Messages from the Deep (2 page)

Footage shows candidates becoming
disorientated about sleeping and waking hours as they struggle to
get up in the morning.

“You’re joking! It’s the middle of the
night,” says one.

Walking outside becomes a major
excursion.

“Week nine was spent in submarines, in very
cramped, claustrophobic conditions, with no fresh air, or chance to
exercise, and with complex, cognitive tasks to perform day and
night.”

The pressures of the past few weeks build up
and tempers become frayed and stretched to breaking point.

“Week 10, the final elimination round, saw
the 35 survivors put into space-craft simulators for a week,
experiencing the extreme gravity of blast-off, weightlessness and
living in a space-suit with no toilet or shower.”

Some candidates relish this final
challenge.

The promotions earned by the final 30 during
the 10 weeks were then added up and the top 16 finally announced.
Mariada had the highest number of promotions and final votes
cast.

The camera pans from Mariada to the other 15
finalists in turn as they are introduced.

It was carefully explained that they were not
chosen according to a cast-iron quota system of equal
representativity of gender, race, nationality, culture, religion
etc, but it was remarkable that this was, in fact, more or less the
end result. The top 16 had nine females and seven males, some from
the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australasia, some black,
brown, white and yellow in complexion, a mix of religions and
beliefs and career experiences and skills.

For the next seven years, ‘Life on Mars’
continued to show how the top 16 were being trained in all the
skills that are needed for long-term survival on Mars, including
the areas covered in the elimination rounds, such as medical,
pharmacological, mechanical, electronic, agricultural, nutritional,
emotional and so on. An added challenge was to explore who should
be in the first team of four to land on Mars, and then who should
be in the next team to follow in two years’ time.

The two year gap is because the solar orbit
of Mars has a close approach to Earth only every two years, known
as the ‘Hohmann transfer’. It could also happen that, if one member
of a team proved to be unsuitable, the whole team could be replaced
by the next team, because of the importance of group-work, and so
the whole system needed to have both precision and flexibility.

A second round of applications started, with
the top 100 chosen to undergo another set of elimination rounds,
down to the next final 16.

Mariada still seemed to be the top candidate,
and the team she was in seemed to be the most positive and vibrant
of the four teams.

In early 2024 the first team to leave for
Mars in a few months was announced, and it was no surprise that
Mariada's was chosen. There was a large media turnout at the ‘Life
on Mars’ studio as the team was presented to the world. The three
others in her team comprised Aziz from Egypt, an electronics and
engineering wizard, Martin, an African-American gifted in all
medical issues, and Noriko from Japan, expert in areas from diet to
group dynamics.

The rocket with its precious capsule of four
astronauts at the tip is poised for take-off on the launch-pad.
‘Life on Mars’ has been following every move since they woke up
this morning.

Now each astronaut is sitting in the capsule,
almost like racing car drivers in the seconds before the start, but
these will be racing into space at about 30 000 kph, then at about
18 000 kph cruise speed.

Mariada thinks back to an interview with her
parents. A reporter asks, “As her parents, how do you feel about
her going to Mars, maybe never to return?”

Her mother answers, “She has pointed out that
some of our ancestors, French, Dutch and German, came to South
Africa 350 years ago, on a similar mission, also about a seven
month, one-way trip, as most knew they would never return to
Europe, and were going to a place barely known and with huge
challenges of survival, something like Mars is to us now.

So we are fully behind her and very proud to
be her parents.”

Mariada is being interviewed.

“What do you think you will miss most about
Earth?”

“Well, of course, I will miss my family and
friends and being together with them. But we will still be able to
talk, in a delayed sort of way. I’ll miss meals and parties with
steak and wine and the occasional cigar. I’ll miss the solitude of
walking in the mountains and swimming in a clear pool, or
body-surfing in the sea. Hearing birds. Playing with dogs. We will
have a recording with us on Mars of all the special sounds of
Earth, like thunder and rain falling, excited children, crickets
chirping at night, and so on.”

The space-craft is on its way and three fixed
cameras show, in turn, Earth as it slowly recedes, the control area
of dials and lights, letters and numbers, and the astronauts either
sitting or carefully moving around in the confined space.

Mariada speaks to Aziz next to her, “While we
were waiting for lift-off, I kept hearing this poem from the
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

‘And, as the Cock crew, those who stood
before

The tavern shouted — “Open the door!

You know how little while we have to
stay,

And, once departed, may return no more.”
’

I suppose it’s a bit late now though, as the
door has opened and we have departed, but somehow, I feel we will
return.”

Mariada says to camera and is viewed back on
Earth at the ‘Life on Mars’ studio and in people’s homes, like her
parents’, “At the moment you can talk to me and it takes a few
seconds for your voice to reach us, but do you realise that, in six
month’s time, when we are near Mars, it will take about twenty
minutes? So when we tell you we’re about to have supper, by the
time you hear it, we will have finished. And by the time your next
message arrives, we may be asleep.”

Noriko says to the other astronauts and is
shown on camera, “At about the half-way mark, there is a point of
no return, where there is insufficient fuel to return to Earth, so
there is only one way and that is forward. This is likened to the
dilemma Caesar had of ‘crossing the Rubicon’ with his army. It is
also something like the ships in the old days crossing the Equator,
crossing from the better-known Northern to the lesser-known
Southern hemisphere. I will let you know when we are there and
we’ll have a small party, with a Mars bar each.”

‘Life on Mars’ has made four biographical
videos featuring each of the astronauts, in the months leading up
to the launch. Now they are showing each one to the whole world and
simultaneously to the astronauts as they make their silent, dark
way outward to Mars.

