It's homecoming for new Mars arrivals
Moving in on Mars
TITHONIA (URBS VALLIS), Dec. 6 - Dressed in the crisp coveralls that mark them as new arrivals, 40 people bobbed up and down curiously as they walked along the edge of terrace three in the habitational tube here on the way to their new homes on Thursday.
One man’s head and shoulders popped up above the others, while a woman lurched sharply to the right, their movements in contrast to the long gliding steps of long-time residents of Mars’ largest city walking nearby.
“Hold onto the handrail,” City Residence Trainer Toria Terrehaute told the first of the 1,983 workers who will take up residence in the dormitories, called the Cubbies, on the level three terrace of the HabTube’s first section.
For the group of people taking their first walk on Mars, the oddly erratic steps came as they adjusted to the lower gravity on their new home world. Some pushed off too strongly and others overcompensated.
“Hold onto the handrail,” Terrehaute said. “It will keep your gait steady and keep you safe.”
One woman in the group bounced up and stumbled forward, only to be saved from falling by a companion.
The group was the first of the contract workers from the Earth fleet to fly by shuttle from the Mars Carousel orbital down to the nearby Ares Port, the spaceport and industrial center, for the short Tube ride to the residential sections of Tithonia at the western end of the Valles Marineris.
Terrehaute gave the group a few minutes to stop and adjust, while taking in the dramatic scenery visible through the sandglass shell of the 4.8 km habitational tube.
The lushly green interior gardens of the Habtube, which includes residential, farming and aquaculture facilities, stands in stark contrast to the totally other worldly cliffs stretching more than 4 km (2.5 miles) to the dusky sky across the floor of western end of Tithonium Chasma.
“It’s like walking on a ship at sea for the first time,” said Shannon Valera, an Earth-born aquaculture specialist, laughing at herself. “I expect my foot to go down one place and it ends up somewhere else.”
The Earth fleet arrived Nov. 30 and most of the City’s newest residents spent the last three weeks on board the Pontus Caelestis orbital, better known as the Mars Carousel, whose spinning creates a slightly lower gravity than on the surface of their new home planet.
“We had a few weeks to get used to the orbital, but this just feels different,” Valera said. “I’m flinging myself around, bouncing up and down.”
Industrial design engineer Conner Altair nodded his head in agreement. “I’m nearly skipping like a little kid, only I’m going twice as high and taking twice as long to come down. It’s a little weird.”
Terrehaute pointed to a group of long time residents moving smoothly across the terrace. “A couple days, and it’ll all be old hat for you.”
Lunar construction engineer Derek Wilhelmster pointed to the soaring transverse slope across the valley floor near the western end of Tithonium Chasma. “That will never get old, and I just spent five years (three Mars annos) on the moon. Most of that was underground of course.”
Next stop the Cubbies
Before moving on, Terrehaute outlined what the workers could expect in terms of their new quarters where they will live for at least the next annos (1.8 years).
“They’ve made some improvements since I lived there,” said Terrehaute, who will act as a live-in residential assistant and trainer for the next 60 sols.. “Still, it will be a bit more space, and a lot easier to move around, than you were used to on the spaceliner.”
“Why do they call them the Cubbies?” asked Altair, to nervous laughs from the group.
“There’s not a lot of personal space,” Terrehaute said, adding, “But like I said, they’ve made some improvements.”
Among those improvements, are a redesign of the shared common room that open out onto the third-level terrace gardens that overlook hydroponic and aquaculture farms and out to the wider chasma.
The private storage lockers have been moved from under the bunks to across the narrow aisle, meaning each set of bunks is separated from the next by storage space.
“You’ll appreciate that when you get up to use the facilities,” Terrehaute said. “You might bump into the locker but not someone else. And we’ll review our ‘Cubby etiquette’ one we get inside.”
The new residents can expect to find their baggage inside the common room and clothing and supply packets on their bunks with the welcome packets that include their training and work assignments.
“The space is small,” Terrehaute said as she got the group ready to move into their cubbies a little further down the terrace. “But you’ll be really tired from all the training we’re going to do together for the next few months. So everyone’s going to sleep really well.”
