Prologue

Step by step, humankind expands its presence, reaching for the stars.

It is a question of time. One day the ship will blast off, taking a human crew on a journey through space to the planet Mars.

Step by step, humankind expands its presence beyond the surface of the planet where it was born, reaching for the stars. The climb out of the cradle has already begun. A permanently inhabited space station orbits the Earth, while robotic probes mill out into the Solar System to collect data and prepare for future, even bolder, steps – some of which will be taken by human feet.

But wherever humans go, one challenge will always stay with us: ourselves. Surviving the hostile environments awaiting beyond our home planet is only the beginning. The human factor is always capable of turning success into disaster, perfect opportunities into lethal risks.

To be able to handle that, we can begin preparing as of today, without having to wait for more advanced technologies to come along or for new spaceships and rockets to be built. We can prepare here on Earth. At a lone outpost, at the end of the world, in an environment so harsh that not even animals live there, let alone native people. An outpost from which no quick rescue is possible should everything go wrong. The equivalent of an alien planetary environment – another world on the outer limits of ours.

The last great wilderness. A “White Mars”...

Antarctica.