Sol 21: Why would they do that?

It’s been a while since my last post. But let’s not get hung up on that. You can’t hurry art.

The idea for this book, World War Mars (‘WWM’) came about over lunch.

Iza had just been reading from an article about President Trump's latest wacky idea: the Space Force. We all had a good laugh about it. The notion was kind of crazy even for Trump. I mean, what would such a force be used for?

We played around with a few ideas to try to make sense of it. The best we could come up with was that black ops guys in pressure suits were being prepared to launch into orbit (burning through billions of dollars in the process), just so they could do some damage to a Chinese satellite; something any US orbiter armed with a laser could do without the need for a bunch of over-equipped and under-trained jarheads). Or maybe they just wanted to snatch Mir from the Russians. 

 The Russians would probably thank them for it.

Our thoughts then turned to the collective fixation with Mars colonization, and then it hit us. Maybe trump wanted the red planet for himself, and the Space Force was just the mob for the job. What if this military white elephant was being funded in readiness to take over Elon Musk's pet project on the off-chance the Mars colony succeeded (if any of the colonists actually survived).

I figured there was a story in that. Not quite like that, but imagine a colony that is, say, two or three generations old. They're supposedly independent of Earth but still rely on the mother planet for some resources. They're a tough, professional community of scientists and technical specialists, much like the inhabitants of McMurdo Station. They've fought to survive and built their colony out of the iron oxide dust. The Martian desert is their home.

 

So why would the US send the Space force to take it over? Why would they even bother?

Why, why why?

Maybe the colonists discover something of value and naively trumpet about it in one of their communiqués. So, the simple answer is: resources. But what would these be?

For a start, I'm thinking resources needed for green energy.

 

Green energy is a thing, and it's here to stay

Green energy is nothing new, but the current main-streaming of green energy by big business and, particularly, by big finance is. Right now (finally), industry is leading the charge for green energy, leaving governments flat-footed in the dust. For example, the maverick steel miner Fortesque Metals (ASX:FMG) is "pursuing green hydrogen to turn Australia into a green steel power." 

Not only will it make its own iron ore with its own renewable energy power plants. It will also be exporting steel instead of ore, thereby generating far more profit. The green alternative has finally made it out of kindergarten. It has just become more profitable than conventional (fossil fuel-based) technologies. At least in some situations. 

 

Governments still cling to fossil fuel, but the Banks don't

Not only is green power both politically correct and profitable, but conventional forms of power are becoming too risky for financiers. Already, banks are slashing their funding of the fossil fuel industry by 60%.

So where am I going with this? I'm making the case for green power being the only show in town by the time a Mars colony can be established. The writing is already on the wall. Just think what things will be like in three to four generations. Earth (and Mars) - worlds starving for power and limited to getting it through green methods. 

So, what are these resources that might be worth killing for?

Wars have always been fought over resources. Assuming that fossil fuel is no longer an option, 'green wars' come to mind. Just for starters, nation states may be tempted into war over:

• Minerals required for Solar Power conversion for new energy: aluminum, cadmium, copper, gallium, indium, iron, lead, nickel, silica, silver, tellurium, tin and zinc.
• Minerals required for power storage: aluminium, cobalt, iron, lead, lithium, manganese, nickel and graphite.
  

The article: "Minerals in the Green Economy: Solar panels and lithium-ion batteries" lists the above minerals and also refers to (however obliquely) issues related to government control of these resources. 

But this list of minerals only scratches the surface. There are plenty of others that could be in demand. To generate an even longer list, one only has to ask questions such as:

• What other industries would need exotic minerals?
• What other industries would be involved downstream of the mining?
• What of the politics involved with all of this?

Other Minerals that might be in high demand by Earth would also include those related to:

• New forms of computing (for chips/processors, data storage, data transmission and connectivity, just like what's happening today)
• Transport and propulsion
• Shielding (from radiation due to cosmic rays, engines)
• Etcetera ...
  

So there are any number of minerals that would be valuable enough to go to war over, but as a writer I figure  I needn't be too specific about them. To do so could inadvertently result in a book that's anachronistic (just take a look at Larry Niven's early short stories). Iza and I discussed this and we came up with collective terms for these materials. Terms like ‘rare ores’, ‘exotic materials’, ‘exotic alloys’,  or, as Iza suggested, simply  ‘exotics’, because the specific ores required will undoubtedly change over time, along with the adoption of new technologies.

But coming back to the idea of Mars discovering abundant deposits of exotics in its own geology, thereby triggering an invasion ... to me, it just isn't convincing. A far more authentic situation would be one where Mars is becoming the hub for an ever growing 'exotics' rush in the asteroid belt. A hub with strategic advantage.

Perhaps during asteroid mining’s infancy, initial surveys have had results that are more than promising, with asteroids that are both literally and figuratively a gold mine. And during their search for high-value mining sites, the Martian colony has provided invaluable assistance to these survey ships as they've gone from speculative prospecting projects to broad-based surveys, to staking claims and ramping up to large scale extraction programs.

Mining companies, and their countries of origin, have therefore become reliant on the Mars base for much of their logistics, like the Dutch East India Company relied on the Cape of Good Hope.

And now that mining is progressing in earnest, massive enterprises run by or on behalf of various governments, it is quicky realised that mining ships are no good for transporting goods or personnel over the vast distances to and from Earth. They are designed for mining, not lugging huge quantities of material all the way back to earth. Besides, transporting raw ore is just too costly. Better to lug load after load to an intermediate spot like Mars and have a cargo ship take it the rest of the way. Better still, why not refine the ore and then just transport the product? It's both far less massive and far more valuable.

Picture this: Mining companies heavily backed by nation states are now flocking in ever greater numbers to the asteroid belt. Meanwhile Mars has become the way-station where ships come to refuel, personnel get some R&R and, most importantly, all that valuable ore is stockpiled, smelted and refined, and the enriched products of all that Martian processing are warehoused until these can be shipped to market back on earth. 

Mars is no longer just a convenient way-point. The Martian colony has become a vital base of mining operations. Mars can have its pick of these resources because it is paid handsomely for its services,  as a location for these operations, as a supplier of technical services and as a trusted independent amidst the competing interests of the mining companies, who are really just fronts for a multitude of rival nation states.

So Mars could be viewed as being in a position of power, being in control of the gateway to the asteroids [note: research necessary to confirm location of asteroid field in terms of distances]. The more astute might see Mars as, instead, merely holding a unique but delicate position. As long as political balance is maintained, the status quo holds and everyone benefits. And therefore, Mars doesn’t necessarily even need to have any particular resource of its own to entice an Earth-based superpower. Control of the mining supply chain is a good enough reason for a power like the US to mobilise a unit like the Space Force to grab the Mars colony (see this slightly chilling Space Force recruitment video).

The US may or may not be diminishing significantly in power relative to China, Russia, and other emerging world powers (and if it is, it just raises the stakes for the US). However, Mars being the gateway to all those resources would be hard to resist.  

Beyond opportunism, annexing Mars could be seen as downright necessary even if it is pre-emptive. In much the same way as Poland is Russia's protective 'cork' and Odessa gives Russia its access to the Black Sea, the Power that managed to take Mars would control the flow of resources from the Belt to Earth.

This is reason enough to go to war. More than enough. Such a move would not be dissimilar to China's recent actions in the South China Sea. The only difference is one of scale and technology. And a whole lot of vacuum.