About Mars

[Tales]

Hello guys

I am new to this place but I have been lurking and not posting much.

Alright the mood for writing has come over me and I am trying to write a science fiction tale that has some possibility of truth.

"Red Darkness" aka Journey to the center of Mars.

Since the time space travel began, Mars has been visited by humans and their equipment. However we have only touched the surface.

A budding scientist, Peter Galton, has been driven by the injustice faced by his own father, Frank Galton, to prove his father's theories right; Mars is capable of sustaining life. He soons finds his way on board a ship heading for the red planet. Only to find out, his father was right... We had not been looking hard enough....

 

[Boneman]

Sounds good to me, when do we get to see some of it?

 

[Tales]

When I get this to sound sensible and make it work.

My physics friend said that the one thing that makes science fiction unbelievable is bad science.

ok based on the research and info I have gathered, Mars is mostly iron oxide and also it's gravity is only 38% of Earth. If there was a survivor, what will be the effects of living on Mars, under low gravity...

My concept is that the elder Galton actually saw Martian life but it's was underground instead of above the surface. However since it has no sunlight, what explanation can explain that it can sustain a viable ecosystem for millions of years?

 

[poisonoustea]

However since it has no sunlight, what explanation can explain that it can sustain a viable ecosystem for millions of years?

I think the readers would be just as curious to know about it... see? It's easy

You can do some research (there's plenty of information on the web!) to know how an environment could develop without sunlight. Many Terran lifeforms live in relative absence of light (moles, a great deal of insects and some deep-ocean lifeforms), so it's not that far-fetched.

Don't be obsessed with taking science seriously. I mean that science should become your tool, not an obstacle. And if you had to stick to what's possible or known at the moment, you'd be forced to set the novel in 2010, and on Earth. You might even want to start writing the novel and discover Mars' subterranean environment through your character's eyes as he progresses.

 

[Tales]

Don't be obsessed with taking science seriously. I mean that science should become your tool, not an obstacle. And if you had to stick to what's possible or known at the moment, you'd be forced to set the novel in 2010, and on Earth. You might even want to start writing the novel and discover Mars' subterranean environment through your character's eyes as he progresses.

Of course but however it mustn't be too unbelievable in the first place. The audiences of today are a lot smarter than the last generation.

I got a younger cousin who can tell me that Jurassic park 3 pterodactyl has biological issues-- the teeth and feet used as talons which according to scientists that's impossible. Even I never thought of that until I asked some guys at a science forum.... Another funny one is that dinosaurs dun pee. They excrete their waste like birds with very little water.

However with the martians here, there is a lot of creativity to paint them out with my imagination.

 

[Arthur_Connelly]

You've definitely got a start there. And the concept of "We had not been looking hard enough" is something to go for. The problem with humans is that we look for things that make sense to us, so if there are no ruins and whatnot, then there is no life. But, who's to say the aliens operate remotely like we do? An example could be a species that communicates by subtly altering the composition of grains of dirt. Humans wouldn't notice it, but the entire history of the species is right there in the soil and no one thought to look. That's just an example and probably doesn't jive with the story you want to tell, but it's one way of doing things.

 

[poisonoustea]

The audiences of today are a lot smarter than the last generation.

Sure, but they're certainly not reading your novel to nitpick about it. You're going to write a hard science fiction chronicle, so you will need a believable setup; but that shouldn't stop you from writing, which is most important. What I'm saying is that you won't be handling a scientific essay, but a science fiction novel. You might want to trace a bit of the character first, describe his journey to Mars, his father.

If you don't write something, we won't be able to give you an opinion

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I've moved this thread from Critiques to Workshop, as it seems to be devoted to brainstorming an idea and there is nothing (as yet) to critique.

Tales, the Critiques section is not for discussing story concepts. It is where people post extracts from their work for criticism. As poisonoustea suggests, we can't give you opinions until you write something.

 

[Tales]

Got it! Gimme sometime... For now this is the castle in the air. Now I am just building the foundation first.

 

[Precise Calibre]

Subterranian.

Mars is known to have water.

Inside the shell of the planets, thermal vents would be likely to be present at some points within the whole of the globe.

Darkness + Warmth + Moisture = Life - Perhaps Fungus in this case.



But no one said you had to adhere to the human-familiar ecosystem . who says the life under mars even needs what anything on earth needs to survive? Perhaps they breathe methane and eat mica.

