Mars flag
The Mars flag or flag of Mars is a tricolor flag of the Mars Society that represents the planet Mars .
draft
The flag consists of three vertical bars in red, green and blue (from left to right).
The idea of the flag is to symbolically represent the present Mars, which has been potentially made habitable through terraforming . The red bar represents Mars as it is now, a red desert planet. The green bar represents Mars during a hypothetical future terraforming. The blue bar stands for Mars after a completed terraforming, as a blue planet like the earth . For the first time, Pascal Lee and Robert Zubrin suggested a Mars flag during an expedition on the Canadian island of Devon Island . The concept for the flag came from the Martian trilogy , the most famous work by science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson . The trilogy was divided into the volumes Red Mars , Green Mars and Blue Mars . Red, green and blue are also the main components of the light spectrum and are intended to symbolize “unity in diversity”.
status
The Mars flag is unofficial in all legal respects as there is no government or other authority that could use it. This also has to do with the fact that Article 2 of the Space Treaty means that celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriations.
use
The flag is hoisted on the Mars Society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (FMARS) simulation station . This station is located on Devon Island, where the flag was first proposed. The flag is also hoisted in various locations on the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS), another simulation station of the Mars Society.
The astronaut John Mace Grunsfeld carried the Mars flag with him during the STS-103 mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery . The flag was thus for the first time in space on December 20, 1999.
Mars flags in science fiction literature
In his science fiction novel Moving Mars , writer Greg Bear described the flag of the fictional Martian Federation. It depicts a red Mars and its two moons in a blue field that is cut off by a diagonal from the rest of the white section of the rectangular flag.
In Robert A. Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange World , an improvised Mars flag is hastily designed. A red Mars symbol on a white background was used for this.
Other Mars flags can be found in Mars Attacks and various other stories.
Web links
- Flag of Mars ( Memento from March 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on www.universetoday.com, June 7, 2011 (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b The First Salute: Martian Flag Flies in Space , www.spaceref.com
- ↑ Treaty on the Principles for Regulating the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, dated January 27, 1967. Federal Council of Switzerland , accessed on September 1, 2019.
- ^ Mars Flag ( memento from March 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Universe Today, June 7, 2011.
- ↑ Mark Pasquin: Quote from Heinlein's novel in Flags of the World (English)
- ↑ Mark Pasquin: Description of the Mars flag from Mars Attacks at Flags of the World . The illustration is fictional, based on the description in the novel. (English)
- ^ Fictional Mars flags at Flags of the World .