Flag of Mars

The Mars flag or the flag of Mars is a tricolor, which is used by the Mars Society and The Planetary Society to represent the planet Mars.

Design

The flag is a tricolor consisting of three vertical bars in the colors red, green and blue.

The idea of the flag is the current and potentially habitable made ​​by Mars Terraforming symbolically represent. The red bar represents Mars as he is now, a red desert planet. The green bar represents the Mars during a possible future terraforming. The blue bar represents the Mars after a possible completed terraforming, as a blue planet, the Earth. For the first time beat Pascal Lee, Robert Zubrin, a Mars flag during their expedition on Devon Iceland. The concept for the flag provided the Mars trilogy, the most famous work of the author Kim Stanley Robinson. The trilogy was in the volumes of Red Mars, Green Mars and Blue Mars (English Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) divided. Red, green and blue are also the main components of the light spectrum, symbolizing unity in diversity.

Use

The flag is hoisted on the Flash Line Mars Arctic Research Station ( FMARS ). This station is located on the Devon Iceland, where the flag was first proposed. In addition, the flag is raised in various places on the Mars Desert Research Station ( MDRS ).

Official Status

The Mars flag is not officially legal in all respects, because there is no government or other authority that could use it. This also has to do with the fact that subject by Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty, celestial bodies no national appropriation. Nevertheless, the astronaut John Mace Grunsfeld wore during the STS -103 mission of the Space Shuttle Discovery, the Mars flag with it. Thus, the Mars flag was on 20 December 1999 for the first time in space.

Alternatives

Despite the fact that the flag is used by the Mars Society and The Planetary Society, there are members who disapprove of the current design. A member of the German section of the Mars Society suggested that the flag to redesign and argued that the colors would not harmonize with each other and lacked the selected flag in symbolism. This created a more unofficial flag that was posted on Facebook. It consists of the colors blue and gold. These two colors are complementary colors. Later the flag was extended by a red vertical stripe.

The idea was also to design a type of flag that is been used by any state. The only official flag uses the same colors, is the Ukraine.

Flags Mars in fiction

In the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, from which is derived the Martian flag, used the Mars after its independence in 2100 a very similar flag. However, the colors are here horizontally and not vertically and there are the outlines of the Valles Marineris, the Olympus Mons and the Tharsis volcanoes in the region to see.

Prior to his independence of Mars used according to the Mars trilogy a flag, which is very similar to the Japanese. However, in contrast to this it has a black background. A very similar, but with a pink or beige background, shows the Marvin Martian in Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century. On Marvin the Martians are also based some Mars flags.

In his science fiction novel Moving Mars, described the author Greg Bear, the flag of the fictional Mars Federation. On it the red Mars and its two moons were in a blue field, which is cut off by a diagonal from the remaining portion of the rectangular flag. This section was white.

In Robert A. Heinlein's novel Stranger in a strange world, a makeshift Mars flag is decorated in a hurry. For a red Mars symbol on white background was used.

Other Mars flags, see, inter alia, to in Mars Attacks and various other stories.

Mars flag based on Marvin the Martians

An interpretation of the flag of the Mars Federation, from the book Moving Mars

From a stranger in a strange world: The field in white and the symbol of Mars in red "

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