 

[chrispenycate]

OK, I assume we need macroscopic life; bacteria or equivalent would be much easier, but not impressive enough.

For any ecosystem to function, there must be an energy input (fungi, as suggested by an earlier poster, use the chemical energy stored in organic matter, so solar energy at one sidestep, like animals.)

Shelving solar for the instant (but not rejecting it entirely; there may be a way we can channel it underground) what do we have left?

Geothermal (well, aereothermal or something, I suppose) In the depths of the ocean there are organisms relying on thermal vents; both heat energy and chemical, sulphides and other compounds which react exothermically with the local environment. If Mars is still geologically active enough, there could be an equivalent process in its depths.

Chemical. Certain sealed-off caves contain complete ecologies where the bottom line is substances dissolved in the water. And it seems likely that some bacteria living deep in the Earth's crust find sources of energetic chemicals in mineral deposits. Don't reject bacteria as the lowest link in the energy chain, just because we use plants and algae.

Tidal. With Mars' tiddly little moons? I don't see it. Jupiter, maybe. Similarly earthquake energy. Don't forget the energy input does not have to be continuous; an ecology can store for many generations, slowly moving an original windfall into less and less distiguishable forms.

Radioactive decay.

Wind power. Underground? It's not actually impossible, but naturally occurring sites where it would function would be very rare.

Magnetic flux. But why would the magnetic field move/fluctuate? Could be combined with wind power, for a fixed field and moving conductor.

Heat pipes from the surface (or light pipes, for that matter) conveying solar energy to the depths.

Obviously, if Mars had once been home to a technological civilisation that had seen the crisis coming and had prepared systems to run for a few million years, it distorts all the probabilities. Engineered hot springs, cave mouths funnelling dust-heavy air into the depths, and out again, kilometre quartz lightpipes; even concentrations of radioactive minerals. Here, 'piped in' solar energy (from high points not likely to get covered in dust, vertical cliff faces if possible) moves from being extremely unlikely to the most probable situation, as the original surface organisms will have been adapted for this source. But could the evidence of a one-time great society disappear to the point that the colonists don't even notice it?

 

[Laustin]

I think you need to narrow your borders a bit Tales, and by that I mean decide exactly what it is you want to say, and what your style will be. In my experience it does little good going into a project only focusing upon what you think might go wrong with it. Negativity never helps. Don't worry about 'sophisticated modern audiences'. If your writing is compelling, and your voice is clear, then you can tell THEM exactly how your universe works.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Tales]

Thank you...

During my fleshing out of the story now the only difficulty is getting the characters to Mars...

The intro was easier but now the Call to Adventure is the tough one....

 

[Laustin]

Sounds interesting. Keep it up!

 

[Tales]

For now let me get the setting fleshed out in the intro but leaving a hook for the readers to guess what happened to the MC's father that will eventually leave the trail for the protagonist to go to Mars.

 

[Tales]

I am now doing research on the Space Elevator becos it's going to affect how the character is going to Space. I believe this is the best and most environmental friendly way to getting into space.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

However since it has no sunlight, what explanation can explain that it can sustain a viable ecosystem for millions of years?

This is rather a "chicken and the egg" question as such plant matter would have to pretty well be carnivorous, or somehow gain light from natural phosphoresence like in Terran caves.


If you decided to go with the carnivorous plants, that's when the "chicken/egg" thing kicks in because you would then have to find a way to have animals be sustained in that environment. It would probably be far more likely, though, to use some kind of either glowing mineral, or glowing fungi of some sort. As it was said before, there's life on our own planet where no light from the sun hits at all and so such life creates its own. It's definitely not outside the realm of possibility.

 

[Tales]

Rather carnivorous, I am going "mineralivorous" instead

I just found out a way during this week consulting two friends who were good with biology [microbiology] and chemistry. There are bacteria one earth called Shewanella oneidensis that can eat the "rust" for energy. And these will turn in end up on the food chain for others....

 

[Tales]

Now I am discussing with friends on the how cheap or expensive is Space tourism to Mars is going to be.

And also what's there to see on Mars?

 

[ktabic]

Well, people go to look at/climb mountains and walk canyons here, so how about:

Olympus Mons. A volcano that is the size of Arizona and is so tall the peak is outside the Martian atmosphere. The tallest known volcano in the Solar System.

Valles Marineris. A canyon 4000 km long, 200 km wide and 7 km deep?

Also other things, such as where Beagle 2 crashed, Spirit and Opportunity's last resting places, stuff like that.