HOME | DD

Description

BASIX

The Aureus currency was adopted by all colonies on Mars in 1995, for use as a standard Martian currency.

Prior to this, the first colonies on Mars in the 80’s and late 1970’s, well into the early 90’s, used a number of different mediums of exchange. US Dollars and Japanese Yen were widely used all across Mars in the early days, since American and Japanese settlements were (and still are) the most numerous. Lesser currencies such as German Marks, French Francs, Euros, South African Rand, British Pound Sterling and others circulated as well, but tended to be pinned to either the Dollar or the Yen. Barter and honor systems were also very widespread, along with other informal systems like work-vouchers, company script and even polished rocks.

These systems worked for the tiny economies of small settlements on Mars, but as roads began to connect settlements together all across the Red Planet, the need for a standard economy became increasingly relevant.

The Mars Treaty Organization was founded in 1979 via the Houston Accords which divided up Mars into American, Japanese, European and Commonwealth spheres of influence (as well as tinier colonies doled out to countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Africa, Israel, Brazil, Taiwan and others), and announced a single standardized medium of exchange for the Martian colonies in 1990, with a five-year period allocated for transitioning to the Aureus.

Named in homage to Ancient Roman gold and silver currency, and using the symbol ₳, one Aureus (plural: aurei) is divided into 100 Denarii (singular: denarius), which are coins minted from 50% copper and 50% silver, whereas Aureus banknotes are made from biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP), a polymer readily synthesized on Mars. The currency is printed in English and Japanese, since these are the two most widely-spoken languages on Mars (as of 2020, everyone on Mars knows either English, Japanese, or both), and while they’re today colloquially known as “redbacks”, the first Aureus notes were completely red on both sides, though by 2001, new Aureus notes featuring the current artworks on their obverse sides were issued, along with low-circulation bimetallic commemorative one-aureus coins.

More so than on Earth, the technophilic Martians were early adopters of cashless transactions, however, Mars isn’t a cashless society. Aside from the fact that Mars doesn’t have two-hundred years of industrial infrastructure and is still putting together its own internet (the eNet), the consensus on Mars is that cashless societies aren’t especially private, require that your wallet not run out of batteries, and on a planet of techies, cybersecurity is of paramount importance. Martians in 2020 are puzzled by the apparent enthusiasm that their Earthling relatives have for going completely digital. By the same token, outside of the major settlements, you can still find people trading in dollars or yen, pegged to liters of water, or in more shaky barter transactions, simply because these people may live so far from the rest of civilization that a nice ₳29.99 wrench has more value than ₳100, when you’re too isolated to spend that money. However, with the ongoing expansion of highways, nuclear-powered railroads, fiber-optic cables, and satellite internet, this is becoming less and less common.

AUREI BANKNOTES

The ₳1 banknote features Robert H Lawrence, Jr ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H… ) - the first African-American astronaut, first person of African descent to go to space, and the very first Martian - who set foot on Mars on July 4th 1976 as part of the Ares-5 mission, coinciding with the Bicentennial Anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. While his actual first words were a light-hearted “touchdown!”, after planting an American flag in the Martian soil, Lawrence uttered the famous line: “America comes in peace, for all mankind”, which was shortened to “Peace For All Mankind” as the slogan of the MTO. Behind Lawrence is the Red Planet, overlaid with the visage of the flag of the United States. Note that there are two years on this note: Earth year 1976, Mars year 1.

The ₳5 note features Valles Marineris, the deepest canyon on Mars and one of its most visible features from orbit.

The ₳10 note features the “brother moons”, Phobos and Deimos, in orbit above Mars. Both moons have been heavily colonized (Port Dread on Deimos, New Archangel on Phobos), however, on the ₳10 note, they are both depicted in their natural state.

The ₳20 features a shot of Olympus Mons, snapped from orbit by the crew of Ares-5, surrounded by clouds.

The ₳50 note features a sunset from orbit, surrounded by two phoenixes, plus the Sino-Japanese character for “fire“, and a faint fiery overlay. This is in reference to East Asian astrology, which equates the planet Mars with the element of fire and the Vermillion Bird of the South.

And finally, the ₳100 note depicts a suited mother and child outside a modern Martian colony, with the Roman god, Mars, clad in Roman armor and pointing at the person holding the note. Despite originally being the God of War, Mars on...well, Mars has undergone a major rebranding. Emphasizing his status as a patriotic Roman deity of not only war, but also agriculture, the average Martian can distinguish noble and civic Mars from his vile and thuggish Greek predecessor, Ares, (Virgin Ares/Chad Mars). Nobody worships Mars (okay, some people do), but Martians do take some measure of pride in their planet’s anthropomorphic personification.

