This ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it’s cold as hell!
Unless humanity destroys itself, I think it’s absolutely crazy to think a human is not going to step foot on the planet. There’s a lot of future to go after we’ve all passed on, and somebody is going to want to be the first. That said, the conditional does actually make it at least a little bit less than absolutely certain. Still, I went with a rehearsed line of some sort.
…needs guitars.
As a child, my career goal was to be the first poet to live at a Lagrange point habitat. Half a century later and I’m still available.
I know what I would say.
“John Carter, we are here.”
Yeah, and I went with “in Chinese.” They just want it more than we (the US) do, right now.
“This is just like Capricorn One!”
Here’s a page with some classic suggestions.
Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
The US went to the moon in order to assert its political dominance. There wasn’t really any other good reason to do it. The Chinese will get to Mars first for the same reason - to assert that they have arrived as a world power. And they will go there because that’s what’s left.
There is no indication that China has developed anything more than a conceptual plan for a crewed expedition to Mars, and certainly not earlier than mid-century given the modest progress of their own program and space transportation technology. All of these people kowtowing over how the Chinese are going to conquer the solar system while the US and Europe are sitting on their hands need to actually look at what the Chinese space program is actually doing rather than uncritically repeating boastful claims with little basis in evidence.
Stranger
“Have another go at her, Mr. Gorsky!”
Where’s the nougat? I was promised nougat! And Caramel!
Gave up eating heads, cars and bars?
“Klaatu barada nikto.”
Mars needs women!
Not going to happen. I think the technical hurdles will never be overcome.
To me, it just seems inevitable, given the type of timeline we’re dealing with here. Like I said, if we don’t destroy ourselves in the meantime, how can’t we end up at Mars (and I personally think beyond–far, far beyond.)
If we find any signs of life on Mars, we probably won’t allow any crewed missions to the surface. There is too great a risk of contaminating Mars with Earth bacteria and destroying native Martian life before we can study them.
Lagrange point habitats make no sense. Orbital habitats might make sense, but why put them at a Lagrange point? So you stay in the same position relative to the Earth and the Moon… but why does that matter?
“Wait, why is my ticket stamped ‘One way’?”