Mars & maybe a Bond villain

    As my regular readers know I am more than a little into sci-fi and write it regularly.  As a result colonization of other planets is something a sci-fi author must grapple with whether their characters are colonizing a planet themselves, or are part of an already colonized world.  Part of colonizing is Terraforming to some extent though as all known planets are not habitable to us as they are.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

    Over the years I have more than halfway watched our real to life potential Bond villain with some interest.  Love him or hate him Mr. Musk is not exactly an idiot nor is he a bumbling fool.  He has flat out said he wants to begin colonizing Mars in 2029.  What a lot of people fail to realize is the process has already started and I am not referring to the spacecraft called Starship although it is an obvious component.  No, I am referring to his other projects.

    As many are aware we know of no fossil fuels on our diminutive red neighbor so either we bring a lot of volatile fuel 140 million miles/225 million kilometers/ 12 light minutes or we find other power sources.

You may notice Tesla Solar does not mess with wind power, that’s because the atmosphere on Mars is too thin to turn the rotors.  (If you get into the contracts for them you also find the system has to have internet and it communicates in real-time with Tesla servers for “system monitoring” read "performance updates and monitoring for improvements”.) However there is plenty of sunlight, so solar tiles and powerwalls it is.  With solar power you get electricity so you need electric vehicles hence Tesla Motors.

Tesla has worked their way up from small electric vehicles toward semi trucks for a reason, testing the products on Earth and getting the flaws out before shipping them 12 light minutes away.  Was sending a Tesla roadster into space vanity or was it a test of its assembly and electronics?  I know, how would you land vehicles on Mars?  Well the U.S. Army can air drop a battle tank, so I think that answer is obvious.

Now we have Tesla tiny homes, this is another precursor toward colonization since they could basically be shipped prefab, and again airdrop them close to their final site.

    Space-X is his obvious launch platform and it makes total sense that it was his first to pay a lot of attention to on that note.

    Now we have Optimus robots, what better way to set up a colony with no labor force than to ship a bunch of semiautonomous robots there first.

    Even The Boring Company makes sense as with a limited atmosphere it makes sense to bury your colony to deal with cosmic radiation.

Starlink is obvious as how would you transport that much fiber optic cable or wire to Mars?  So satellite internet makes sense.  All the habitats, robots, and other equipment need to communicate with Earth and each other.  Once people are on Mars then it already is in place for them to communicate.  Another bonus is you eliminate the issues with loss of signal caused by Mars rotating.

    So we have power, housing, transportation, radiation protection, communication, and initial labor, so what do I see next?  To me the next two logical steps are:

Heavy equipment possibly powered by site generated rocket fuel or maybe solar but let’s face facts solar does not seem like it would be the best option for heavy equipment power.

Gardening  Now this already exists obviously and Andy Weir has even tackled it in The Martian, but we have to look at large scale as well as scalable, off planet growth.  Do you go hydroponic?  Dirt in greenhouses?  Artificial light or natural?  If natural, how do you cut back on lethal doses of cosmic radiation?  (Even plants have a lethal dose level)  Also if natural lighting how do you not lose massive amounts of heat via your skylight system?

    Now some may wonder where does twitter fit into this?  Why did he buy it?  The obvious is he wanted an unfiltered platform to yell into the void, but what if it is also to be duplicated on Colony X?  Considering there is no Cydonia Book, no Xtegram, no Mars’ Space, and no legacy media, it makes sense to clone an existing product for the future Mars immigrants to communicate and gossip through.

Love him or hate him, be he genius or crazy, he is smart enough to hire the right people to make this work and use people with the cash on Earth to fund his projects as they test them for him (a real life Tom Sawyer?) locally and under the guise of “green initiatives” before shipping them 12 light minutes away.

In the end is he a Bond villain or do we save that title for someone else?

Updates on me July edition 7-15-2025

Been a while since I have posted an update on me so here we go:

Weight is down another 11 Lbs over the last 3 months, so closer to my goal.

Blood pressure is down a bit more running a respectable 112 over 60, and I take no blood pressure or heart medications. For a person of my age that is pretty good 😊

May 13th I fell through a staircase landing, broke a rib and pulled my back. Ironically I was with two of my crew to get them to repair that spot before someone dropped into the basement like I did. At this point it only bothers me if I lay on that side for too long, but have recently been cleared to full work load. My crew has had my back during the whole thing stopping me from automatically doing things I would normally have done.

Wound up with twitter again dumping Jobe’s profile on me–she has been blocked for 18 months now 🙄. The experience did not phase me, no anger, no depression, but seeing the same repeated lies, thirst trap pics (I can’t say much there as I have posted some of myself on my own Insta), etc that she has posted for the last 13 years made me glad I walked away…progress. I won’t say the trauma bond is broken, but I can see through it and see her for what she is.

I have realized that Jobe taught me a very huge lesson; if someone can’t respect my boundaries they aren’t worth my time.

Therapy has taught me that love is more than a feeling, it is the long series of choices and actions where you both respect and choose to do for the other. Jobe could say “I love you” and not return simple texts or phone calls, but instead could post on twitter and create a clandestine Instagram while lying about it. She could send me nudes and risqué pics I did not ask for–seriously, does that not seem like something special between two committed people–but at the same time she put her job before us. Post about being lonely on Friday nights when she knew I was here waiting for her to reach out.  Subtweet things, but choose not to be an adult and talk to me.  Basic respect was not there and love without respect is abuse in a pretty package.

My shop has been at a standstill of late. Between my broken rib, helping my son with some bills as he gets back to steady employment causing the funds to just not be available, and then adding the wet weather around here of late… Originally I hoped to have the shop up by October, now it is looking more like next spring.

Started setting fencing as the neighboring house has new occupants. I had to set a 1,000 pound log in one corner of my yard as the new neighbor had a friend who was driving around one of my trees and into my yard as opposed to backing out into the street–like I do every time I leave to go somewhere. The log does not roll, and my tractor has issues moving it so until I put a fence there as well it will do.

My hair is finally growing out at a decent rate once again, though there are a few silvery strands now–seriously just a few. My family does not really go gray until closer to their 80s so I have 30 or more years for that.

Conversations with Once Wife have been a bit more frequent. Neither of us have ever really stopped caring about the other. Three years out now and we are beginning to have actual discussions on where things went wrong between us. Three years and therapy before I figured out how to explain how I felt things went wrong–she honestly had no issues expressing her side to me. I won’t imply nor say I was an angel in our now nearly 38 years of knowing each other, but I also won't take all of the blame either. A marriage is 50/50 on everything, including issues/problems.

Will we get back together? We have not talked that far, nor worked through everything yet, maybe we will, maybe we won’t, but the issues still need addressed and seen before we can truly move on even if it is with someone else lest we sabotage our next relationships with the same issues.

I've been a bit missing on social media, but on the flip side as regular readers have noticed I am writing again.  I am reading through Solitary Nonconfinment in an effort to tie it up so hopefully by year's end it will be in print.  Rainy days may find me recording stories for audio books going forward as well.  Some of my catalog of stories has been sitting for a decade now, and I think it is time they get finished and seen by more than just myself.

For now, that’s about all there is

Maura out