Billionaire Mars Anthem

[bnewman]

I unironically love Ada Palmer's "Somebody Will", the way it gets the whole filk community singing along about the hope for a future in the stars. And I can respect Jordin Kare's "Bloody Bastards", about how it will take an entrepreneurial spirit to get us there. But somehow I don't think the current crop of celebrity billionaires, who never got excited about anything they didn't think they could own — not gonna name names, you know who I'm talking about — are the ones to build it, at least not a future in the stars the rest of us will enjoy.

lyrics by Benjamin Newman

ttto: "Somebody Will" by Ada Palmer

listen to this song

 

My new world is so close

Mars has treasures I'm still working out how to sell

Frozen mountains and crimson dust waiting

For saps who like working in hell

 

A hundred years to raise the first dome

By crews paid in company scrip

And if they dream of Earth back home

You think I'm gonna pay for the trip?

 

And I want it so much

Close my eyes I can taste the Mars dust in the air (achoo!)

In the darkness the space stations shimmer

In orbits I won't have to share

 

'Cause I'll own the rockets and I'll own the launchpads

And I'll buy the laws that make colonies mine

And I'll own the brand names that market the vision

My fortune pays my employees to design

 

It will never get easy to wake from my dream

When the future I dream of costs so much to buy

But I am willing to sacrifice

Everything you have for something that I'll have

I guess I'm just that kind of guy