DENARII COINS

The five-denarius coin features the first lifeforms discovered on Mars. See, it turned out, Mars did briefly bear complex life similar to that of Earth’s Precambrian, but as radiation levels rose drastically, temperatures dropped, atmosphere was stripped away and water froze up, the planet’s short-lived biosphere collapsed. The only remaining organisms are the “greenmen” (a pun on Ares-5 crewmember Story Musgrave remarking “Bob [Lawrence], we found the little green men on Mars”), which are tiny, extremophilic colonial organisms residing six feet under the dirt. The scientific name of the greenmen, *Cohortsuva musgravei* is emblazoned on the coin, in English and Japanese.

The ten-denarius coin features the mug of American astronomer, Asaph Hall, who discovered the Martian moons, Deimos and Phobos in 1877, as well as calculated the mass of Mars.

The 25-denarius coin features laurels and the word “peace” in English and Japanese. Because “Peace For All Mankind”.

The 50-denarius coin features Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, famous for his telescopic observations of Mars, naming many of Mars’ major surface features, including its “continents” and “seas”, and most famously, accidentally popularizing the notion of canals on Mars. Time will tell if canals carry water across the red deserts of Mars one day, and make Schiaparelli into a prophet.

AUREUS COINS

Issued in 2001 alongside the current Aureus banknote designs were commemorative one-aureus coins to ring in the new millenium. These are limited-production legal tender, not especially common, but common enough that all Martian vending machines will accept them. These bimetallic coins are made from gold and nickel, with a black/white finish, and bear a gold “Shield of Ares” on the reverse side.

Brief aside: about the circle-and-lambda symbol. This is known as the “Shield of Ares”, “Martian Shield” or simply “a shield”. Originally inspired by the mission patch of the Ares-5 crew (round, featuring red Mars and a white delta/lambda, with a white rim), this has replaced the classic astrological symbol for Mars, and become the symbol of the Mars Treaty Organization, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the traditional symbol of Mars, in modernity, is tied up too closely with the symbol of the masculine sex, and continuing to use it for the Red Planet was deemed unfair to female Martians by second-wave feminists in the 70’s and 80’s, and most famously, by Carl Sagan. Additionally, the traditional symbol of Mars is meant to evoke a shield and spear, whereas a simple shield is seen as less warlike, without compromising the symbolism of the Roman deity the Red Planet is named after; warriors carry shields to defend themselves, rather than hurt others.

Starting from the far left, we have the Aegis-1 commemorative coin. Completed in 1998, Aegis-1 is a satellite positioned at Mars’ L1 point between the Red Planet and the sun. The station consists of a massive heat shield, behind which is an extremely large, donut-shaped copper solenoid torus. Powered by onboard nuclear reactors (fission originally, upgraded to fusion in 2015), and with wing-like radiators for dispersing waste-heat, the copper solenoid generates a powerful magnetic field which redirects a 500,000 kilometer swathe of charged particles from the sun moving 300 km/s, into the torus. In addition to creating an artificial magnetosheath around Mars (by 2003, the surface radiation on Mars had been lowered by a factor of 50%, and following the upgrades to Aegis made in 2015, surface radiation has dropped to only 10% of 1976 levels), Aegis-1’s solenoid is surrounded by a beautiful light show of red and green aurorae. The obverse of the coin depicts a stylized Aegis-1, while the reverse features Mars’ artificial magnetosphere protecting it from solar winds, with the slogan “Dawn Of A New Era”, reflecting the game-changing nature of lowering Martian surface radiation.

Next, we have a coin commemorating the birth of Eric and April Crenshaw, fraternal twins, and children of early Martian-Mormon pioneers, Thomas and Yui Crenshaw. They were also the very first humans born on Mars, in the settlement of Tesla (Mars’ first settlement), on October 8th 1978. The twins were twenty-three years old when this coin was minted in 2001, and by the turn of the new millenium, tens of thousands of more children had been born and raised on Mars. On the front of the coin, we see side profiles of a boy and a girl, with the Crenshaw twins’ birthday in between them, and on the back, the symbol for Gemini and the slogan “Children Are The Future”, which reflects the broadly-natalist mentality of many Martians then and now. The Crenshaw clan (Thomas and Yui would go on to have three more children, all sons) would later move to the burgeoning Mormon colony of New Canaan (atop Olympus Mons) in the early 1990’s, where today Eric and April have started their own large and happy families.

