Commander_X wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 3:59 pm
I had to think a bit about this, but after reading
this here's the ask: 5 examples (books, movies, series, games, etc.) of "everything started on Mars", i.e. where a discovery made on Mars enabled mankind to hop across a much larger area of development (solar system(s), galaxy, and so on).
OK.
"The Hole Man" by Larry Niven.
Earth's first interplanetary mission lands on Mars, discovering an alien base, clearly not local. but ... abandoned, and for quite a time. As I recall, somewhat larger than humans (higher ceilings and door ways), no privacy taboos (communal sleeping platforms) and ... a peculiar, very massive structure.
For reasons not sufficiently explained, the expedition includes a "Forward Mass Detector" (Robert Forward, physicist ; clearly something of a go-to physicist for SF writers in 1960s Los Angeles) which is showing a sine wave of a large mass being oscillated constantly.
The expedition's resident nerd is mocked by the "jocks" of the "right stuff" contingent, but deduces that it's a long-range (interstellar) communications device, sending a carrier wave. The jocks needle the nerd to prove it, while he is trying to figure out the controls. The needler-in-chief happens to be standing under the massive machine when the Big Red Switch is turned off. Spaghettification makes a mess of a pencil-thick line from his upturned face through neck and torso, and part of a leg ... then into the floor ...
Mars has a limited lifetime. But the change in signal from a carrier wave to a slowly changing wave as it eats Mars from the inside has alerted the Outsiders (generic) that something has happened on their base. They'll be along. But all that future stuff is "offstage, future" from the "Hole Man" 's point of view.
Though it's Niven, I don't think it's part of his "Known Space" universe which has it's own future history of Mars, which I'll leave on the table. I don't think that future history really fits the bill of "it all starts with Mars" though. Mars is a bit of a backwater there - rather like here.
Yes, it's sad to see "Ingenuity" suffer the slings and pebbles of outrageous fortune. On the other hand, at least one helicopter has ditched into the North Sea in my career due to a helicopter blade delaminating mid-flight. I think about a dozen dead. FOD (Foreign Object Damage) or ground strike is obviously remains a hazard on interplanetary missions too. The planned future flying mission on Titan is going to be subject to the same hazards, added to cryogenic embrittlement. Interesting materials science challenge.
There's a Twitter account I follow, of a scientist working on landing pad design for "Lunar Base" (and "Mars Base", indirectly), because the particles picked up by rocket plume impact on the soil is likely to be a real problem for stuff on the surface that you want to use in the future.
The calculation of how long it would take a BH to eat Mars (or anything else) is complicated, since an asteroid-size primordial BH might only pick up a few electrons or protons per orbit about the barycentre. But it'll eat. If it were eating a star, we might not even know about it for a long time. There was a recent paper I read ... Ah yes, here it is : (
my write up, under the heading "A Provocative Idea" ; TFP for reading, under the heading
"Is there a black hole in the center of the Sun?") Their conclusions (see the Kippenhahn diagrams at the end of the paper, and of my write up) are that the luminosity/ neutrino output consequences of an eating central black hole wouldn't be noticeable until potentially several billion years from now.
Which is a trifle suspiciously convenient - "it hasn't
quite happened, yet!". But it's still a fun idea. Testable too - oddly long-lived red giant phase.
Honestly, I thought the idea of (primordial/ small) black holes as a component of dark matter was an ex-idea (choir immortal, Norwegian Blue, etc). But it's definitely a fun idea to nail back onto the perch and play with, particularly for SF types, so it's probably worth a bit of effort to keep it going.