Space crews feel adrift in Mars orbit
Crew seeks next berth
MARS ORBITAL CARGO YARD, Dec. 5 - For the 2,500 passengers of the newly arrived space liners, Mars is a beginning. For the crews that brought them, it’s an often an end.
“We sign on for the duration, and then we see what we can get when we get there,” says Martine Pavo, chief steward of the ill-fated Wandering Star passenger liner,. “There may be a job, and there may not.”
“If there is a job, it may be one we don’t want,” says physical therapist Cassian Torrance, who ran the exercise programs for the 250 passengers aboard the liner Guiding Star on their 253-sol journey from Earth.
The now idle crews were sitting around a table in the crew quarters in the orbital cargo yard, where they’ll stay until moving onto permanent quarters on the Mars Carousel orbital that floats above the Valles Marineris or down to jobs in Mar’s largest city, Tithonia, or the neighboring Ares Port shuttle port and industrial zone.
“Not that we have to worry,” says instructor Zine Botha of the Sailor’s Star, sipping tea from a flight bottle. “They have to feed us and make sure we have a place to live, but we’d all like to know what we’re going to do next. Right now, I don’t.”
While many of the 323 crew from the Earth fleet face the same uncertainty, that was heightened for the remaining crew of the Wandering Star by the explosions that crippled their ship and forced the passengers to evacuate.
“Until they get through the initial investigation, we’re still officially space crew, but they’re filling the available jobs with the crews who are now off space duty,”says Pavo.
Botha, whose job as an in-flight instructor involved training contract workers for life on Mars as well as overseeing the eduction required for the jobs waiting for them, had hoped to have a surface berth ready for her on arrival.
Wondering what's next
Botha says she’d like to be a safety trainer for outside work on Mars, building on her experience on Luna.
“It’s really frustrating. We see the ads for volunteer trainers in the Chaos Courier, so we know they need trainers,” Botha says. “They could hire us for those jobs and transition us into other roles later on.”
That’s particularly true as the passengers move into their new quarters on Mars in the contractor worker dorms, or Cubbies, in the Tithonia habitation tube, at the western end of the Valles Marineris.
“Those people need to re-learn almost everything about daily life,” says Torrance, the physical trainer. “They really need to have trainers on hand to help them.”
The adjustments include learning to move and do daily tasks in Mars’ gravity which is just under 40 percent that on Earth.
“That affects walking, lifting coffee mugs. You have to retrain your perception and your physical responses,” Torrance says. “True, they just spent about nine months in zero G, but most of them lived every day until now on Earth.”
Rincon was tasked with making sure all passengers kept up with their daily exercises to maintain strength and health on the long trip.
In Pavo’s case, she says her experience as chief steward would make her a prime candidate to manage one of the City-run canteens where residents eat most of their meals.
“They’re opening up new canteens in the third section of the HabTube, so they have openings for people. They should have the jobs scheduled as well,”Pavo says.
The third-section of the 4.8 km habtube is scheduled for final completion by Jan. 1, with the last several hundred habitations now being finished. Construction of a fourth section is underway.
Once the new arrivals have moved down to Tithonia, about 46,000 people will be living in the three sections of the habtube. Some 15,500 people live in the original WestHill section of Tithonia, bringing the city’s total population to 61,000.
All three say they have applied for multiple open posts, but remain puzzled why they all didn’t have set assignments when they arrived.
“The new contract workers have their assignments waiting for them,” Botha says. “There’s no reason that we should have to wait. We’ve trained for very similar jobs.”
Tithonia City Council sets New Year target for neighborhood business
City wants to liven up the neighborhoods
TITHONIA (URBS VALLIS) Dec. 6 - The Tithonia City Council wants to add a little life to the city’s exclusively residential areas.
The Council voted 5-2 Thursday to set aside areas for dining, entertainment and small business services on the residential terraces in the three sections of the Habitational Tube and in the WestHill Terrace section of Mars’ largest city.
“Ideally, we want to turn the habitational terraces into neighborhoods, where people can dine in a small restaurant or sit in a coffee shop and browse through stands selling crafts or get their hair cut or buy custom goods,” City Councillor Luca Matteo said.
Besides the canteens, where residents eat most of their meals, there are no services or other businesses in the habitational areas of the city.
