blog.Jelmer Oosthoek.nl

I wanted to start a fictional diary of someone in the future starting a life on the planet Mars. This idea had to do with my site Earth Mars Travel.com. I won’t continue this but will definitely write about Mars again, for sure! I thought, why not post it on my blog:

A diary book from someone who did the European Selection Procedure, traveled to Mars and currently works there as an Areologist (someone who studies the geological history of Mars). The man studied Geoscience and majored in Areology. And now he wants to work on Mars. This diary starts at that precise moment…

Februari, 12^th, 2052

I am selected! I couldn’t believe it at first, but it’s true! This is something I always wanted! It’s so strange to write down this happiness and excitement. I will try, but this is so important for me, I don’t know if I am able to really write down what I feel now. I suddenly don’t even know why I write down these things. Perhaps so someone else later on can read about it. I don’t know. Fact is, I want to go to Mars, it’s something I always wanted for as long as I remember. Why, I don’t know, Mars has been hot news whole my life. When I was born, in 2016, the first new Apollo mission went to the Moon. Since then everything happened fast. I was 7 when The First landed on Mars and seeing that I was completely flabbergasted. My grandfather had the same experience with Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon. I think the images and movies of Howard and the others walking on Mars did something to me. I wanted to go there, to reach that distant place. I thought about that a lot, why do I want to go there? Is Earth so bad? I have a nice life here, why would I give this up and go to Mars? I’m thankful that I don’t have a long lasting relationship; I think I would have stayed here because of that. Now it is easier. I’ll miss my family for sure but they know I really want to do this. Well, of course, this is only the selection procedure, so nothing is 100% yet. Perhaps I’m not good Mars material. I’ll find out the following months, I think they will phone me and make an appointment within the next couple of weeks.

Februari, 15^th, 2052

Nothing heard yet, but I guess it could take some time. Mars was in the news again: more cities are going to be build. Areopolis is getting fuller and fuller and that really affects the quality of life there. I hope I won’t have to stay there very long, I want to see Mars itself. I’m so glad I studied Areology, because next to engineering it’s the best chance to set foot on Mars. And with Areology you travel around a lot, from place to place. And there are beautiful places on Mars! It promises to be a wandering, nomad kind of life. Currently there is big areological mapping project going on. I’ve applied for a piece of the pie. I want to focus on the chaotic terrain on Mars. It’s completely broken up terrain situated next to gigantic dried out outflow channels. So what’s the relation between these chaotic terrain and outflow channels? Well that’s what I, and a lot of other areologists, want to find out. Nowadays they fly robotic planes around Mars, something like 1 km above the surface. These things have all sorts of measuring devices on board. They measure the full light spectrum plus elevation, gravity and magnetism. The nice thing is they also have sideview, so you can see the scenery. I’ve used all their data during my studies here on Earth. I also got sample data which were gathered by autonomous rovers. They’ve got a whole bunch of these things. The concept started in 1997 with the Sojourner rover. But that one needed a human driver still. Now you’ve got fully autonomous rovers which do not need any human intervention. They just gather scientific data, and when they break down they are simply replaced. The nice thing is you can just tune in to one of them via the internet, see them move. On Earth they are not live feeds, there is of course no instant communication possible with Mars. I think they have around 50 of them around Mars.