As if the recent Chelyabinsk meteor explosion wasn’t enough to give us a glimmer of the much larger event that wiped out the dinosaurs, now we have Stephen Hawking, the renowned astrophysicist, telling us recently that humans won’t survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our ‘fragile’ planet. Or, as the prescient Tennyson urged in his 19th century poem “Ulysses”: Come, my friends, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.
I’d like to credit my parents for realizing this predicament many years ago when, in the clever guise of creative gift-giving, they gave me 1000 acres on Mars AND registered a star in the constellation Taurus to be henceforth known as Mooring, which was the name of the planet in my first novel. No, really! I’ve got the proof: spiffy paperwork, signatures, deeds, locations, the works.
The star used to be called Taurus BA 5h 31m, at 45sa 25′ 52″ (or something). The International Star Registry promised that the new name was registered permanently in its vault in Switzerland (where that novel, by the way, should be kept so no one will ever read it) and also recorded “in folio” at the Library of Congress.
The deed for Martian land comes via the Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado, and my homestead is located at 15 degrees 06′ 20″ North and 134 degrees 26′ 42″ West. And guess what? That’s on Mons Olympus. Talk about view property! The deed is signed by David A. Aguilar, Supreme Martian Land Executor. Before you scoff at his title, just remember that he wouldn’t be the first real estate agent to sell property without having seen it.
Okay, I figure the star thing as a last resort. It’s a star, after all, and you can’t live on one of those, not even a red dwarf that’s seen better eons. But with the new name, I have my foot in the door for some sweet Earth-like planet orbiting around MY sun, a terra nova the Kepler probe is sure to find any day now. Taurus isn’t THAT far by interstsellar standards from the constellation Lyra, where Kepler has just found the most earth-like planets yet discovered.
How to live long enough..to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, before the shit hits the fan? (the last part was mine, not Tennyson’s, just so you know). I suppose my current 2-day a week fast diet won’t do the trick. But there’s always freezing the ole bod. I’m sure there’s some other vault in Switzerland that would accept mine, and I don’t see the Swiss losing their reputation for time-keeping, so they’ll know when to warm me up after we develop interstellar travel. Actually, maybe I should wait on that, and have them load my six-foot ice cube onto the starship, since it’ll take a while to get to Taurus.
Anyway, we’re already working on designs for starships, with groups like Icarus Interstellar, a research organization dedicated to achieving interstellar flight by 2100. There’s also the 100-year Starship Initiative, a non-governmental, independent project started with seed money from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Of course, Mars beckons a lot sooner and closer, though I hear it’s colder and drier than it once was, the atmosphere a little stingy. Still, I already HAVE the land. I’ve been closely following the latest probe, Curiosity, as it hunts for signs of water and life. Because there’s a catch to my keeping 1000 acres of prime view property on Mons Olympus. The deed specifically states that to have and hold the said property, I have to plant at least one tree on it–or the land claim will revert back to original ownership.
Right.
Signs of water–ancient floodplains and rivers–have been found on Mars. If any remains, it would be great to melt it for drinking water and to sprinkle on the tree in its warm little bubble. But I don’t have to worry about the tree. Maybe the Supreme Martian Land Executor didn’t know it at the time when he thought he was pulling a fast one on my folks, but we do now: the so-called ‘Face on Mars’ ain’t no Martian Sphinx. If there WERE any Martians at one time, who breathed easily in a better atmosphere as they sipped on Martian cocktails, enjoying the view of distant lakes and rivers from my acres on ‘the Mons’, they’re long gone to somewhere else, perhaps at the urging of someone named Sar-el or Kefkhafu–their version of Stephen Hawking–who told them to get out while the getting was good.
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