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Mars L4 Outpost, #2
I present to you the second part of another essay from the writings of Leon Winter, our guide for the Trailing Edge stories. The first essay can be found here, and I hope you enjoy.
The incident at Mars L4 didn’t slow the exodus from earth; it did however, speed up the occupation of the moons in the outer system, and it did foreclose the possibility of any long-lasting settlement of any of the L4 or L5 points. Europa first, but ultimately the rest of the Jovian system and Titan.
If the Visa Riots were the spark that started the exodus in earnest, Mars L4 was the fuel that kept it going. I can’t fathom this, I’m sure that had I been there I would have predicted that a tragedy with one of the colonies would have discouraged further colonization.
Clearly that wasn’t the case. Except in the limited form that people were completely unwilling to settle on space outposts like Mars L4. Within five years, all of these habitats had been abandoned, some people even went back to Earth, which was still overcrowded, but most moved on to Mars, the Moon, laid the basis for some of the outer colonies. More than anything thing else the legacy of the Mars L4 disaster was the concentrated development of the OuterColonies.1.
The road that lead humanity to settled on Europa and Titan was difficult and fraught. So many people missed so much: the people that never got to leave Earth, the people lost at Mars L4, the generations of people who never got to see Earth. And yet, for a time, I think Titan and Europa represented the very best of what humanity was capable.
– Leon Winter
Notes:
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I am throughly a product of the society of the outer colonies, as I suspect most of the people reading this are as well. The great ships bound for other solar systems bring not the children of Earth but the people of Europa and Titan to the galaxy. Though I still get nostalgic for Earth, it would be thoroughly incorrect to think that any of my relations for the past three–very long generations–had spent any substantial amount of time on the planet. ↩
tagged: leon winter • mars
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Critical Futures is a review of fun and thoughtful (with luck) science fiction stories; often serialized, but there will be new content every day. Science fiction, for our purposes is a literature of possibility, of adventure, and conjecture: although we endeavor to interpret these descriptors as liberally as possible. Critical Futures, attempts to present the kinds of fictional stories that we know and love, in a form—resembling the blog—that may be a little different than what we are accustomed. I doubt that this is truly “new,” but it seems fitting to call this an experiment in “new media.” Enjoy.Search
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