Explosion rocks Earth fleet passenger ship
Blast hits ships maneuver ring engines. No injuries reported
ABOARD THE JOVE, Nov. 11 - A powerful explosion destroyed three maneuver engines on one of the 10 passenger ships in the approaching Earth supply train early Sunday, according to fleet radio and visual sightings.
The explosion happened as the passenger ship Wandering Star, carrying 250 passengers and 24 crew, was halfway through testing the 33 engines on the external maneuver pods near the stern of the ship.
Seven other passenger ships had already successfully tested their maneuver engines, but testing for the remaining passenger carriers and the 15 cargo ships has been paused as they investigate the cause, Fleet Admiral Ambrosius Coleridge radioed.
The engine tests come ahead of the deceleration burn needed to bring the ships into Mars orbit, which will take place about a week ahead of their scheduled arrival at Mars.
“We have time to take a careful look before we resume,” Coleridge radioed. “We’ll know more soon.”
On the Mars Carousel, Mission Control Cmdr Ceres Piazzi said, “We’re keeping a close eye on it. We have the Space Tug Juno in test flights, and it should be ready if need be.”
The maneuver engines are clustered in groups of three in the 11 exterior pods that circle the hull near the stern of the ship.
The first five pods tested successfully, but the sixth went into a full burn immediately, and the middle engine exploded, destroying the other two in the pod.
The extant of damage to neighboring pods is not yet known, as crew were preparing to go outside for a close inspection.
Wandering Star Capt. Hervé Xenokostas reported minor damage to the hull that did not cause any immediate structural concerns, Coleridge radioed.
The Space Rescue ship Jove rendezvoused with the fleet Nov. 6, and remains in visual contact from about 20 km behind.
“The burns were proceeding nominally and than it got more interesting,” Jove Capt. Hayden Torbay said as he showed a replay of the explosion. “We’re standing by to render any assistance necessary as ordered by Admiral Coleridge.”
The pods are spaced evenly around the 314m circumference hulls of the supply ships just forward of the main propulsion engines and can be jettisoned in case of emergency.
The passenger ships, whose main hulls are 500 m long and 100 m in diameter, each carry 24 crew. The cargo ships carry 12 crew.
The fleet carries a total of 2,823 passengers and crew, with 2,010 scheduled to move to the surface in December, including 1,983 moving in the worker dormitories in the City.
The rest will remain aboard the Mars Carousel or housing in the orbital cargo and shipyard.
Martian voters spurn central planning in election
Proposed Council to oversee all of Valles Marineris suffers punishing defeat
TITHONIA (URBS VALLIS), Nov. 6 - Mars voters chose local control over central planning by an overwhelming margin in Tuesday’s election.
A measure to subject local development in the Valles Marineris to oversight by a new Valley-wide council failed by a significant margin in Mars’ largest City, Urbs Vallis — now renamed Tithonia — where the City Council had added it to the ballot in September without consulting the other local councils.
Across all of the Valles Marineris, the measure lost by roughly a 3-to-one margin; failed by a 3-to-2 margin in the City and was thrashed 9-to-1 outside of Tithonium Chasma.
“Even people in the City want a more Martian future,” said Ius Councillor Brynn Gibby, who won reelection in Mars’ second largest city. “They don’t want to be an outpost of Earth controlled by Earth corporations. They want to be free Martians, and they voted that way.”
Tithonia Councillor Tiberia Hernandez, who won re-election in a vote that saw three of her fellow Council members unseated, said that residents in the widely spread settlements had rejected a one-size fits all approach.
“It doesn’t make sense to try to micro-manage the development decisions made by people a thousand kilometers away from the City,” said Hernandez, who had voted against a City demand that all homestead submit to their approval and against adding the Valley Council measure to the ballot.
“Not every settlement has to be a copy of the City,” Hernandez said. “Let them take their own path.”
DevCo will stay its course
The vote will not change the direction of planning in the City and in orbit, MarsDevCo Planetary Manager Elric Balvicar said.
“We will continue to do act in the best interest of Mars and its development on the surface and in orbit, consistent with the best use of our-hard won concessions, in which we have made historic investments,” Balvicar said.