Some space has been set aside at the Industrial Tube Terminal between the City and Ares Port for small businesses, and markets for individual residents to sell and trade food and other home-grown or craft items.
There are no other options within the residential areas.
The Council vote directs the Tithonia Planning Commission to create a map delineating where open areas, such as terraces, and enclosed or underused facilities in individual neighborhoods can be shifted to provide space for restaurants, bakeries or coffee shops.
“We want their to be more to city life than sleeping and working,” said new Councillor Beata Bakken, a WestHills resident elected in November.
Before the November election, the City had remained staunchly opposed to allowing independent businesses in residential areas.
In September, the City closed down a popular, but unapproved nightclub being run in an unopened canteen in the third section of the habtube.
The Planning Commission turned down a proposal in June to turn an under-used City-run canteen in the center section of the habtube into a restaurant.
Former City resident Janet Depaysage, whose proposal was rejected, has since opened a cafe at the Geryon Agora, where the Ius Council has been promoting an expansion of independent businesses.
Council President Claude Paddingbury and Councillor Herald Severus voted against the proposal.
“While it’s true that we are a growing settlement, we remain primarily an exploratory outpost, a proof of concept if you will,” Paddingbury said. “We should not lose focus of our main goal here, which is to create a growing and thriving settlement on Mars.”
Councillor Tiberia Hernandez noted that while Tithonia remains by far the largest city in the Valles Marineris, other settlements, particularly the combined Ius and Geryon Montes have been outpacing the City’s growth rate.
“They are, in fact, creating a more vibrant, thriving, growing city,” Hernandez said. “And let us not forget that we are losing people to those faster growing, more dynamic settlements.”
Mis-fold crimps new orbital factory
Self-deploying unit doesn't
MARS CAROUSEL, Dec. 4 - One of the four prefabricated, self-deploying factory ships that arrived with the Earth fleet nearly four weeks ago on Nov. 30 has jammed on initial attempts to unfold into its final configuration, orbital management said Tuesday.
“They need to open in a certain sequence, and every step leads to the next, and we’re stuck on one of the initial steps,” Pontus Caelestis Manager Johannes Tycho said. “They fold up before they leave Earth and they’re supposed to unfold here. It appears to be a sort of misfold.”
The four factory ships, designed for zero, micro and low gravity manufacturing, have taken up their permanent orbital slots above the Pontus Caelestis orbital, known as the Mars Carousel.
The ships are designed to produce high-value goods and components for export to Earth and for use on Mars and in orbit.
“We’re building out our orbital industrial base with an eye to further expansion in space,” Tycho said. “These four factories are essential components of that long-term strategy.”
- Alfwinna Webster, Mars Carousel Correspondent
Arrivals
The Wandering Star space liner, which was crippled by engine explosions on approached to Mars, is expected to arrive in Mars orbit on Wednesday, Dec. 12. The spaceliner is being pushed into orbit by the explorer scout Boudicca, which attached to the larger ship using a pairing lattice developed by Boudicca Capt. Attracta O’Ceileachair (O’Kelleher) and her sister, Beansí (Banshee) Capt. Electra O’Ceileachair. Wandering Star Capt. Hervé Xenokostas said his ship will be pushed into a temporary mooring in the O’Ceileachair cargo yard until its final disposition is settled. - Mei Aonio, Ares Port Correspondent, on board the Wandering Star.
Calendar
City Guides Arrivals Week 1 recap
Meeting for City Guide volunteers helping the new arrivals. Week 1 debrief and planning for Arrivals Week 2. You can still volunteer. Refreshments. Monday Hab 1 Terrace 8 outside Council Hall. 19:00
The Opera Tithonia.
Selections from the Strauss opera Der Fledermaus. Stage 1 on Terrace 2 (HabTube 1). Saturday-Sunday noon
City Strings "Coming Home Concert"
Ensemble performs selections from Dvorak's "New World Symphony." " Refreshments. Mariners Hall. WestHill Terrace 4. Friday-Sunday 16:00
“Rhumba Room”
Fun song and dance review threedee. Goofy, guilty pleasure with great dancing Stage 3 Hab 1 Terrace 8 Dec. 13-19 18:00, 20:00, 22:00
Samba Marte Dancing and Music.