The coin to the right celebrates the Nozomi-3 landing in 1978, the day Japan became the second Earth nation to send humans to Mars. Where Ares-5 founded the American colonial nation of Tharsis, Nozomi-3 founded the colonial nation of Kasei (officially, the “Federation of Japanese Mars”), the second-largest polity on the Red Planet, with the largest single settlement on Mars, the “Ruby City” of Hirakawa. On the front, we have the Nozomi-3 landing craft, and on the back, the logo for the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA), with the slogan “Explore To Realize”.

The next coin over, meanwhile, commemorates the 1980 Odyssey mission to Mars. Organized by the European Space Agency (ESA), Odyssey touched down in Fournier Crater, in the Iapygia region to the south of the Isidis Basin, and founded Axiom, the capital of what would eventually become the nation of Euromars. The obverse features the Odyssey spacecraft and the twelve stars of the flag of Europe, while on the reverse, we have the ESA logo and the European Union’s motto, “United In Diversity”.

Next. This one is about the 1981 Darwin mission to Mars, made possible by the efforts of the Commonwealth Space Program. Darwin touched down in the Hellas Basin and founded the city of Churchill, which, you guessed it, became the capital of another Martian nation: Avalon, a confederation of British, Canadian, Australian, Kiwi, Rhodesian, Botswanan, Tanzanian, Kenyan, Nigerian, Ghanaian, West Indian, Malaysian, Hong Konger, Singaporean, Fijian and Samoan colonies in and around the Hellas Avalon Basin. The Darwin spacecraft can be seen on the front of the coin, and on the back, a lopsided Commonwealth globe logo, with the slogan “Per Ardua Ad Astra”, the official motto of the CSA and Avalon.

FINALLY, we have the most recent one-aureus coin, the first new coin to be issued by the MTO since 2001. This one commemorates the “completion” of the Halo orbital ring. A joint venture of all the colonial nations of Mars, the Halo hangs in low-Martian orbit above the Red Planet’s equator. Construction began in 2009, and “completed” ten years later in 2019. I say “completed”, because, little do the Martians know, but their simple dynamically-supported ring around Mars will grow into a colossal megastructure, home to millions, with twelve “chandelier” space-elevators dangling down into the upper atmosphere, by the end of the 21st century. On the reverse, we have the slogan “Build The Future”, an invitation for Martians to keep dreaming big and working hard, because the Red Planet’s best days are still ahead.

Description

BASIX

The Aureus currency was adopted by all colonies on Mars in 1995, for use as a standard Martian currency.

Prior to this, the first colonies on Mars in the 80’s and late 1970’s, well into the early 90’s, used a number of different mediums of exchange. US Dollars and Japanese Yen were widely used all across Mars in the early days, since American and Japanese settlements were (and still are) the most numerous. Lesser currencies such as German Marks, French Francs, Euros, South African Rand, British Pound Sterling and others circulated as well, but tended to be pinned to either the Dollar or the Yen. Barter and honor systems were also very widespread, along with other informal systems like work-vouchers, company script and even polished rocks.

These systems worked for the tiny economies of small settlements on Mars, but as roads began to connect settlements together all across the Red Planet, the need for a standard economy became increasingly relevant.

The Mars Treaty Organization was founded in 1979 via the Houston Accords which divided up Mars into American, Japanese, European and Commonwealth spheres of influence (as well as tinier colonies doled out to countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South Africa, Israel, Brazil, Taiwan and others), and announced a single standardized medium of exchange for the Martian colonies in 1990, with a five-year period allocated for transitioning to the Aureus.

Named in homage to Ancient Roman gold and silver currency, and using the symbol ₳, one Aureus (plural: aurei) is divided into 100 Denarii (singular: denarius), which are coins minted from 50% copper and 50% silver, whereas Aureus banknotes are made from biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP), a polymer readily synthesized on Mars. The currency is printed in English and Japanese, since these are the two most widely-spoken languages on Mars (as of 2020, everyone on Mars knows either English, Japanese, or both), and while they’re today colloquially known as “redbacks”, the first Aureus notes were completely red on both sides, though by 2001, new Aureus notes featuring the current artworks on their obverse sides were issued, along with low-circulation bimetallic commemorative one-aureus coins.

More so than on Earth, the technophilic Martians were early adopters of cashless transactions, however, Mars isn’t a cashless society. Aside from the fact that Mars doesn’t have two-hundred years of industrial infrastructure and is still putting together its own internet (the eNet), the consensus on Mars is that cashless societies aren’t especially private, require that your wallet not run out of batteries, and on a planet of techies, cybersecurity is of paramount importance. Martians in 2020 are puzzled by the apparent enthusiasm that their Earthling relatives have for going completely digital. By the same token, outside of the major settlements, you can still find people trading in dollars or yen, pegged to liters of water, or in more shaky barter transactions, simply because these people may live so far from the rest of civilization that a nice ₳29.99 wrench has more value than ₳100, when you’re too isolated to spend that money. However, with the ongoing expansion of highways, nuclear-powered railroads, fiber-optic cables, and satellite internet, this is becoming less and less common.

