Space Race
of themselves as potential visitors to Mars . It is surely the case that the way in which we , as a culture , conceptualize Mars is based on how we visualize Mars ; and interestingly , the fictional enlistment posters clearly , if unintentionally , place scientific exploration into the historical lineage of colonization , empire , and capitalism . There is even a hint of underlying fascism at work in the narrative and the iconography , as if these were posters created by the Nazi-inspired state in Paul Verhoeven ’ s 1997 film , Starship Troopers . What are needed are explorers , surveyors , workers�all willing to do anything Uncle Space Sam says must be done . And to do it with a single-minded enthusiasm .
Wherever we go , there we are . And there our values are , too . It is difficult for a capitalist culture not to think of a new land as simply a new market or a new source of resources . We map our values onto our vision of the future . And such posters are part of that mapping as well .
From Earth , Mars is seen as a rocky wasteland , barren and dead . With only rocks ( and no life ) on Mars , we are told that we thus have a blank check to do whatever we wish with the planet once we finally get there . In truth , we have already encountered Mars first-hand . Mars and the Earth exchange bits of themselves all of the time in the form of rocks and dust . Thinking of our solar system as a connected whole , one with internal systems of exchange , means giving up thinking of our planet as the center of anything�a world-view that is said to have changed with the Copernican revolution , yet never really did . Rocks can found our ethics for an encounter with Mars if we are open to seeing things in a truly revolutionary way . Envisioning the Red Planet as only a rock in space�as merely dead�is not really the end of ethics . Ethics is not only for the living world . Rocks , too , can be
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