Once the colonists arrived on their new home, their real work began. The shuttles could not land on Mars even if an appropriately long, smooth, boulder-free natural landing strip had been available. The shuttles are gliders on re-entry, and Mars simply does not have a thick enough atmosphere at about one percent that of Earth normal to allow any glider to land safely, let alone one that can fairly be described as a flying truck. Parachutes in the thin atmosphere are also inefficient for heavy payloads, And the beach-ball airbag approach to landing employed successfully by the original extraordinarily successful twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, would also be impractical for the precise, safe delivery of fragile payloads that would need to be deposited in a very specific location gently to provide any chance of survival for the colonists and the equipment upon which their life depended.

A variety of ideas were considered for solving the problem during the initial brainstorming on Earth, including an intriguing proposal for the shuttles to carry two reusable, improved version of the Curiosity-styled landers that could ferry upwards of a ton of cargo to the surface thanks to Mars’ reduced gravity each trip by employing large, light, disposable parachutes made of a super-tough, extremely light Mylar for the initial entry and a booster system for the final landing. The boosters would then couple with a ground-based self-contained Atmospheric Fueling Station (AFS) that would be the first payload delivered to Mars. These AFS units could turn atmospheric CO2 into oxygen and carbon, using both solar panels and an integrated nuclear generator for the power needed to break down CO2 into its components, compress O2 into liquid form and store it in tanks with which the robotic thruster could couple to refuel a sufficient quantity of liquid oxygen to propel it back to the shuttles with enough left over for a return trip to the ground, braking and soft landing the next payload. The problem with the system was that it would take too long for the fuel reclamation and refueling process—longer than the colonists could wait in a holding pattern using up resources and dangerously depleting needed reserves to see them through until the AFS units were functional on the ground providing the precious oxygen and water that they would need to replace their meager stores. Moreover, the risk of any failure would have depleted irreplaceable equipment and stores.

The solution to the lander problem was borrowed from the late Arthur C. Clarke—a modified, miniature space elevator in geostatic orbit at Mars’ equator. Strands of invisibly thin carbon fiber cable with the hardness of diamonds woven into a cable of varying thickness at no point exceeding five centimeters in diameter were used. The relative thinness of the Martian atmosphere and the weaker gravitational pull of the planet made it possible to string impossibly thin cable that would have the ability to transport payloads of a little more than eight hundred Earth-standard kilograms safely down to the planet with only the mass of the three shuttles acting as a counterweight.

With a geostatic orbit on Mars at approximately 17,188 kilometers, the thin, lightweight carbon fiber cable nevertheless fit on a single massive spool taking up nearly all of the cargo bay space on one of the three shuttles. Deployment was computer controlled and delivered by a modified self-guided bunker busting missile capable of penetrating several hundred meters into the Martian bedrock, deploying a nearly indestructible carbon-fiber anchor, and detonating a tiny incendiary warhead to instantaneously liquefy the surrounding rock and fuse the end of the carbon cable to the rock as it cooled. The slack was then gently reeled back by the shuttle’s nearly empty spool while it automatically maintained its orbit by means of the guidance computer’s meticulously timed firing of the shuttles’ attitude jets—a task that, given the jerry-rigged nature of the tri-partite ship could not safely be trusted to any human pilot.

A simple harness platform was then attached to the cable driven by a perfectly synchronized friction wheel system to both accelerate and brake the platform on its journey to and from the planet. The platform itself was little more than a metal plate with a vertical tube at its midpoint that held the friction wheel mechanism through which the carbon fiber cable was threaded. For greater stability, the platform was strung in a pyramid shape with carbon fiber cables extending from the corners of the bottom platform plate to the top of the drive tube. Equipment and supplies would be attached securely to the floor of the platform and would need to be carefully leveled before each trip—a task accomplished automatically by a computer after each cargo platform is loaded in a predetermined manner using pre-packaged containers numbered and loaded in a computer-determined order. The final fine tuning of the load balance would be accomplished by adding ice to the platform on special plastic bags strategically attached to the appropriate place on each platform to perfectly balance the load once it encountered Martian gravity. Four small attitude jets on the corners of the platform would fire as needed to compensate for unexpected consequences such as a Martian wind or dust storm as the platform neared the surface. The frozen water used to balance each load was then collected on the ground for later use and the cycle repeated as subsequent loads were ferried down from the shuttle.

