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Here are nineteen flags of nineteen countries on Mars in the year of our lord, 2021.

For the purposes of this post, I am leaving out the “Big Four” polities on the Red Planet. These are the Commonwealth of Tharsis (United States), the Federation of Japanese Mars (better known as “Kasei”), Euromars (European Space Agency) and the Confederation of Avalon (Commonwealth Space Agency), each of which have populations in the millions as of 2021, and are big, complicated affairs. This post is also leaving out colonial polities in Martian orbit (which are very numerous), as well as unrecognized or partially-recognized political entities on Mars.

These are “colonies” only in the most technical sense of the word. The distance between Earth and Mars is gigantic, and the realities on Mars do not lend themselves to micromanaging by politicians back on Earth. That’s why some of these are referred to as “Republics”, or more often, “[nation] Republics”, rather than “Province” or “Territory” or “Colony” since they effectively operate as self-governing, sovereign “franchises” of terrestrial governments. Usually, at least. But this isn’t always the case.

Mars was carved up in 1979 by the Treaty of Houston, which established the Mars Treaty Organization. Under the auspices of the Houston Treaty and the MTO, Mars was formally partitioned between the Big Four, along with a handful of other countries who were given territorial claims on Mars mostly for the sake of favors and Cold War geopolitics back on Earth. The hard and fast rule at the Houston Treaty was that any country that managed to successfully land a manned or unmanned mission on Mars prior to 1979, could get a slice of the pie (the US, Japan, the Commonwealth Space Agency and the European Space Agency), along with other nations approved by at least two of these four players. The Soviet Union tried its damnedest, but every Soviet mission to Mars in the 70s failed spectacularly (and one ended tragically), and Soviet exclusion from Mars would go on to inform the Soviet-enforced exclusion of Western nations from colonizing Venus. So yes, you may be wondering why Mars was colonized by a discrete selection of Western-aligned Cold War regimes, this is why.

It’s worth noting that as of 2021, there’s not enough wind on Mars for flags to wave. As such, the majority of these flags are instead hung on walls, or else require L-shaped flagpoles.

**ALSO**. The weird web browser I’m using as a literal framing device? It’s diegetic and canonical, and meant to give an idea of what computer interfaces are like on Mars in the year 2021, along with the Martian equivalent to the Internet, the eNet (“Electronic Network”). My idea is that unlike on Earth, electronics on Mars tend to be built to last rather than to be quickly replaced, in order to take advantage of available resources on a planet with zero pre-existing infrastructure, and one consequence of this is that some features, design philosophies and modes of thinking remain persistent for decades longer. I also just like the retro aesthetic, but I also think it makes sense in the Mars-colony context. For this specific piece, I decided to go with the retro Windows XP/Geocities aesthetic thanks to my good friend, realhumanbeing (alias CHEEKI BREEKI, go give him a watch: www.deviantart.com/realhumanbe… ). He’s a swell guy, so I wanted to give him credit where it’s due.

The full lore is available in the Google Doc below, since I ended up writing nearly thirty pages of content for all these flags.

Da Link:
docs.google.com/document/d/1eV…

Description
Here are nineteen flags of nineteen countries on Mars in the year of our lord, 2021.

For the purposes of this post, I am leaving out the “Big Four” polities on the Red Planet. These are the Commonwealth of Tharsis (United States), the Federation of Japanese Mars (better known as “Kasei”), Euromars (European Space Agency) and the Confederation of Avalon (Commonwealth Space Agency), each of which have populations in the millions as of 2021, and are big, complicated affairs. This post is also leaving out colonial polities in Martian orbit (which are very numerous), as well as unrecognized or partially-recognized political entities on Mars.

These are “colonies” only in the most technical sense of the word. The distance between Earth and Mars is gigantic, and the realities on Mars do not lend themselves to micromanaging by politicians back on Earth. That’s why some of these are referred to as “Republics”, or more often, “[nation] Republics”, rather than “Province” or “Territory” or “Colony” since they effectively operate as self-governing, sovereign “franchises” of terrestrial governments. Usually, at least. But this isn’t always the case.

Mars was carved up in 1979 by the Treaty of Houston, which established the Mars Treaty Organization. Under the auspices of the Houston Treaty and the MTO, Mars was formally partitioned between the Big Four, along with a handful of other countries who were given territorial claims on Mars mostly for the sake of favors and Cold War geopolitics back on Earth. The hard and fast rule at the Houston Treaty was that any country that managed to successfully land a manned or unmanned mission on Mars prior to 1979, could get a slice of the pie (the US, Japan, the Commonwealth Space Agency and the European Space Agency), along with other nations approved by at least two of these four players. The Soviet Union tried its damnedest, but every Soviet mission to Mars in the 70s failed spectacularly (and one ended tragically), and Soviet exclusion from Mars would go on to inform the Soviet-enforced exclusion of Western nations from colonizing Venus. So yes, you may be wondering why Mars was colonized by a discrete selection of Western-aligned Cold War regimes, this is why.

It’s worth noting that as of 2021, there’s not enough wind on Mars for flags to wave. As such, the majority of these flags are instead hung on walls, or else require L-shaped flagpoles.

**ALSO**. The weird web browser I’m using as a literal framing device? It’s diegetic and canonical, and meant to give an idea of what computer interfaces are like on Mars in the year 2021, along with the Martian equivalent to the Internet, the eNet (“Electronic Network”). My idea is that unlike on Earth, electronics on Mars tend to be built to last rather than to be quickly replaced, in order to take advantage of available resources on a planet with zero pre-existing infrastructure, and one consequence of this is that some features, design philosophies and modes of thinking remain persistent for decades longer. I also just like the retro aesthetic, but I also think it makes sense in the Mars-colony context. For this specific piece, I decided to go with the retro Windows XP/Geocities aesthetic thanks to my good friend, realhumanbeing (alias CHEEKI BREEKI, go give him a watch: www.deviantart.com/realhumanbe… ). He’s a swell guy, so I wanted to give him credit where it’s due.

The full lore is available in the Google Doc below, since I ended up writing nearly thirty pages of content for all these flags.

Da Link:
docs.google.com/document/d/1eV…