What you need to do is convince the Earth governments that by supporting this disrespecting of you, they are supporting the disrespecting of themselves. That will cut this nonsense off in a big hurry.
“And this may be arrangeable ...”
So other than being verbally outraged, we have patience. We do a bit of name-calling, but mostly we just let those shadow government people hang themselves.
It takes a couple of months, but they do. They aren’t any kind of real government, so those that stay with it evolve into a group of competing comedians making fun of current politics. And while that is happening, Anton is encouraging other malcontented bloggers to set up shadow governments of various Earth institutions.
When shadow DMV’s start to show up offering ten minute service, and a shadow IRS on the Lincoln Memorial, and a shadow Tax Commission on Tiananmen Square, the Earth governments get the hint, and the customs house business is declared a prank and shut down. Likewise, many of the politicians now realize the fire they are playing with and move back to more conventional ways of making their talking points. The shadow government is a fad that fades.
And after the shadow government crisis, the Martians become pretty well respected for being Martians. We are different, and we are independent. We are also just the first. Earth-Mars commerce is now big enough to support many ships making profitable journeys. What comes next is more ships that go farther afield. Mars is just the first, and we Child Champs are real proud to have done our part to make it a hugely successful first.
We are now truly making babies —- and humanity —- in the 22nd century way.