By Todd Adair
As the planet spins its way through a global pandemic and generational turmoil, I’ve found myself using my imagination to dream about the world we’ve built and what we’ll pass on to our children. Like many Muskokans, I spent many nights during the craziness of the pandemic staring up at the stars and wondering, Why were we in this predicament? What had we done to put ourselves in this chaotic situation? What were we doing to our world? When would life return to normal?
Clients, coworkers, friends, and family know I’m typically an optimist, and yet I found myself cynical about the world as it was: in total disarray and disagreement. One evening when I found myself particularly down on the world and perhaps inspired by the night sky, I finally opened the link to a video a friend had sent me about Elon Musk’s vision of a colonized Mars by 2030.
It had always seemed far-fetched to me – domestic travel to another planet within my lifetime. “A colony on Mars?” I thought. “I can’t fly to Montreal without lost luggage and stale overpriced snacks. How in the world could we travel to Mars in under a decade?”
But then – maybe because of the pandemic isolation, or excitement of something new after a period of lockdowns, school closings, and mask mandates – I allowed myself to let my imagination entertain what Musk must have been envisioning. I let myself think about the possibility of a new colony on a new planet, one that would allow us to leave all of our earthly problems behind. Goodbye pandemic; goodbye climate change; goodbye Friday traffic on the 400, closures on the DVP, snowstorms, and crowded TTC trips.
I can almost hear your skepticism. Why would the owner of a successful real estate brokerage advocate for abandoning our planet? But bear with me; allow me this indulgence. Imagine, as I did, the possibilities of a blank (red) slate. We could learn from an entire history and start from scratch: new ideas, new government, new foundations of law and new systems, all born out of the experience of our mistakes. We could build a new world, populated by like-minded individuals inspired by innovation, ingenuity, and a sense of adventure that defined the pioneers who settled what became our country: the new world, the world we seem to have let slip into decline.
I was inspired by the idea of being an explorer, of seeing an unrealized landscape and being allowed to let my visions run wild. I was obsessed with my thoughts about the possibility of being able to look at an untouched world and imagine its evolution.
The more I immersed myself in the dream of Mars, the more I felt myself drifting away from Earth. I saw landscapes of insurmountable mountains, unpredictable volcanoes, and frozen lakes. With less gravity on the Red Planet, we’d all appear to be in better shape. The longer days and years would yield more time to get work done, but also more time to spend with family and friends. I Googled “average daytime equatorial temperature on Mars” and found it to be 20˚C (70˚F) – an ideal temperature for a Canadian who loves a late August evening in Muskoka. I saw breathtaking photos of Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos, and the child in me imagined a Star Wars-like moonscape.
I shut the lid to my laptop, and stepped back outside, gazed up at the stars, and started my Martian immersion. I looked out on the Muskokan landscape before me and I was instantly mesmerized.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I know Mars isn’t a Nirvana-in-waiting. As someone in real estate, I’m a realist by nature. Musk detailed in 2016 that the trip would demand 80 to 150 days of travel time, with an average trip time to Mars of approximately 115 days; depending on the positions of Earth and Mars at departure, it could take three years or longer to get there. In 2012, Musk stated, “An aspirational price goal for such a trip might be on the order of US$500,000 per person,” but in 2016 he mentioned that he believed long-term costs might become as low as US$200,000. That’s an expensive move.
And, of course, if you think the last couple of years wheezing through your mask has been cumbersome, imagine strapping your face into oxygen support for your best chance at a breath of fresh air. Farming and agricultural enterprises would need to be indoors or underground, and the supply chain challenges would make COVID’s seem subtle. We would need to protect ourselves from cosmic radiation. The process of desalinating the water on Mars would be a burden, and water is life. Those 20˚C days are rare – the average temperature is minus -63˚C (-81˚F) and can drop to -129˚C (-200˚F). Dust storms lasting a few days reach speeds of 50 to 60 kilometres an hour. Conversations with Earth would have a 25-minute delay. Mars only gets about a third of the sunlight that Earth does, so the requirement for solar energy would be problematic.
My head started to spin. Were things here on Earth really that bad? Had the pandemic clouded all that had drawn me to this incredible region in the first place? Had the chaos of the past few years really made me enough of a cynic to consider relocating to another planet?!
I took a deep breath. Right before me was some of Mother Nature’s very best work. The Muskoka region alone boasts over 1600 lakes and endless woods in which to fish, hunt, snowshoe, swim, wakeboard, camp, waterski, cross-country ski, paddleboard, sail, host bonfires, scuba – the list in my head was as endless as the stars above. Each season highlights a different element; trees snowcapped for winters, bright blooming springs, summers of warm lakes and warmer campfires, and fall colours that are the envy of, likely, all planets. The Canadian Shield is one of my favourite parts of Muskoka’s landscape – a phenomenon thousands of years in the making, and I’m fortunate enough to have grown up and raised a family smack-dab in the middle of it.
Sometimes we need to be humbled by the universe to feel fortunate for what it has given us, and for our place in it. Mars will be colonized, and likely in our lifetime. And people of science will solve the problems of habitation, because that is what humans do: we solve problems so that we can move forward. And perhaps one day, the opportunity for my family and me to board a flight to the fourth rock from the sun will present itself.
But for now, I’m going to step out into my yard, look out at the lake, the woods, and up at the stars above them, and think of my gratitude and good fortune to live and work in Muskoka – one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
