Earth Nostalgia
Nov 7, 2022 2:40:07 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 7, 2022 2:40:07 GMT -5
We, the first members of a manned mission to Mars, had planned for all contingencies, the hazards of interplanetary space the Martian surface-radiation, the psychological isolation, and the weaker gravity. We had provided double and triple redundancies to all life-sustaining systems both to the ships and the habitats. Furthermore, we had sent supplies and living quarters beforehand. Carefully chosen a site that provided easy access to water near the southern Martian Icecap. Plenty of solar (photovoltaic) panels to provide us with our electrical needs had been deployed. So it was with great confidence that the four of us, two males and two females, had agreed to embark on the historic mission to the Red planet which had enticed us for so long.
The long and arduous trip had gone according to plan except for a few unexpected bouts of vertigo. But we attributed them to the ship’s gradual acceleration and our bodies trying to adapt. EDL or entry, descent and landing, the dreaded seven minutes of terror for deceleration from thirteen-thousand-miles-an hour to zero, had been routine. Once securely on the Martian surface, we celebrated just as people back on Earth were celebrating the achievement. Finally, we were there! We were on Mars!
Everything went as planned for the first few weeks. We explored and did our assigned experiments. At evening, we’d all gaze up at a sky gloriously speckled with stars and watch as the smaller sun set slowly beneath the icy mountain horizon. But we weren’t looking for stars. We were always anxiously seeking out Earth which was rapidly receding as its greater orbital velocity nearer to our sun made it race away from us.
We'd find ourselves constantly talking about its vast blue oceans and magnificent waves. Recalling its oxygen-rich atmosphere and endless green pastures. Reminiscing about its lush emerald forests seething with life under tropical down-pours. Remembering its swift and powerful majestic rivers and thunderous waterfalls and gleaming sunlit lakes.
There was always a slight irregularity of our heartbeats as we did so. But we paid it no mind and attributed it to normal emotions. After all, who wouldn’t feel emotional to see the Earth slowly receding in that way? It was the only world we'd ever known and having it near provided emotional comfort-the same comfort that those who had gone to the moon felt as they gazed up at the Earth, the Blue Marble, as they had referred to it then, hovering in the Moon’s dark sky.
But as the Earth and Mars distance increased, and earth became more difficult to observe, the heartbeat irregularities and former bouts of vertigo we had experienced on the trip resumed and intensified, and a deeper nostalgia for home set in. Gradually sleep became shallow and restless and our dreams began to be filled with images of vast forests and surging oceans. With copious rains splattering the surfaces of crystalline lakes or drumming rhythmically on a tropical cottage zinc roof.
Of blue skies graced with billowing sunlit-rimmed, cumulus clouds and beautiful orange sunsets. With thundering waterfalls pouring thunderously over lofty ledges and creating diaphanous mists far below. We'd awaken suddenly gasping for air and clutching desperately at the images that seemed to vividly persist even after we had awakened.
Gradually, a certain sadness in our tone of voice and facial expression became disturbingly noticeable. An exaggerated drooping of the shoulders and a shuffling of gait. A deterioration of conversation and a sinking into a morose and dismal silence.
An increasing reluctance to go about our daily tasks as outlined in the mission specifications became evident as well. That was unusual since we had all been chosen for our exceptional emotional and psychological stability, personal drive and motivation.
Had that been all it was it would have been endurable. But it wasn’t. Slowly but inexorably, we all began losing weight. Weight-loss had been expected, of course, due to the effects of the weaker Martian gravity on both muscle and bone leading to decalcification and some muscular atrophy. So we initially took it all in stride. But it soon became clear that this was drastically different.
A few ounces per week at first and then pounds which at the end left us looking like walking skeletons. We joked about it and initially attributed it to the less fatty diet we were on. We extolled the NASA dieticians for their excellent cholesterol-reduced menu. But as the weight-loss began to become severe, we began to panic.
We desperately sought a rational scientific explanation but found none. All causes such as dietary deficiency were systematically rejected as feasible. The first to seriously founder was Matilda Evanston the ship's co-pilot. She had been the thinnest among us from the start, so it didn’t take much to tilt the level from slim to skinny to cadaverous. She convalesced for a week before she died and the last word she uttered was Earth.
The Next was Jorge Evangelista, the exogeologist. He had been nicknamed Hercules by the NASA folks and by the crew for his chiseled, muscular physique. For some reason his rate of weight loss was the most pronounced of all at the rate of four pounds per week. He made a brave stand striving to remain optimistic until the end, but suddenly collapsed in a heap while desperately seeking to find Earth in the blackness of the Martian night sky.
Then there was Margaret Stevenson, the crew physician who was the last one to go before I, the ship's captain, was left all alone. She had seemed the most robust, and yet at the end, she was far thinner than me. I still remember her large, melancholy, green eyes gazing longingly at the sky as if seeking some crucial lifeline. As a man who is drowning desperately clutches for something to stay afloat, so were her last convulsions before she expired.
As for me, the crew navigator and biologist, for some reason I was the least affected of all. My weight-loss amounted to only an eighth of an ounce per week and as Earth once again began nearing Mars, I quickly began to recover. Of course Houston immediately ordered my return. Strange how each mile nearer to Earth invigorated me as if I was being reconnected to some invisible, vital source of energy.
Severe Earth Melancholia, they have chosen to call it and all planned Mars Missions have been canceled until we can figure out exactly what is involved. I have been examined and reexamined for some crucial clue that would help unravel the mystery but to no avail. Everything checks out as normal.
A correlation of Mars distance from Earth with severity of symptoms was established with the severest symptoms having occurred when Earth and Mars had been opposite one another with the sun in between, or a distance of approx. 250 million miles (401 million km).
The only explanation that seemed feasible is that perhaps, just perhaps, humans were not meant to be far from Earth. That Earth itself emanates some as yet undetectable life-sustaining force. That the farther we venture, the weaker it becomes and that we eventually wither like a plant deprived of Sunlight if we remain separated from it for too long. Who knows? Only time will tell.