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This process of downloading cargo was slow, but effective and relatively safe—at least in theory as long as the carbon cable held out. Five of the 12 astronaut-colonists accompanied the cargo down on the first trip with two AFS units that would begin extracting Oxygen from the atmosphere for their air tanks and synthesizing methane also from the available atmosphere to serve as fuel for their conventional auxiliary generators. The carbon would also be stored for later usage, including the weaving of multi-use carbon fiber that would provide the mainstay of their textiles and low-level manufacturing for years to come, if the colonists survived.

The privilege of stepping off the platform first fell to the mission’s commander, Col. Bob Dawson. He would be the first human to walk on Mars, but unlike Neil Armstrong when first stepping on the Moon, Bob uttered no memorable words beyond “welcome to our new home, folks” as he stepped off the platform and turned to help Dr. Gloria Hernandez, medical officer, off the platform. He then helped the remaining three crewmembers still on the platform, Linda Chang, geologist, Upinder Singh, astrophysicist and Larry Bronson, nuclear and mechanical engineer, off-load the remaining vital equipment they would need to complete their first mission, including the two atmosphere reclamation units (ARUs) that must be set up immediately in order to begin extracting Oxygen from the carbon dioxide rich Martian atmosphere and generating the oxygen and methane from it required to complete their mission. That task accomplished, Larry was left to initialize the ARU units and send the lift back on its way to Earth 2.0, now a permanent space station, for its next load of crew and equipment while the rest of the party headed North West towards the entrance of a natural tunnel that in Mars’ distant past had been part of the underground aquifer that fed the now dry lake at the bottom of which they currently stood.

When the five colonists had completed the job of unloading their equipment and the platform was on its way up the long, arduous trip to the space station, Bob Dawson removed a small U.S. flag on a thin metal pole about a meter tall and stuck it in the ground, saying simply “We claim this world on behalf of humanity in the hope that its seeds will take hold here. This flag represents the sacrifice of those who gave their lives to make our journey here possible.” He then saluted the flag, and, turning to the bright star he knew to be Earth, offered a second, slow salute in requiem to the more than seven billion dead or dying souls who would now live on only in memory. No words were said beyond these. None were needed. Their silent tears spoke more eloquently than anything these five remaining remnants of a dying race could ever say.

The large natural tunnel that had once contained an underground river extending for hundreds of miles was destined to become their first Martian base and permanent home, offering protection from both solar radiation and small to medium-sized meteor strikes against which the thin Martian atmosphere offered no protection. The outlet of this former aquifer was some 200 meters from their current position over the rocky Martian terrain and, though it was once near the bottom of a fairly deep lake, it would now appear some two meters above the floor of the former lake bottom at the side of a rocky canyon towering nearly 100 meters above it.

Walking with spacesuits and carrying over 50 kilograms of extra equipment each over terrain not unlike that of a very rocky beach on earth was difficult even under the reduced Martian gravity. Only one small, motorized dolly with tank-like treads capable of easily negotiating the uneven, rocky terrain was available to them to carry the heavier ARU unit that looked for all the world like an 80-liter water heater with three cylindrical tanks attached for the oxygen, hydrogen, and methane gasses it would extract and compress for use by the colonists. Each colonist carried enough oxygen in their suits’ internal supply that, in conjunction with the suit’s CO2 scrubbers would provide a little more than four hours of oxygen under moderate exertion. The single large tank of O2 that had sustained them on their long trip to the surface was nearly depleted. Their only hope for replenishment of their supply now lay in the ARU they had left behind at the space elevator, and the one they carried with them fully operational and would leave, if all went well, at the location towards which they now traveled. This ARU had been operating continuously since their trip on the space elevator, reclaiming oxygen from the CO2 in the Martian atmosphere when the atmosphere became dense enough for the machine to begin its work, approximately half way to the surface.