My Life on Mars
Waking up, I hear the hum of the generators in the room, purifying and recycling the air to create a comfortable atmosphere for me to breath. I’ve grown accustomed to the hum and now barely notice it. It helps me to sleep, especially through the dust storms that frequent the landscape. The familiar red and orange glow is coming through the window from the iron rust landscape outside. It’s sunny outside today with a temperature of -14 degrees and not a dust storm in sight. It’s a good day to go exploring.
Upon waking up, I climb out of my temperature-regulated sleeping bag, designed by SpaceX, then proceed to get dressed in my blue work suit (the red one with the digital patch of my two sons is my favorite though). After washing my face with the last of the melted ice I collected last week, I look at the MRO analysis. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and look for buried ice below the surface of Mars and is an incredible tool for sustaining life.
I eat a breakfast consisting of a variety of fresh vegetables, all coming from our garden, and some potato cakes, cooked from the very last real Yukon potato, delivered directly from earth. I then check on the rock samples I collected near the Planum Boreum, or northern Ice cap. After going over the agenda for the day, it’s off to the garden pod in the right wing of the habitat. I created a system for growing vegetables in the red Martian soil that requires careful monitoring. It’s really quite a complicated procedure, but overtime it will become easier and easier to grow. Then I suit up and head out to collect some ice. It’s critical that I collect enough ice to sustain my camp life for at least another 10 days or longer.
Heading out, the barren red lands and sharp rocks crunch under my feet. It’s dry, dusty, and cold. I drive my rover about 10 miles out to the western edge of Milankovic Crater, which has a thick deposit of sediment covering a layer rich in ice. Some scientists believe one of the many warm Martian oceans used to cover this location, teeming with life far beyond human imagination.
On the way there, I find myself thinking back to the year 2020, when we were racing towards a multiplanetary species. One of the more enthusiastic companies leading the charge was SpaceX, and it was Elon Musk, engineer and founder of SpaceX, who inspired me to become the first person to live on Mars. Elon sees planetary colonization as a necessity for the advancement and preservation of the human race and is a chief advocate for Mars exploration. I completely agree; however, we constantly butt heads about how the system for living on Mars should work. Elon even established the first Mars Financial Banking System called Mars Federation Finance, which runs on the popular Doge Coin Blockchain.
In 2020, Elon predicted the first person could land on Mars as early as 2029; we did it on
December 12th, 2027, ahead of his prediction. He envisions a million people inhabiting a Martian city by the year 2050, which he says could cost anywhere from 100 billion to 10 trillion USD.
Arriving here on July 4th, 2032, I am the first person to live on Mars, here to establish the initial colony, a new utopia. People will soon venture to this red planet and be known as pioneers to an undiscovered world. I need to pave the way and figure out a system for sustaining a million people in a very harsh and unforgiving landscape. It’s been one year since I arrived on Mars. It’s hard work and lonely at times, but rewarding. My pilot Yamamoto Jun, who navigated our SpaceX Starship, tragically died on day 38. We were looking for ice along the vast canyon system of Valles Marineris. The cliffs dropped down for what looked like miles. While hiking along the rim, my foot slipped, and I would have fallen to my death, but Jun quickly grabbed my hand and pulled me up. He then lost his footing and began to fall himself. I reached out to grab him, but his fingers slipped through my hand. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him.
It’s been a year since I arrived and only 62 days remain before my two sons and the rest of my crew come to join me and live here permanently. I need to prepare for their arrival. I miss them dearly. This is important work though. It’s for our humanity.