Stephen J. Lyons
I am a bad American. My sin: I don’t care one whit about Mars. There, I said it. Go ahead and dox me. Be mean and make me a meme. I will still not budge an inch from my stance.
As Elton John famously sang: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as Hell. And there’s no one there to raise them, if you did.”
Yes, the technology that enabled our latest venture to Mars is incredible and, to this liberal arts major, incomprehensible. The pictures and sounds sent our way from the Perseverance Rover are spectacular in their own way, but so is our home planet Earth, especially at this moment, when the COVID chains are loosening and the vaccinated among us are free to roam this beautiful and troubled planet.
And, honestly, when you look at those Martian images, that Mad Max rock-encrusted, oxygen-challenged, bird-less, tree-less landscape, is this a place you really want to stake a claim? Do you prefer dust storms, dehydration, an average daytime temperature of minus 81 degrees and poor cell service? Ladies, can you cope with two moons?
Or would you rather stay Earth-bound, and lie on your back in the cool grass under a towering oak, surrounded by the songs of warblers and the occasional leaf blower? Or, perhaps, hike in our own red rock country among our sacred national parks in the Southwest? Or, better yet, plan a trip to New England in October?
According to NASA, Perseverance’s mission is to, “seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth.” There is even a Mars helicopter to further explore said rocks and soil. But ancient life? What does one search for on an inhabitable planet. The first pair of Air Jordans?
I’m not anti-science, and I realize we have to keep the scientists, astronauts and astronomers gainfully employed unless we are prepared for a surplus of plastic pen holders and the overuse of the words Houston and Roger. But, seriously, could not those brilliant minds be used here on Mother Earth to solve, oh, I don’t know, maybe CLIMATE CHANGE!!
You might have heard: we have a few challenges on this spinning orb. Melting ice caps. Rising sea levels. Droughts. Raging fires. Oceans full of plastic waste. Men in their 60s wearing sleeveless shirts and a certain delusional retiree in Florida.
Look, I liked Mars well enough when it was safely tucked between the pages of all those sci-fi books I read as a dreamy kid. I loved it fanaticizing that the red planet was unattainable and perhaps inhabited by a race of people that resembled stalks of celery. Or Elon Musk clones. But I have no desire to ever travel higher than a comfortable seat in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Along the same lines of all this galaxy gazing, the subject of UFOs has seeped into our headlines. This is a classic good news/bad news development. Good news in the sense that these interlopers might have needed answers to many of our problems. A warming planet. Phone trees. Cicadas. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
But we all can pretty much predict that a visit from let’s say, the aforementioned stalks of celery (or worst! A living, breathing population of rice cake men!), would receive about the same brutal treatment that we routinely dole out to all arriving migrants at our borders. And in case you were hoping…a wall around Earth would be about as effective at keeping out space invaders as the current wall on the Mexico border.
No, if we were blessed with a stop-over from one of our fellow intergalactically curious neighbors we’d probably blast them into the next orbit. We are not exactly at a welcoming stage in our human devolvement.
(By the way, those so-called UFOs? They are the usual, vague wedge-shaped objects darting in and out of view—sort of drone-like. Hmm.)
Recently China, taking a much-needed break from destroying democracy in Hong Kong and imprisoning one million Uyghurs in re-education camps, decided to get in on the Mars action by landing its own rover—Zhurong—in May of this year. My, it’s getting kind of crowded up there. Isn’t it just a matter of time before a war breaks out over all that rock and soil? Fun times ahead!
In the meantime, I will keep my feet firmly planted on good old terra firma. It’s springtime in the Heartland and the irises are blooming in our flower garden. You should see them. They are stunning. In fact, you could say they are out of this world.
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Lyons is the author of five books of essays and journalism. His newest book is “West of East.”