Hab3 Terrace 2 by the bamboo grove. Friday-Saturday 19:00. Sunday Family dance 14:00
Rhumba Cats and City Samba.
Team up for MarsSamba and dancing. All acoustic. Hab 1 Terrace 4 outside the Canteen C. Refreshments. Just one flight up from the Cubbies. Saturday-Sunday 15:00
Mick MacLuna
Silly comedy from the far side of the moon. Industrial Tube Terminal Canteen Thursday 19:00
City Social
Mix and mingle with new arrivals and old hands. Acoustic music by Harris and Fitz. Harris and Fitz acoustic duo. Learn where single socks end up. Hab 2. Terrace 4, by Tithonia Gardens. Friday 17:00
“La Bandita” live
You’ll fall in love too. “La Bandita,” a one-woman play by the author of the romantic threedee, “La Bandita - Thief of Hearts” will be performed by writer Phoebe Nyx at the Geryon Agora. The thief of hearts tells how she met her match, sparking a fiery romance. Happy ending? Find out at the Geryon Agora Theater Saturday 21:00.
Las Panteras de Marte
Singer Monique Solis, guitarist Hernando Senatobia and accordionist Ignacio Beck, play Mars-style Norteño music. You’ll dance. You'll love it! Ius Forum. Saturday 19:00
Rayguns
Electric pop trio goes retro. Outside Rick’s at Geryon Agora. Saturday 20:00
Melas Karaoke
You don't have to memorize the words, but you'll want to practice. Sing solo, in groups or just hum to yourself at the Bottom of the Sea cantina. Friday 20:00. Melas.
Marsball
Kind of like basketball, with really high baskets. Rules and regulations are evolving. They'll take it easy if you're just finding your feet. Hab 3 Terrace 1 Gymnasium area Saturday 08:00
Volleyball
Get ready to jump without worrying about the ceiling. Learn to play volleyball at the new Hab3 beach. Saturday, Sunday sessions 08:00, 10:00, 12:00. North Beach Hab3 Terrace 1
Lawn bowling
Learn how to play the lawn bowling game of bocce (bot-chee). WestHill Terrace 2 by the terrace edge. 10 am. Message City Parks for information.
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
- Merry Grace, lifestyle correspondent
Classified Ads
SHIP REFITTING, BREAKING All craft, parts and refurb. PONTUS 100 751
DUST MAGNET. Won’t let the dust get past the airlock. CANDOR 286 87919
FURNITURE Printer Stock. And cushions for a comfy seat IUS 278 58897
WALL PRINTERS All shapes and contours. MELAS 285 45672
SURFSUIT Refurbishing. Fabric and boot repair, seal replacement, visor refurbishing, comms upgrades. COPRATES 297-14210
CARGO HANDLERS. Space experience required. Contract exemptions considered. PONTUS 100 419
ROCKET SCIENTIST. Engine upgrade project, Ex-contract only. PONTUS 100 637
SHUTTLE MECHANICS. Experienced preferred, but we’ll train you if you have the skills. Ex-contract only. PONTUS 100 635
CONSTRUCTION All specialties. Some outside. Ex-contract only. GERYON 278 68034
DRILLING specialists, supervisors and crew. Ex-contract only MELAS 285 13941
APPRENTICES Recycling systems. 8 annos and up. IUS 278 98559
APPRENTICES Metal smith, forging, casting, 8 annos (14 years) and up. URBS 269-37728
APPRENTICES Machine repair 8 annos (14 years) and up. NOCTIS 260 21188
APPRENTICES Hydroponics. 8 annos and up. URBS 269 44085
APPRENTICES Environmental systems. MELAS 285 74223
SPACE CAMP. Get ready for orbital work. All ages. ARES PORT 268 00910
BALLET Poise, strength, balance, beauty. Très grands jetés URBS 269 62577
RAAS / GARBA Dance performers for existing troupe. COPRATES 295 45788
CRICKET Mars style. Two teams. Unfamiliar? They’ll explain it. COPRATES 295 21508
MARTIAL ARTS. Conditioning and confidence. Weighted and natural. GERYON 278 71435
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