Soil – that in which you can dip your hands, that which nourishes and therefore gives life. Here barren and inaccessible, seen from space. It’s Earth’s and Mars’ deserts and the brackish Lake Ururu. Nightmares about the end of the world mingle with dreams of space conquest. In the media, pictures from the surface of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover appear alongside news of climate catastrophe. Mars seems like a romantic dream, but more than satisfying curiosity and ambition, it is about exploiting new mining areas. Laws are being created to regulate extraterrestrial mining and companies are being formed to make it possible¹. With the success of the manned mission to Mars, we will enter a new era of colonialism.