Each week on Earth, one of the videos is
shown in the country of origin of that astronaut, to a local
audience chosen after a competition to test their knowledge of all
the astronauts.

The rest of the world also watches the 30
minute video and then watches as the top five contestants from the
audience compete in a quiz show about the video just shown. There
are 15 questions about various details of the person’s life. After
the first five questions, the weakest contestant is eliminated, and
another after 10 questions, so that the last three contestants have
five questions left.

At the end, the highest total score wins,
with more questions if there is a tie. The winner is given the
option of being in the top 100 for the next round of choosing
candidates for Mars.

On the space-ship, the three astronauts not
featured in the video also answer the questions, with a winner
being found, the prize being relief from all routine duties for a
day.

When Mariada’s turn comes, Cape Town is the
city she has chosen as her home base as she spent many years there.
The video shows that, after being born in King William’s Town, her
parents moved to Pietermaritzburg.

“I loved hearing stories and, while stories
were being read to me, I followed the print and taught myself to
read, from the age of about three years. I liked nearly all school
subjects so I tried to take as many as I could, doing nine subjects
for the school-leaving certificate.

For my choice of study at university, I would
have loved to do Art or Music, but I decided to follow the biggest
intellectual challenge, it seemed, Quantum Physics, after enrolling
for Astrophysics at the University of Cape Town. I loved it but,
after spending my whole life studying, I decided to travel and work
overseas. In London I met a young Japanese woman who suggested I
should see Japan. We became such good friends that I stayed with
her and her mother in Fukuoka in a tiny apartment. As her mother
spoke no English but loved to talk, I had a crash-course in the
kitchen in Japanese. I was also teaching English at a pre-school
and so I had a perfect opportunity to keep learning not only oral
but also written Japanese. After one year I was reasonably
proficient and fluent.

I heard of a course in making cocktails for
up-market clientele and at the end of it was offered a lucrative
position at an exclusive night-club where my bilingualism was
valued. After two years I returned home to start on my PhD at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, which I was awarded at about
the same time as I heard that I was in the top 100 for Mars.”

Cape Town City Hall is the venue for the quiz
show and is looking magnificently colonial under the ‘table-cloth’
cloud on Table Mountain. The place is full to capacity with an
enthusiastic audience, and the top three contestants are young and
highly motivated to win the grand prize.

The winner is a young, female, final year,
BSc student from the University of the Western Cape. She vividly
recalls how Mariada gave a talk at her township school on the Mars
project, and how inspired she was to excel at Maths and Science
after that. She has no hesitation to be a candidate for Mars.

The quiz in space that follows is also a
closely-contested affair, watched by millions.

Six months have passed and the craft nears
Mars. As it approaches, the heat shield protects the craft as it
enters the Martian atmosphere. Parachutes open at six km altitude.
Retro-rockets fire at 1.5 km, slowing the craft to zero speed as it
lands. The craft weighs about 40 tons, considerably more than the
four tons of the Curiosity rover with its science laboratory, so
the sense of relief at not having a crash-landing is palpable. Aziz
does a quick check of all the main communication and electronics
systems and pronounces them all in perfect shape, a huge relief as
the craft will be the data and communication centre on Mars and
will be right in the middle of the settlement area.

Mariada is the first to alight and repeats
the version, with a few alterations, of Neil Armstrong on stepping
onto the Moon 55 years earlier:

“One small step for a human, one new planet
for humankind to live on.”

There is, in fact, a partly functional
outpost there already, with a breathable atmosphere of 0.7 bar
pressure, 3000 litres of water, 240 kg of oxygen stored, and a
communication system to monitor these resources. The crew is soon
busy connecting the additional housing materials and solar panels
that they have brought with them, including systems of pipes,
cables, machinery and even cameras. One camera will remain in the
space-craft and three others will be in the housing complex of
three areas: the living area, the bath and sleeping area and the
garden area. The living area is divided into a laboratory and a
kitchen-dining-meeting area.

Heaps of frozen soil are being brought by a
conveyor belt into the garden area. Each ton of sand yields 20
litres of water after being exposed to microwaves and then
collecting the condensed vapour. Some of the water is for drinking,
some is converted to oxygen and some is used for irrigation. Garden
beds are being fertilised and sown with seeds and the recycling
plant is working. The first seeds begin to germinate.

Sexuality issues in space have obviously been
thoroughly discussed beforehand, with the final analysis being
roughly as follows: Regarding contraception, the men consented to
have reversible vasectomies. The policy of no births on Mars, with
no real Martian as yet, will apply indefinitely. If you really
can’t resist sleeping together, although it is strongly discouraged
because it can have divisive effects, and probably could not have
happened in the space craft before now anyway, well, nobody can
really stop you. But if your relationship gets in the way of any
duties we have or the smooth functioning of the unit, and we will
tell you if it does, that is not on. If you do not heed the
warning, it will be officially recorded in the log book.

‘Life on Mars’ has a ‘delayed live’ interview
with Mariada as she replies to a question from Earth.

“What are our main areas of research? Well,
they are both practical and very theoretical. Practical research is
basically about our survival here, ensuring that we will continue
to generate electricity, thereby creating water from ice, to drink
and irrigate our crops and, by electrolysis, to generate oxygen to
breathe. Each one of these areas is crucial to our survival here,
so we need to study every possibility of how to improve our
systems, or how to prevent or deal with possible problems in
future.

For example, how would we deal with a
sandstorm, quite common on Mars, and which may block out sunlight
for a few days, so we can only generate minimal power from the
panels.

Well, we have a portable nuclear device to
use in emergencies. We have become hyper-aware of how precious
every single thing is that we have. You can’t just go out and buy
another light bulb. But we do have a 3D printer which can make many
useful objects, like tools and nuts and bolts.