We'll never leave earth. Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson

By Mikael Krogerus

The future of mobility extends far beyond the planet Earth. Even today, organisations are vying with each other to set dates for the first settlements on Mars, the Dutch foundation Mars One being one example. Science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson talks about the merits or otherwise of our plans and explains why Earth stands to benefit if we even just think about colonising Mars.

Mr Robinson, 30 years ago you wrote the “Mars Trilogy”, a science fiction series about colonising Mars that won popularity all over the world. What would you say today: is travel to Mars science now, or still fiction?

That depends on the time horizon we’re talking about. It’s theoretically conceivable for us to send a manned spaceship to Mars in the next 100 years, but in practical terms it’s impossible. First of all, it would fall down on the costs: a colony on Mars would cost around 500 billion dollars. The next hurdle is getting there. At the present time it’s expected to take nine months. Nine months without gravity would have disastrous effects on our body. Our muscles and bone structure deteriorate without pressure.

If you get into a spaceship at the age of 40, you land nine months later on Mars as a physical geriatric?

This process could be combated with intensive training, as practiced by today’s astronauts, who sit on an ergometer for four hours a day. However, we now know that there are also chemical processes involved that damage the heart. The solution would therefore be the old SciFi idea of creating artificial gravity by rotation, but we haven’t got that far yet.

Just assuming we got to Mars in good health, what can we expect there?

It’s cold, between -30 and -120 degrees Celsius. There’s no atmosphere, no gravity and no global magnetic field, only weak, local magnetic fields offering little protection from cosmic radiation. The soil is contaminated with perchlorate, a highly active substance that does considerable damage to humans. In short, it’s a place that’s hostile to life. For people ever to settle there, the Mars colonies would have to be built metres under the earth. All the same, Mars is still the best candidate for colonisation. There’s a lot of water, though it’s frozen, there’s carbon dioxide – likewise in the form of ice – and there’s sunlight. These are three important ingredients for life! What there’s not, however, as far as we know, is life itself, for example in the form of bacteria. That’s where we humans come in.

The keyword is “terraforming”. What does this term mean?

The word comes from science fiction literature and describes the attempt to “create a planet Earth”. For Mars, that requires a highly complex industrial process: first of all there’s this thing about the toxic soil, the entire surface of Mars would have to be sown with a mixture of sand and bacteria so that the highly toxic salts could be consumed and transformed. Then we’d have to cause something that we want to prevent on Earth: an artificial greenhouse effect to release the frozen CO2 and warm up the climate. That’s the only way to make plants grow and, in turn, produce oxygen through photosynthesis. However, at this point we still haven’t solved the problem that plants need nitrogen to live, but there’s practically none on Mars. You see, terraforming is conceivable in theory, but virtually impossible to implement in practice.

Maybe we wouldn’t have to go there at all. NASA’s Adam Steltzner is talking about a kind of 3D printing where we would start by releasing bacteria and later, when conditions are friendlier to life, “print” human DNA locally.

I know and admire Adam Steltzner, but I consider sending human DNA into space a crazy idea. On the other hand, ecopoiesis is an interesting idea. We would establish bacteria and then leave evolution to do the rest. In theory, plant cover could increase to the extent where most of the CO2 atmosphere would be converted into biomass. However, it’s likely to take more than 100,000 years for that to become reality.

Let’s think the conceptual experiment through to its logical conclusion: humans can – under whatever conditions – live in colonies on Mars, feed themselves, multiply. Such people would be exposed to an entirely different kind of evolution. Would they still be people, or would they be Martians?

I think Martians would be something like super-Tibetans. Tibetans have passed through an amazing evolution within a very short time that enables them to increase the supply of oxygen to their blood cells. Life on Mars could possibly be like life at an altitude of 30,000 kilometres, people would probably adapt by evolution, they would perform better, but possibly also be more susceptible to certain diseases.

They would be humans biologically, but what about culturally? What kind of a value system would people who’ve moved 400 million kilometres away from Earth have? Would human rights apply up there?

We can only ever think of Mars as a mirror of the world. Mars may be colonised in 1000 years’ time, in other words at a time when most of what we believe in today – capitalism, for example, or democracy – will no longer function here on Earth. When I describe the colonisation of Mars in my books, I’m not thinking about a distant planet, but using the idea of Mars as a metaphor for a different Earth. How would we live? How would we organise ourselves? Are there alternatives? Because that’s more and more difficult to imagine in our world, I extrapolate the question into space: how would we organise ourselves on Mars, for example? Now, I assume that we would try to develop an alternative economic system on Mars. Because what drives us here on Earth also digs our graves: capitalism. We are destroying our resources with our growth logic. We would therefore need an economic system that allows everyone to share and that protects natural resources. And if you change the economic system, you would also have to change the education system. And if you change the schools, you automatically change a society’s values and norms. To answer your question: yes, Martians would still be people. They would have the same needs, fears and hopes – that’s embedded deep in our DNA – but they would live in a completely different culture and would therefore have different values and basic rights.

Your answer to the present crises is not the anti-progress degrowth that a lot of left-wingers advocate, but a Marxism that has faith in progress.

Correct, we can’t turn the clock back. We have to use our present technological capabilities to save our world. You could translate that as: we don’t need to terraform a new planet, but to establish “Mars colonies” in the world. Islands that provide social, crisis-independent basics.

Who would actually have the right to colonise Mars?

Space belongs to everyone and no one. The Outer Space Treaty – that is, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, which all UNO member states have signed – claims that outer space and all celestial bodies with it are common property, in the same way as the world’s oceans are claimed as “the common heritage of mankind”.

The fishing industry ignores such treaties and considers international waters as a legal vacuum. Could something similar happen in space? To put it another way: do we have the right to claim Mars for ourselves just because it is presumed to be uninhabited?

The Outer Space Treaty is worded in very vague terms and contains no enforcement provisions. However, I don’t think there’ll be a fight for Mars, because you have to bear one thing in mind: it has no resources at all that are of value on Earth. It has no economic value to offer. That protects it from exploitation.

To sum up: colonising Mars is neither easy nor profitable. And nevertheless both government and private programmes exist and we are seeing growing public interest in the subject. Where does our fascination for this planet come from?

I think there are two very different reasons for it. First, feasibility: some of the things we writers merely imagined thirty years ago are now technically possible. Mars is still far away, but it has come closer technologically. The second reason for the new enthusiasm for Mars is pure escapism: we’ve run the Earth down so much that a lot of people feel they want to seek a new opportunity on a new planet. I think the first motive is sound and just, the second is flawed reasoning as far as I’m concerned. We’ll never be able to leave the Earth. We are a product of this Earth. We have to rescue it. The crisis on Earth is acute; it has to be resolved in the next hundred years. However, it will be 1,000 years before we can colonise Mars. So I don’t see my science fiction novels as space scenarios, but as conceptual experiments that could help us to create a better world here.

How will later generations look back on our idea of wanting to colonise Mars?

They’ll think it’s a senseless, naïve idea. But people are rarely interested in sensible ideas and often keen on the technologically most extreme possibility, and at the moment that’s journeying to Mars.

Kim Stanley Robinson is an American science fiction author. He rose to fame for his awardwinning Mars trilogy (Red Mars in 1997, Green Mars in 1997, Blue Mars in 1999), based on 15 years of research work and Robinson’s life-long fascination with the red planet. In this series of novels, written to a high technical standard and with meticulous attention to detail, Robinson considers the technical possibilities and social consequences of the colonisation of Mars by man. Prior to becoming a writer, Robinson taught literature and English at a number of US universities. He lives with his wife and two sons in Davis (California).