See also
- The Voices of Mars , 1957 book in the Maurice Gray series
The Domes of Mars is a 1956 children's science fiction novel by Patrick Moore, published by Burke.
It is the second of a six-book series based on the character Maurice Gray. [1]
The story is set five years after the preceding novel, Mission to Mars . Several permanent colonies have been founded on Mars. Some thirty colonists, including many of the scientists from Woomera, now live and work there.
Maurice Gray, still based at Woomera Rocket base in Australia, is now a qualified radar technician. He elects to become a permanent member of the Mars colony, knowing that he is unlikely to be able to return to Earth. His uncle, Leslie Yorke, is unable to join him because of a heart condition, but approves his decision.
Gray joins other scientists on the spaceship ‘E5’, led by Professor Häller, and travels to Mars. They nearly suffocate when the ship's hull is holed by a meteorite, but are able to repair the air leaks in time. They receive a fragmentary message in Morse code from Mars, warning them of danger, and advising that they should return to Earth. Unable to easily do so, because of fuel and navigational difficulties, they continue their journey and land on Mars, near the plastic domes of Lowell Base.
All the colonists, including Mellor and Talbot, are safe, but an explosion has damaged the air-conditioning plant, and several domes are in ruins. Their air supply is now limited, unless emergency repairs can be made.
Miroff, a new-arrived astronomer, panics. He and two colleagues take off in one of only two usable rocket ships, bound for Earth.
More damage is done to the air-conditioning, and all the staff work feverishly to repair it and re-inflate the plastic domes which are still usable. Gray and Talbot travel by ‘dust-car’ to the other base, Pickering Dome, which has been out of radio contact. They discover that Professor Whitton and his colleagues have managed to breed plants, native to certain areas of Mars, into giant varieties that can produce enough oxygen to keep the domes inflated and liveable indefinitely. But the plants die once used, and the colonists are unable to generate enough oxygen to take them to Lowell.
In a desperate act, Gray and Talbot launch a cannibalised rocket E2, with just enough fuel to get them within radio range of Lowell. The latter is evacuated, and all colonists travel to Pickering, which is now crowded, but safe.
The story makes no mention of the carnivorous gastropods and pterodactyl-like flying creatures encountered in the previous story.
Interplanetary spaceflight or interplanetary travel is the crewed or uncrewed travel between stars and planets, usually within a single planetary system. In practice, spaceflights of this type are confined to travel between the planets of the Solar System. Uncrewed space probes have flown to all the observed planets in the Solar System as well as to dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres, and several asteroids. Orbiters and landers return more information than fly-by missions. Crewed flights have landed on the Moon and have been planned, from time to time, for Mars, Venus and Mercury. While many scientists appreciate the knowledge value that uncrewed flights provide, the value of crewed missions is more controversial. Science fiction writers propose a number of benefits, including the mining of asteroids, access to solar power, and room for colonization in the event of an Earth catastrophe.
Mars Direct is a proposal for a human mission to Mars which purports to be both cost-effective and possible with current technology. It was originally detailed in a research paper by Martin Marietta engineers Robert Zubrin and David Baker in 1990, and later expanded upon in Zubrin's 1996 book The Case for Mars. It now serves as a staple of Zubrin's speaking engagements and general advocacy as head of the Mars Society, an organization devoted to the colonization of Mars.
Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer, author, and advocate for human exploration of Mars. He is also an advocate for U.S. space superiority, writing that "in the 21st century, victory on land, sea or in the air will go to the power that controls space." and that "if we desire peace on Earth, we need to prepare for war in space."
Mars 3 was a robotic space probe of the Soviet Mars program, launched May 28, 1971, nine days after its twin spacecraft Mars 2. The probes were identical robotic spacecraft launched by Proton-K rockets with a Blok D upper stage, each consisting of an orbiter and an attached lander. After the Mars 2 lander crashed on the Martian surface, the Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to attain a soft landing on Mars, on December 2, 1971. It failed 110 seconds after landing, having transmitted only a gray image with no details. The Mars 2 orbiter and Mars 3 orbiter continued to circle Mars and transmit images back to Earth for another eight months.