AUREI BANKNOTES

The ₳1 banknote features Robert H Lawrence, Jr ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_H… ) - the first African-American astronaut, first person of African descent to go to space, and the very first Martian - who set foot on Mars on July 4th 1976 as part of the Ares-5 mission, coinciding with the Bicentennial Anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. While his actual first words were a light-hearted “touchdown!”, after planting an American flag in the Martian soil, Lawrence uttered the famous line: “America comes in peace, for all mankind”, which was shortened to “Peace For All Mankind” as the slogan of the MTO. Behind Lawrence is the Red Planet, overlaid with the visage of the flag of the United States. Note that there are two years on this note: Earth year 1976, Mars year 1.

The ₳5 note features Valles Marineris, the deepest canyon on Mars and one of its most visible features from orbit.

The ₳10 note features the “brother moons”, Phobos and Deimos, in orbit above Mars. Both moons have been heavily colonized (Port Dread on Deimos, New Archangel on Phobos), however, on the ₳10 note, they are both depicted in their natural state.

The ₳20 features a shot of Olympus Mons, snapped from orbit by the crew of Ares-5, surrounded by clouds.

The ₳50 note features a sunset from orbit, surrounded by two phoenixes, plus the Sino-Japanese character for “fire“, and a faint fiery overlay. This is in reference to East Asian astrology, which equates the planet Mars with the element of fire and the Vermillion Bird of the South.

And finally, the ₳100 note depicts a suited mother and child outside a modern Martian colony, with the Roman god, Mars, clad in Roman armor and pointing at the person holding the note. Despite originally being the God of War, Mars on...well, Mars has undergone a major rebranding. Emphasizing his status as a patriotic Roman deity of not only war, but also agriculture, the average Martian can distinguish noble and civic Mars from his vile and thuggish Greek predecessor, Ares, (Virgin Ares/Chad Mars). Nobody worships Mars (okay, some people do), but Martians do take some measure of pride in their planet’s anthropomorphic personification.

DENARII COINS

The five-denarius coin features the first lifeforms discovered on Mars. See, it turned out, Mars did briefly bear complex life similar to that of Earth’s Precambrian, but as radiation levels rose drastically, temperatures dropped, atmosphere was stripped away and water froze up, the planet’s short-lived biosphere collapsed. The only remaining organisms are the “greenmen” (a pun on Ares-5 crewmember Story Musgrave remarking “Bob [Lawrence], we found the little green men on Mars”), which are tiny, extremophilic colonial organisms residing six feet under the dirt. The scientific name of the greenmen, *Cohortsuva musgravei* is emblazoned on the coin, in English and Japanese.

The ten-denarius coin features the mug of American astronomer, Asaph Hall, who discovered the Martian moons, Deimos and Phobos in 1877, as well as calculated the mass of Mars.

The 25-denarius coin features laurels and the word “peace” in English and Japanese. Because “Peace For All Mankind”.

The 50-denarius coin features Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli, famous for his telescopic observations of Mars, naming many of Mars’ major surface features, including its “continents” and “seas”, and most famously, accidentally popularizing the notion of canals on Mars. Time will tell if canals carry water across the red deserts of Mars one day, and make Schiaparelli into a prophet.

AUREUS COINS

Issued in 2001 alongside the current Aureus banknote designs were commemorative one-aureus coins to ring in the new millenium. These are limited-production legal tender, not especially common, but common enough that all Martian vending machines will accept them. These bimetallic coins are made from gold and nickel, with a black/white finish, and bear a gold “Shield of Ares” on the reverse side.

Brief aside: about the circle-and-lambda symbol. This is known as the “Shield of Ares”, “Martian Shield” or simply “a shield”. Originally inspired by the mission patch of the Ares-5 crew (round, featuring red Mars and a white delta/lambda, with a white rim), this has replaced the classic astrological symbol for Mars, and become the symbol of the Mars Treaty Organization, for a number of reasons. Firstly, the traditional symbol of Mars, in modernity, is tied up too closely with the symbol of the masculine sex, and continuing to use it for the Red Planet was deemed unfair to female Martians by second-wave feminists in the 70’s and 80’s, and most famously, by Carl Sagan. Additionally, the traditional symbol of Mars is meant to evoke a shield and spear, whereas a simple shield is seen as less warlike, without compromising the symbolism of the Roman deity the Red Planet is named after; warriors carry shields to defend themselves, rather than hurt others.

