We Built the First Mars Colony - On Earth for One Night Only (and my continued discontent with Zach @ Substack)

Have you ever heard the phrase don’t keep all your eggs in one basket? Isn’t it egotistical of us to think that we can escape the fate that the dinosaurs suffered from or a great solar flare or thousands of the things that could go wrong that we have such incomplete information about that it is almost moot to theorize about in the depths of the internet isn’t it? I am not prepared for an asteroid to hit the planet. Are you? I have one reusable tote bag that gets stolen from me somehow about twice a month, I am not who you want to trust with the backup of civilization.

I believe we want to preserve life as long as we can, because it is so beautiful and precious - with a few notable exceptions, most of which in my inbox currently, I am fairly sure, that most of us agree with this.

(Do not fear dear reader this is not all autistic space nerd stuff I promise to make it funny too).

A few Sundays a month, when I’m not traveling, I go to a house in Palo Alto and do Mars Society things with roughly five older white men, one Stanford intern, and me. I am, depending on the Sunday, the diversity hire, the youth outreach program, and the only person present who knows what a For You page is. It is the one room in the Bay where I am simultaneously the youngest person and the most normal one, which should tell you something about both me and the Bay.

The Mars Society is the nonprofit Robert Zubrin started back in 1998 to advocate for actually settling Mars — building somewhere humans could stay. It is exactly as charming a scene as it sounds, and these are some of the most sincere people I have ever met.

The philosophy is simple enough that it’s easy to be cynical about it: life is rare and worth preserving, so we should get serious about backing it up somewhere that isn’t a single fragile planet. The longtermist version of the argument is that this doesn’t just help some abstract far-future people — it helps a lot of people, because pushing hard on this frontier drags a huge amount of science and capability forward with it. I find that persuasive.

There are plenty of fair criticisms, mainly that we have enough unsolved problems and suffering people right here on earth to keep us busy for centuries. I hear ya. But here’s the thing I only learned as an adult. When you’re a kid learning about history and the future, you quietly assume the world just moves forward — that things get better on their own, on a schedule. Then you grow up and watch genuinely great things get taken apart and made worse, and you realize progress isn’t a current you drift along. Someone has to actually push. Ideas need people willing to drive them, or they simply don’t happen.

Which is why I admire America and China as much as I do. They still inspire people to build. The war for the future is being fought right here — how is that not the most interesting thing in the world?

Some examples of how we kneecapped what America used to be:

The other reason I got pulled into all of this: I learned that Elon Musk used to come to this exact group when he lived in Palo Alto, and that he still turns up occasionally and invests heavily. As a Canadian who won't be able to meaningfully work on anything space-related until I am rich, I find that genuinely inspiring. (Which is not to say I agree with all his decisions, or that I'd call him a good man — but the pursuit of space itself, I will defend.)

The center of gravity is the Mars Desert Research Station — an analog habitat out in the Utah desert where crews live and work as if they were already on Mars, running the whole thing as a simulation to figure out what a real settlement would actually require. The version where the first wave is mostly assembling infrastructure and, honestly, farming. Our chapter’s projects feed into that research question: what does living there really take, and what would the first settlement look like?

We also have a Mars rover we maintain and haul out to educational events, which is exactly as good at drawing a crowd as you’d hope. Holden takes the real imagery that comes back from Mars and upscales it into HDR — so instead of the grainy postcards you’re used to, you’re standing in front of the planet in a resolution that makes it feel like a place you COULD actually go.

So my very talented friend Nicole Levin, who runs events from an event space called Pebblebed came up with the concept.

Pebblebed is an early-stage technical venture fund — the "a home for builders" type — founded by a stacked crew of ex-OpenAI and ex-Facebook engineers. Nicole runs the community and the events side, which she does out of their warehouse in the Mission. She was a broadcast journalist before this, which is the tell: she understands, better than almost anyone, why some ideas achieve escape velocity and others quietly die. So when she decides to build a whole world for one night, she builds a whole world.

The idea was to demystify what moving to Mars would realistically look like — the un-fun version, on purpose. Everyone who came was “selected,” and had to arrive wearing an assigned color. You entered through an airlock and were immediately shown all the things you’d never get to do on earth again.

Then there was a ceremony: how the mission was funded, the fake future it was building toward, why anyone would sign up for this in the first place, how the society up there would actually work. The honest pitch. The first wave assembles things. The first wave farms. The first wave probably doesn’t come back.

Nicole pulled together around 30 local artists to bring the night to life, and it was sponsored by Rho (shoutout to Rho).

My other very talented friend Bansini and I took over two of the booths and turned them into a single argument. One booth put you on earth; the other put you on Mars. Standing between them, you had to decide, whether you’d go with the first wave of settlers. We built a little program that fed you prompts and counterarguments to pressure-test whichever side you were leaning toward.

We strung memes from the ceiling, one planet’s propaganda per booth.

The Mars booth: ziplock bags of earth air for sale, pro-Mars propaganda. Bansini made national-park-style posters for destinations on Mars, in the same visual language as the ones we have here, which did something quietly emotional to people. And you could apply for a visa to Mars; we'd pre-filled a few, including one for Daniel Lurie (our very beloved San Francisco mayor).

..and I, a marketing executive, am doing my part by making memes about it. You're welcome, America.

The Earth Booth: was the counterweight — the case for staying. Designed around arguments that going to Mars would be negative, complete with make your own tinfoil radiation blocking hat, check the super hot weather forecast for mars for the next couple of days, see how many times over you could solve world hunger before you invest in going to Mars or interplanetary.

The Mars Society squad pulled up and brought the Mars rover we work on and take to educational events, and let people drive it around the party — which was incredible, and we really appreciated it. They were so cute. Holden came and brought the images he upscales from the rover and played them on a projector screen.

Jess made some incredible food for the night, completely Mars-inspired. Freeze-dried everything, nothing that looked remotely edible, and all of it actually was. I didn't get sick either, so that was a win. There were a bunch of other beautiful projects people put together that I was too busy manning the debate station praying my code did not go down with the whole booth that I cannot remember to mention here and for that I am so sorry. But often how many of these art events tend to go I find.

The part that all of you are really here for.

Last week I published an article called ‘Stop Hiding from me Zack at Substack’ in which I discussed my grievances with him, and proposed options that I would be okay with for resolution.

I even in the article went on to propose things that I would be less okay with, but would accept as a gesture of good will.

Well he saw it. He read it. He understood it. Loud and clear. And then what did he do?

He completely ignored all of the very very very hard work I put together, 1. drafting the blog article on the matter, 2. proposing solutions, 3. proposing less good acceptable solutions, and then offered me a t-shirt instead.

I replied, like anyone would at a time like this, ‘hmmmm’ because what am I meant to say right now Zack at Substack? Are you toying with me? Have you ever really satisfied a woman all of the way?

I worry I maybe made him feel like he never had a shot at being great, so he is just trying to do what he can, okay with falling short because that was the only option. I assure you Zack at Substack, if you actually threw me the party at the tonga room I would actually just be happy! There are no hidden tricks between my words (and if there were you should be able to read them because you literally work at Substack).

Do you guys think that humans will be interplanetary or I will get my party from Zack at Substack first?

Anyways, thanks for reading, let me know if you also are into crazy longtermist space stuff I guess, or art stuff, or if you also think that Zach from Substacks reply was actually so unacceptable again are you kidding me? Does he think we are idiots? That he is just going to walk all over us like that? Probably bad to piss off the person deciding who is going to live on mars when the asteroid comes, just saying.