Thorium Blues is a novel in progress in my Worlds of Sol series about an expedition from the UNS settlement in Tharsis City to the richest thorium deposits on Mars.

Tharsis City is the capital of the United Nations of Sol settlement on Mars. The domed city sits high above Mariner Valley on Thaumasia Planum. In Chasm Town, a domed city in the valley below, terraforming workers live and toil, pulling water from ancient aquifers, extracting energy and oxygen from Martian regolith, and creating fertile soil where Earth plants can grow.

Extracting resources and expanding the farm domes east and west, and establishing new farms takes a lot of energy. As Mars is much further from the Sun than Earth, solar power is of limited utility. The energy demands of the UNS settlement are supplied by fission reactors whose components and fuel must be shipped from Earth at great expense.

As the settlement grows, its power needs expand. The UNS administration decides to send an expedition to explore thorium deposits in the Northern Highlands to decrease their dependence on power sources that require shipping fuel and heavy industrial equipment from Earth.

Faced with growing demands for power, the UNS Administration on Mars decides to explore the use of thorium reactors with fuel sourced on Mars. They send an exploratory expedition to the richest known thorium deposits on Mars, located in the Northern Lowlands.

While the UNS is nominally a global organization whose members are all the nations on Earth, America is pursuing parallel agenda and China is not a member of the UNS. China’s primary focus is a research center in Isidis Planitia. The station is sending a competing expedition, nominally to thorium deposits further east, but in reality intended to tap the richer ore nearer Tharsis City.

The different visions of China and the UNS will meet head-to-head in the vast Northern Highlands of Mars.