SpaceX Mean Time

The seemingly reversed video clip of the perfectly timed SpaceX Falcon 9 landing flags the technological sophistication of the SpaceX project. A separate SpaceX promo video perhaps sheds light on the possible first landing site of the SpaceX Falcon 9 (see embedded video capture on map). Elon Musk always ends his keynote speeches on the possibility of living on Mars by saying “Colonize Mars”, which according to him will be realised with the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). The ITS is a system that consists of the Falcon 9 Rocket, the spacecraft and a base on earth. As capital literally takes off from earth and lands on Mars, the implications of its landing will have a great impact on the future center of capital on Mars.

The most challenging aspect of the SpaceX project has been financing. Afterall, unlike government funded NASA, SpaceX is a private sector commercial endeavor. Is it plausible that such a complex and resource exhaustive interplanetary trip can be designed to cost only $200,000 USD, allowing for people to actually use the program? Recent speculation has alluded to a figure nearer to ten billion dollars.^[1] The submission to capital accumulation directly standardizes time. Just as the role the Greenwich Observatory played in standardizing Earth time, the SpaceX Mars project will be instrumental in standardizing Mars time. Where will Elon’s first manned landing touchdown on Mars be? The time feedback of this first landing will generate the data necessary to calibrate future landings. This one geographic area has become the centre of Mars Time. Coordinated Mars Time (CMT, which is centered on Airy-0, named after the Greenwich Observatory transit circle telescope builder Sir George Biddell Airy) will be uprooted by SpaceX time as it lands and begins the colonization process.

What will the conditions of SpaceX Mean Time (SMT) be? How will SMT be coordinated with Earth? Which centers of capital will align with SMT? How will the current divisions of geographical space/time zones be manipulated to better fit the accumulation of capital on Mars.

What will the consequences be if the SMT standardised time zone is installed on Mars and what would this mean for the possible future inhabitants? Techno-capital is seemingly already a few steps ahead, focusing on Mars as the anthropocenic apocalypse has already taken place.

A speculative map of a time zoned SMT Mars might aid in our understanding what and where techno-capital is going to unfold, duplicate and disseminate as well as the geology of the red planet.

^[1] Wall, Mike. “SpaceX’s Mars Colony Plan: By the Numbers.” Space.com. Accessed March 04, 2017. http://www.space.com/34234-spacex-mars-colony-plan-by-the-numbers.html.