The Life of a Star-Settler: Living on Mars

Life on Mars

It’s been 50 years since the first settlers arrived and humans began living on Mars. 

May 18th, 2452: I’ve lived here on Mars all of my life, but that can’t be said for some of the old timers. They knew a different life before launching into the stars. Earth had been dying. Years of reckless fossil fuel burning, tail-to-tail traffic jams, and plundering Mother Earth of her natural resources led to the planet rebelling. Humanity needed an alternative, and our red cousin provided the answer.

I live in New Canterbury, named after the home of the engineers who designed one of the first transport ships, which is the most advanced of the red planet’s cities. We have a burgeoning population of settlers and Marsborn humans — funnily enough now referred to as Martians. The old timers sometimes look up to the skies and yearn for what once was, but me? Nah. This red rock is all I’ve known. 

Life whilst living on Mars

Life on mars

Life is pretty normal here, my home is stationed within one of the many Hab Complexes that make up New Canterbury. The city is high above what is now sea level on the slopes of Olympus Mons — a purposeful choice thanks to the rising sea levels. Sure, positioning a settlement on the slopes of the solar system’s biggest volcano might not sound sensible, but there hasn’t been a peep from it… yet. 

Our atmosphere is controlled enough that we’re able to breathe freely and walk the surface. In fact, nowadays, Mars looks much like earth. The vegetation and plant life is widespread, as are the oceans. It wasn’t always that way. My father had it hard. He remembers Mars as the red, dusty inhospitable rock that it was for millenia before us.

He worked the nearby silver mine. Tearing through the rusty rock for minerals which in turn we would use for our Martian currency. Thanks to those mines, and people like my father, our colony expanded rapidly. Our very own shining star, the Orbital Surveyor, crisscrossed our sky morning, day and night. It seeks out the most efficient and mineral rich areas to mine and has increased our revenue endlessly. With the help of the satellite, we’ve even expanded our mines deep into Valles Marineris, the monster 4000km long 7km deep canyon. Old timers have shown me photos of what they called “The Grand Canyon” that looks like a small crack compared with this.

At the other end of the spectrum, we looked to the sky for farming. Huge sky farms dominate areas of the atmosphere. Their purpose is simply to produce everything that we need to survive, whilst also maintaining our life-sustaining atmosphere.

What could be next after living on Mars?

We’re all fully aware that our world is fragile. It needs to be perfectly balanced, and constantly. Take, for example, yesterday’s AtomGen Suite shutdown. That caused some headaches, literally, as pressure and oxygen maintenance began to go offline and engineers worked around the clock to stabilize our environment. Thus is life as a Martian. 

What’s next for us? Who knows. Although, I’m beginning to see posters talking of Venus around the Varian V space port. I hear it’s warmer there, naturally. Maybe I’ll sign up to one of the ships there and lead the next terraforming expedition. After all, it’s a great big universe, and I’m here to settle the stars.