DevCo controls Ares Port, which handles cargo and passenger traffic to the Mars Carousel orbital. On the surface, DevCo also owns the Ares Port industrial facilities that it has built and has substantial development rights in Tithonium Chasma. In orbit, it owns the Carousel and its associated industrial orbitals.
DevCo has been responsible for bringing immigrants from Earth and its orbitals, Luna and L5, but the pace of new arrivals has slowed, even as there has been a slight tick up in the number of immigrants seeking to return to Earth.
The City Council controls the residential areas of WestHill Terraces and the Habitational Tube, with a total population of 58,000, as well as the industrial areas extending west of the City and the cargo and passenger transit tubes to Ares Port.
City Council President Claude Paddingbury has argued that development outside of the City has become chaotic and counterproductive as local councils take action without regard to the wider impact on the Valles Marineris.
Paddingbury has led the Council for 8 annos and was the main proponent of a development slowdown outside outside Tithonium Chasma.
In his lowest showing to date, Paddingbury placed fourth in the election, behind two outspoken opponents of City control of the other chasmata, Luca Matteo and Tiberia Hernandez as well as Council newcomer Beata Bakken
Second-generation Martians rising
“Top-down control made sense when we were just a scientific outpost, but we’ve grown far beyond that into self-sustaining communities and even self-sustaining homesteads,” said Matteo, who placed first in the City Council vote. “They know what has worked, and they want to stick with that, but Martians are moving beyond that on the surface, in orbit and in space.”
Voters also rejected the Valley council proposal as being overly vague because it did not spell out the exact powers to be granted to the council would hold, how the seats would be apportioned, Noctis Labyrinthus Councillor Blythe Gunther said.
“There was way too much wiggle room, and that’s always a danger,” Gunther said.
Growth across the Valley has outpaced that in the City, driven in part by the development of compact fusion power units in Candor Chasma,
This annos for the first time, the number of Martians surpassed Earth arrivals.
“Over the coming annos, growth will be driven by the children of first-generation Martians,” said Perseverance Mendez, councillor for Mars third-largest settlement Coprates, about 1,600 km from the City.
“We’ve learned how to live on Mars as Martians, not transplants from Earth,” Mendez said. “This is our home, and we want to be the ones to decide how our future home will be.”
Allowing local councils to make the decisions that best suit their own communities is the best path forward for sustainable growth on Mars, said Amara Shah, a councillor for Melas Chasma, whose water mining project had come in for City criticism.
“Martians are creative, because survival on Mars depends on it,” Shah said. “Second-generation Martians are even more so, and to them Earth is almost a bedtime story—not all of it happy.”
City residents say call it Tithonia
Vale (Goodbye) Urbs Vallis
TITHONIA (URBS VALLIS), Nov. 6 - City residents celebrated the new name for Mars’ largest city following Tuesday’s election with an impromptu dance party outside the Council Hall in the first Habitation Tube section.
“It’s a lovely name and sounds so much better than Urbs—and we can use the flower as our emblem,” said Belinda Patel, whose singing tribute to Tithonia at a June council meeting helped kick start the name change. “We’ll still just call it the City, of course.”
The ballot measure had given residents the choice of keeping the current name, Urbs Vallis, or changing it to Tithonia or Tithonium City. Write-ins were also allowed and did suprisingly well.
Tithonia was chosen by just over half of City voters as the new name for their hometown at the western end of Tithonium Chasma.
Some 23 percent chose WestHill, for the terraced settlements on the ridge just west of the City’s habitational tube.
About 15,000 of the City’s 58,000 residents live in Westhill, with the rest in the three sections of the 4.8 km habitational tube, often called the ‘Tin Can.’
“WestHill always gets forgotten, but we were the first permanent city on Mars and the model for most of the larger settlements in the Valles Marineris,” said WestHill resident Beatta Bakken.
A geologist, Bakken led the drive for WestHill as the name for the entire city and in the process placed a surprise third in the City Council election.