Starting from the far left, we have the Aegis-1 commemorative coin. Completed in 1998, Aegis-1 is a satellite positioned at Mars’ L1 point between the Red Planet and the sun. The station consists of a massive heat shield, behind which is an extremely large, donut-shaped copper solenoid torus. Powered by onboard nuclear reactors (fission originally, upgraded to fusion in 2015), and with wing-like radiators for dispersing waste-heat, the copper solenoid generates a powerful magnetic field which redirects a 500,000 kilometer swathe of charged particles from the sun moving 300 km/s, into the torus. In addition to creating an artificial magnetosheath around Mars (by 2003, the surface radiation on Mars had been lowered by a factor of 50%, and following the upgrades to Aegis made in 2015, surface radiation has dropped to only 10% of 1976 levels), Aegis-1’s solenoid is surrounded by a beautiful light show of red and green aurorae. The obverse of the coin depicts a stylized Aegis-1, while the reverse features Mars’ artificial magnetosphere protecting it from solar winds, with the slogan “Dawn Of A New Era”, reflecting the game-changing nature of lowering Martian surface radiation.

Next, we have a coin commemorating the birth of Eric and April Crenshaw, fraternal twins, and children of early Martian-Mormon pioneers, Thomas and Yui Crenshaw. They were also the very first humans born on Mars, in the settlement of Tesla (Mars’ first settlement), on October 8th 1978. The twins were twenty-three years old when this coin was minted in 2001, and by the turn of the new millenium, tens of thousands of more children had been born and raised on Mars. On the front of the coin, we see side profiles of a boy and a girl, with the Crenshaw twins’ birthday in between them, and on the back, the symbol for Gemini and the slogan “Children Are The Future”, which reflects the broadly-natalist mentality of many Martians then and now. The Crenshaw clan (Thomas and Yui would go on to have three more children, all sons) would later move to the burgeoning Mormon colony of New Canaan (atop Olympus Mons) in the early 1990’s, where today Eric and April have started their own large and happy families.

The coin to the right celebrates the Nozomi-3 landing in 1978, the day Japan became the second Earth nation to send humans to Mars. Where Ares-5 founded the American colonial nation of Tharsis, Nozomi-3 founded the colonial nation of Kasei (officially, the “Federation of Japanese Mars”), the second-largest polity on the Red Planet, with the largest single settlement on Mars, the “Ruby City” of Hirakawa. On the front, we have the Nozomi-3 landing craft, and on the back, the logo for the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA), with the slogan “Explore To Realize”.

The next coin over, meanwhile, commemorates the 1980 Odyssey mission to Mars. Organized by the European Space Agency (ESA), Odyssey touched down in Fournier Crater, in the Iapygia region to the south of the Isidis Basin, and founded Axiom, the capital of what would eventually become the nation of Euromars. The obverse features the Odyssey spacecraft and the twelve stars of the flag of Europe, while on the reverse, we have the ESA logo and the European Union’s motto, “United In Diversity”.

Next. This one is about the 1981 Darwin mission to Mars, made possible by the efforts of the Commonwealth Space Program. Darwin touched down in the Hellas Basin and founded the city of Churchill, which, you guessed it, became the capital of another Martian nation: Avalon, a confederation of British, Canadian, Australian, Kiwi, Rhodesian, Botswanan, Tanzanian, Kenyan, Nigerian, Ghanaian, West Indian, Malaysian, Hong Konger, Singaporean, Fijian and Samoan colonies in and around the Hellas Avalon Basin. The Darwin spacecraft can be seen on the front of the coin, and on the back, a lopsided Commonwealth globe logo, with the slogan “Per Ardua Ad Astra”, the official motto of the CSA and Avalon.

FINALLY, we have the most recent one-aureus coin, the first new coin to be issued by the MTO since 2001. This one commemorates the “completion” of the Halo orbital ring. A joint venture of all the colonial nations of Mars, the Halo hangs in low-Martian orbit above the Red Planet’s equator. Construction began in 2009, and “completed” ten years later in 2019. I say “completed”, because, little do the Martians know, but their simple dynamically-supported ring around Mars will grow into a colossal megastructure, home to millions, with twelve “chandelier” space-elevators dangling down into the upper atmosphere, by the end of the 21st century. On the reverse, we have the slogan “Build The Future”, an invitation for Martians to keep dreaming big and working hard, because the Red Planet’s best days are still ahead.