A propellant is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or another motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicles, the engine that expels the propellant is called a reaction engine. Although technically a propellant is the reaction mass used to create thrust, the term "propellant" is often used to describe a substance which contains both the reaction mass and the fuel that holds the energy used to accelerate the reaction mass. For example, the term "propellant" is often used in chemical rocket design to describe a combined fuel/propellant, although the propellants should not be confused with the fuel that is used by an engine to produce the energy that expels the propellant. Even though the byproducts of substances used as fuel are also often used as a reaction mass to create the thrust, such as with a chemical rocket engine, propellant and fuel are two distinct concepts.
Liquid oxygen, sometimes abbreviated as LOX or LOXygen, is a clear light sky-blue liquid form of dioxygen O2. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which has continued to the present.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were "canals" on the planet Mars. These were a network of long straight lines in the equatorial regions from 60° north to 60° south latitude on Mars, observed by astronomers using early telescopes without photography.
The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. Of all of his novels, Clarke stated that this was his favourite. Prior to the publishing of the novel, Clarke also wrote a short step outline with the same title, published in Omni magazine and anthologised in The Sentinel in 1983.
The F-1, commonly known as Rocketdyne F-1, is a rocket engine developed by Rocketdyne. The engine uses a gas-generator cycle developed in the United States in the late 1950s and was used in the Saturn V rocket in the 1960s and early 1970s. Five F-1 engines were used in the S-IC first stage of each Saturn V, which served as the main launch vehicle of the Apollo program. The F-1 remains the most powerful single combustion chamber liquid-propellant rocket engine ever developed.
The Sands of Mars is a science fiction novel by English writer Arthur C. Clarke. While he was already popular as a short story writer and as a magazine contributor, The Sands of Mars was also a prelude to Clarke's becoming one of the world's foremost writers of science fiction novels. The story was published in 1951, before humans had achieved space flight. It is set principally on the planet Mars, which has been settled by humans and is used essentially as a research establishment. The story setting is that Mars has been surveyed but not fully explored on the ground. The Sands of Mars was Clarke's first published novel.
Colonization of Mars is the establishing and maintaining of control over Martian land for exploitation and particularly for the settlement of Mars.
No Man Friday is a British science fiction novel by Rex Gordon published in 1956. The reference in the original title is to Robinson Crusoe, and the story can be described as a science fiction robinsonade set on Mars. The similarity is made explicit by the first edition cover.
Oxygen is a 2001 futuristic Christian novel by John B. Olson and Randall S. Ingermanson.
In space exploration, in situ resource utilization (ISRU) is the practice of collection, processing, storing and use of materials found or manufactured on other astronomical objects that replace materials that would otherwise be brought from Earth.
Stranded is a 2001 English-language Spanish science fiction film about a fictional first crewed mission to Mars. It stars Vincent Gallo and Maria de Medeiros, and was directed by Spanish filmmaker and actress María Lidón, with screenplay by Spanish science fiction author Juan Miguel Aguilera. Lidón won the "Grand Prize of European Fantasy Film in Silver", and Gallo and de Medeiros were named best actors at the 2002 Fantafestival in Rome.
Mission to Mars is a 1955 children's science fiction novel by Patrick Moore, published by Burke. It is the first of a six-book series based on the character Maurice Gray.
The Voices of Mars is a 1957 children's science fiction novel by Patrick Moore, published by Burke. It is the third of a six-book series based on the character Maurice Gray.
Marooned on Mars is a juvenile science fiction novel written by American writer Lester del Rey. It was published by John C. Winston Co. in 1952 with illustrations by Alex Schomburg.
SpaceX has stated its ambition to facilitate the colonization of Mars via the development and mass manufacturing of the Starship launch vehicle. The company states that this is necessary for the long-term survival of the human species and for the expansion of the scope of human consciousness.
Surviving Mars is a city building survival video game initially developed by the Bulgarian studio Haemimont Games, and later by Abstraction Games, and published by Paradox Interactive. It was released on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on March 15, 2018. The player serves as an overseer who must build a colony on Mars and ensure the survival of the colonists. A spiritual successor, Surviving the Aftermath, was released in 2021.