The write-in choice of Mars City took third with 11 percent of the vote, beating Tithonium City with 8 percent and Urbs Vallis at just 6 percent.
While it wasn’t on the ballot, most residents and those in the other chasmata simply call their hometown the City.
The City started out as a collection of balloon shelters known as at the base of the transverse ridge now called WestHill.
Originally called PVHB1 for Permanent Valley Habitation Base One, or PeeVeeBee One, the city founders changed the name when the population climbed past 1,000 and the terracing of WestHill began.
With everything else on Mars named in Latin, they opted for Urbs Vallis, or Valley City, rather than Civitas Vallis, or city of the valley.
The history books credit habitants who came from a valley in California most often called, “The Valley.”
Outside Council Hall on Tuesday, an impromptu group clapped out a samba beat as the crowed joined in singing “Tithonia” with Patel.
Voters choose more choice in Mars council elections
Top down approach loses in Tuesdays’ vote
TITHONIA (URBS VALLIS), Nov. 6 - Voters made their desire for a new direction in Mars' biggest city clear in Tuesday’s election.
City Council candidates who backed local choice on development and more choice on questions of housing and independent businesses in the City itself surged past long-standing council members, three of whom lost their seats.
Outside the City, candidates who had led the opposition to City moves to manage local development did well, among them legendary Mars builder Jeremiah Volcan, whose new settlement in the Shalbatana Vallis has been the target of City objections.
Urbs Vallis (Tithonia) Councillors Luca Matteo and Tiberia Hernandez, who voted against attempts to put the City in overall control of Valley development, surged to the top of the list, coming in first and second, respectively, with 12.9 percent and 11.6 percent of the vote.
Matteo had been was accused of pandering by other councillors when he recently suggested the City re-open an underground nightclub it had shut down.
The Council’s opposition to private enterprise was a deciding factor, said Councillor-elect Joshua Asta, a structural engineer, who came in fifth out of the seven available seats.
That included the shutdown of the City Speakeasy nightclub in September and the Planning Commission rejection of a proposed café in an underused City cantina in June, Asta said.
“The main message was that residents want city government to loosen up a little,” Asta said. “We’re growing into a real city, and we want more choice in our daily life, whether that be where we eat and how we socialize. The Council needs to embrace our evolution.”
WestHill resident and geologist Beata Bakken rode a surge of local support from the older WestHill Terraces section of the city to a third-place finish with 4,402 votes, equal to 44 percent of WestHill voters.
“All the focus is on the HabTube and the new, fourth section, and then the one after that, and WestHill gets ignored,” Bakken said. “We can use improvement and more housing here as well. That’s what my neighbors voted for.”
City Council president drops to fourth place
Bakken came in ahead of longtime Council President Claude Paddingbury, who dropped to his lowest showing ever at fourth place, but still retained his seat.
Paddingbury came in just ahead of Asta and nutritionist Shira Chang.
“There is a lot of respect in the City for Claude (Paddingbury),” Asta said. “He essentially built this beautiful habitat we live in, and he keeps it growing. Still, as the City becomes more Martian, we want more options.”
Councillor Herald Severus held onto his seat by a little more than 100 votes, coming in seventh.
Karina Hermetta, who voted to place the Valley Council question on the ballot, lost her seat on the seven-member Council with an eighth-place finish.
Marcus Wu, a staunch opponent of independent business in the City, lost his seat with a ninth place showing, and will also be replaced as Planning Commission President, although he can remain on the board.
Councillor Yitong Yu, who has been largely silent on controversial questions but voted in line with Paddingbury, was unseated with a 10th place finish.
“Tithonia” proponent Belinda Patel picked up 1,100 write-in votes in the City Council election but did not make the top 10.
One size fits all doesn’t work on Mars
Local council elections sparked less drama as Ius Councillors Brynn Gibby, Seamus Mitsutomi and Eugenia Velazquez took the first three spots for Mars’ second largest city. All have been outspoken in their opposition to City control.
That pattern held for Noctis Labyrinthus, Candor and Coprates.
The Melas Council, however, saw three seats turn over.
