August 2024 story

Martian Dreaming

Aldron Betts was Mars obsessed from childhood.  As an eleven-year old, he had discovered his father’s copy of Ray Bradberry’s ‘Martian Chronicles’ and even though the idea that there were water filled canals and golden eyed Martians waiting on the fourth planet had been long dispelled by hard science, the poetry of Bradberry’s tales found a place in his soul.  It even shaped the choice of his favorite candy bar.  Someday, he thought, someday.

But first there was the matter of education and then after that, of making a living.  Aldron’s family was solidly middle class so there was no boost of family money or connections to ease his way.

In his high school senior year he was voted class nerd, but also the most likely to succeed.  Though Aldron always possessed a quick mind, he was not a genius level thinker.  He was awarded a four year partial scholarship to a highly competitive college and graduated with a cum laude, not a summa.  But he had tenacity of spirit, a willingness to take chances, and an analytic ability to see beyond the short term.

After graduation, he began working at a consulting firm.  In his spare time he played with immersive game design that he self-marketed, and when his third offering took off and was voted the game of the year, he quit his corporate job.  His followup release was eagerly awaited by gamers and though it did not achieve quite the level of critical acclaim that his breakthrough had, its high sales numbers were enough to attract two very lucrative buy out offers.  And so at age twenty-seven Aldron Betts was  rich and looking for new challenges.

He had made many contacts during his five years at the consulting firm and he used them to keep abreast of the newest trends in innovation and technology not only in silicon valley but across the country and abroad.  By using a proprietary program to assess early stage developments for the likelihood and degree of success or failure, Aldron was able to buy in very early.  Of course his ventures did not always pan out, but a seventy-five percent success rate was more than good enough to make his reputation as a venture capitalist so that he was eagerly sought out by inventors and innovators looking for financing.

He financed major positions in one company that achieved a breakthrough in battery technology and another in a company that totally revolutionized chip design.  They were were true industry disrupters and Aldron became immensely wealthy.  The second or third most wealthy man on earth depending on the fluctuations in the stock prices of the companies he was invested in.

But space and Mars still beckoned.  He began to look at aerospace industries and when a former leader in commercial aviation experienced a series of actual and near-disasters—certainly PR disasters— and its stock price plummeted, Aldron became a major minority stock holder and obtained a seat on its board of directors.  On the board, he led the charge for better quality control, emphasizing engineering competence over financial return, arguing that in the long run, this would restore the company’s tattered reputation and increase its value.  In this process, the company spun off its rocket, satellite and space division that Aldron acquired and took private.  The division already had contracts with NASA for explorations of the solar system.  And that included Mars.

Of course much had been learned about Mars from robotic explorers and much of that information emphasized how harsh surface conditions on Mars actually were.  But evidence of water and then past microbial life were breakthroughs in planetary science.  There was or had been alien life on a planet other than earth.  What else lay hidden beneath the Martian sands?  The evolving information about Mars only strengthened his own Martian resolve.  Unmanned flights to Mars were already almost routine.  The Holy Grail for Aldron was to send the first manned flights, first to circle without landing, and then to land, eventually to establish a permanent colony.  And beyond?  Those water-filled canals of his youth?  

His passion for Mars was for a time matched by that of another uber-billionaire, Midas Crassi, an industrialist, who had honed his space competence in preparation for journeys to Mars through commercial satellite launches and space tourism.  When Crassi turned his vision away from Mars to mitigating climate change, Aldron acquired his space-related assets.  After the necessary reorganization and downsizing to eliminate redundancies, the two companies were reformated as Betts Space Inc.  Now Aldron had all the expertise and resources both human and industrial to make a push towards Mars.  Recruitment of crews was not a problem since there were many others smitten by the idea of traveling to the Red Planet.  Candidates were subjected to vigorous physical and especially psychological testing.  

In the meantime, there was design and testing of the hardware needed.  He chose not to be discouraged by those who cautioned that a round trip to Mars would be a multiyear journey with all the dangers of prolonged exposure to radiation and psychological stress and rage that would affect any crew.  His answer was to shorten the journey.  But how to propel a ship faster, since that would require a huge amount of fuel?  If the ship could be assembled in space, in earth orbit, no fuel would be needed to lift the ship from the ground and the fuel saved could be used to propel the ship on a more rapid course to Mars.  Nuclear powered rockets were the key.  

The first step was to establish an orbital base where assembly workers could stay for two weeks at a time.  Then the various components of the ship itself were rocketed up from earth to the base for assembly including the nuclear engine.  And finally the fuel.  The first flights were crewless.  Then followed a crewed flyby, which demonstrated the importance of the human factor.  By the time the ship completed it’s roundtrip of sixteen months, the four-person crew was no longer on speaking terms with each other and had almost come to blows.   The nuclear engine worked flawlessly.

And so a larger crew cabin was designed with nocks where the crew members could get way from each other when they felt stressed.  The psychological evaluation of potential crew was made more stringent.  

And then just as the second mission was about to go, Aldron received truly terrible news from his doctors.  His recent weight loss was due to stage three pancreatic cancer.  And there was still no cure.  He would not live to set foot on the Red Planet.  He bitterly compared his fate to that of Moses who led his people to the Promised Land but did not cross over into it himself.  After his initial reaction of rage at the cruelty of Fate, he came to accept reality and planned.  He thought, I will not be denied my dream of being the first human to land on Mars.  He left careful instructions.  His ashes were to be placed in a gold urn and welded shut.  No landing on Mars until after his death.  And then on that first trip his urn was to be carried on a drone launched from the space ship and landed at a random spot on Mars well away from where the crew was to land.  It was done.   And so Aldron Betts did became the first human to land on Mars.