martian fantasy
(note: the concept of living martians is obviously ASB. It was only a trick for toying with Mars perihelic oppositions across the 20th century)
"Mars had rendezvous with Earth. The blind game of celestial mechanics carried the planets in orbit around the Sun. A long time before, Kepler had demonstrated that planets orbited their mother stars at different speeds; the farther the slower.
Mars orbited the Sun in 687 days, twice as much as the most immediate inner planet, a blue marble. From times to times, the red globe and the blue planet got very close – 55 million kilometres at best. That was called perihelic oppositions, and happened on a regular cycle of fifteen (sometimes seventeen) years.
As astronomy progressed in the eighteen and nineteen centuries, Mars perihelic oppositions grew in importance. Ground based telescopes were pushed to their limits; photographs showed a pale, ocher disk with some discernible features such as a black, triangular scar: Syrtis Major.
Had an advanced Martian civilization ever existed, understood human calendars, and observed Earth during perihelic oppositions, that civilization would have had mixed feelings. For centuries it looked like nothing moved; humans were focused on Earth-bound worries – plagues, wars, political struggles, revolutions.
Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, Earth inhabitants slowly progressed toward the sky.
There was a good reason for that.
The Earth was a pretty massive planet, and in turn this meant a deep gravity well. The deep gravity well made orbit from the surface, and escape, damn difficult.
Very ironically, Mars being much less massive its gravity well was much less deeper, and reaching from the red planet surface was easier.
The amount of energy to reach space was called the delta-V, expressed in kilometer per second. To put things into perspective, top speed of the fastest aircraft ever build on planet Earth, the SR-71 Blackbird, was a single kilometer per second - three thousand and six hundred kilometer per hour.
Orbital speed however was seven kilometer per second - seven time more., or worse, because the rocket equation featured a logarithm that made things even harder.
That was, in itself, a daring challenge. On top of that was a thick atmosphere entailing a lot of drag and two more kilometer per second, up to nine time the SR-71 speed ! Only rockets achieved the feat, but they paid a high cost to it. The expense of energy to climb at the edge of Earth gravity well was so large that the mass of propellant to burn was just overwhelming.
Early in the history of spaceflight it had been calculated that a rocket build as a single, monolithic vehicle would have to be 92% of propellants by itself. The 8% that remain would have to be, well, the rocket itself - the tanks around the propellants, and the rocket around the tanks - including the engines, guidance system, structure and, obviously, the payload to be sent to orbit ! That in itself explained why rockets staged.
The optimal number of stages had been found to be three, so three stages would be crammed with propellants, stacked one above each other, and fired in sequence. Its propellant exhausted the stage would be casted off, falling back to Earth. The higher and the fastest the stage separated, the harder it hit Earth thick atmosphere.
Needless to say, destruction usually followed; bringing the stages back to Earth surface for reuse would have been theorically feasible, but it added immense costs and complexity.
So the big rockets usually destroyed themselves to place a tiny payload into orbit. The only way for stage reuse to make sense, cost wise, was to launch a lot, and there was hardly enough satellites to justify higher flight rates...
The August 4, 1892 perihelic opposition showed the Martians humans vain efforts to left the ground - Lilienthal gliders, Ader and Maxim steam-powered unworkable machines.
Seventeen years passed, then September 24, 1909 brought another opposition. Humans had not progressed much, still flying in small hops.
Fifteen years later, in 1924 the Martians found the blue marble in a state of distress. There had been some god awful war, killing millions.
Next opposition, August 24 1939, was no better. It looked as if the humans were on the bring of another, even more deadly war. More advanced aircrafts were flying, but humans had yet to make their first leap into space.
Mars came close again on September 10, 1956 and the Martians were startled. This time there were rockets, plenty of them, although primitive. Scanning of Earth near-space showed nothing, but ten day later the observers were given an interesting show. They saw a rocket climbing to near orbital speed, and caught a name they would be familiar with in the next future: Wernher von Braun.
That night at the Cape Mars glowed bright orange-red in Florida sky. Ten days before the faster Earth had overtaken Mars and now raced ahead. Wernher Von Braun looked at Mars with mixed feelings.
Today had been a baby step in the direction of new worlds. But the fourth stage of the rocket had been filled with sand, not propellant, because the Navy Project Vanguard had priority over the Army for which von Braun teams worked.
Nothing could have prepared the Martians to what happened before the next perihelic opposition. The Martians did not expected any news from Earth before that date, but the terrans were apparently progressing faster and faster.
Soon robots started to rain, most of them dead – humans still had to learn building durable electronics. In 1965, however, an Earth robot reached Mars in working state, and snapped some photos. Other robots overflew the planet on regular occasions, bigger and better ones. And in the late 60’s Mars yet again closed from Earth, closer and closer until August 10, 1971.
For a long time now the Martians had learned about Earth rocket launches, counting successes and failures, the proportion between the two rapidly inverting as humans progressed.
The Martians first scanned Earth orbit, and found it populated by hundred of robots, a marking contrast with 1956. They watched humans timid steps in outer space, to Earth huge satellite they called the Moon.
The Martians caught again the name of von Braun, and were excited by what they found.
By contrast with 1956 and its near-orbital attempts the man was now building the immense rockets that carried men to Earth satellite. Going back to 1969, they found that plans had been discussed to send men farther – to their planet !
So they prepared for the invasion, and calculated the next oppositions. There would be two close-up, in 1986 and 1988. And the next one, in 2003, would be the closest ever since 60 000 years. So from 1971 onwards the Martians patiently waited for the invasion. Because they were so much advanced than humans they had nothing to fear, no anger nor resent. They were just waiting…"