Supply Chief Vita Rivenhill and Construction Manager Niah Parnasse, who is overseeing the chasma’s ambitious water drilling project, won seats along with aquaculturist Onofrio Argas.
Councillors Leigh Brisbane, Fintan Darval and Blaise Sfax lost seats in the Melas vote.
Voters also sent a message in the combined election for the new Xanthe Terra Council, encompassing Orson Welles Crater and the Shalbatana Vallis—both outside of the Valley proper.
Jeremiah Volcan, who is leading the building of a vertical city settlement in a Shalbatana pit crater, won a seat on the five-member council, along with former Survey Mars explorer Perpetua Heathering.
Over the summer, Heathering helped rescue a Survey Mars crew caught in a cavern collapse at the site of Volcan’s new settlement.
Volcan has faced strong opposition from the City and Mars DevCo to his project, as well as from Survey Mars, which has so far refused to accept his settlement claim, although the Orson Welles Council has independently certified it.
Asked for comment on the results, Volcan wrote in reply, “Mars isn’t going for one-size fits all.”
Corrects Asta's Council result to fifth place (10 Nov.)
Calendar
New Councils meeting this week
Wednesday, Nov. 14, 1900 - Ius Council at Geryon Agora; Melas Council at Aquarium Dome; Coprates Council, Schiapparelli Hall
Thursday Nov. 15 1900 - Candor Council, Chaos Gallery
Will they sing Tithonia?
City Council 101 Installation of new councillors, formal adoption of new name, and election of Council president for the next annos. Thursday Nov. 15, 1900. Council Hall Hab 1 Terrace 8
Meet up at the Labyrinthia Truck Stop
Noctis Council initial meeting Saturday Nov. 24 (every first and fourth Saturday) at the Grange Hall
New Council for Xanthe Terra
Combined Orson Welles/Shalbatana Vallis Council, Welles Dome, Saturday Nov. 24 1400 (Meets every fourth Saturday)
Tithonia Garden shows off Tithonia, Christmas trees
Tithonia Gardens is honoring the City's new name with a display of the bright yellow, orange and red blossoms of its latest display of Mexican Sunflowers, also known as Tithonia.
The Gardens also plans a display of miniature pine, fir and spruce trees to mark the celebration of Earth Christmas, from Nov. 15 through 23. Habtube 2, Terrace 4
City farmers' market
Going green with veggie envy? Get to the City farmer's market. Stalls available by appointment. Industrial Tube Terminal. Saturday 0900-1500
City Strings Quartet
Quartet performs selections from Dvorak’s American Quartet. WestHill Terrace 4 Friday-Saturday 19:00
“La Bandita - The Thief of Hearts”
The thief of hearts meets her match, lighting a fiery romance. Sparky! Held over for second week post election. Stage 3 Hab 1 Terrace 8 Nov. 15-21, 18:00, 20:00, 22:00
The Opera Tithonia
Open rehearsal for the Strauss opera Der Fledermaus. They’re just practicing, but well worth a listen. Stage 1 on Terrace 8 (HabTube 1). Sunday noon
Hey Rhumba girls and guys!
It’s time to put a little rhumba in your step, and some cha-cha, at Coprates Schiapparelli Hall Friday 20:00
Acoustic Song Share
Everyone gets a song Cafe du Mont. Geryon Agora Saturday 16:00
City Social
Mix and mingle with new arrivals and old hands. Hab 2. Terrace 4, by Tithonia Gardens. Every Friday 17:00
- Merry Grace, lifestyle correspondent
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APPRENTICES Environmental systems. URBS 269 81447
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BALLROOM DANCING Cha-cha, cha-cha-cha! URBS 269 49144
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YOUTH CHORUS. Want to sing? URBS 269 13930
The header photo is the iconic mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars from 2,500 km above the surface taken by the Viking Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The Candor Chaos Courier, Candor Chaos, Valles Marineris, Mars
The Chaos Courier gets you over the rough spots
Future News from Small Town Mars
Copyright © 2025, M. Fitzpatrick, all rights reserved
Photomosaic: Viking Orbiter: NASA/JPL-Caltech