As NASA's Spirit rover scours the surface of the red planet, searching for signs of past water and life, don't be surprised if it stumbles upon a surfboard. The folks at JPL in Pasadena (not to mention the world) will be shocked. Ken Bradshaw, Jeff Clark, Matt Warshaw and the likes will star in every talk show of the year, and finally surfers will be seen for who we truly are: the ones who are more connected to the source of life -- water -- than anyone else in the cosmos.

'A surfboard on Mars?! How is this possible?' The experts will pant, and most likely, they will have to accept the hitherto dubious theory as fact: At one point, some 1 to 4 billion years ago, Mars hosted vast oceans and surf. The Mars Global Surveyor, after all, continues to evince many features on the red planet that strongly resemble shorelines, riverbeds, gorges and islands. Surfers, then, springing from the life that water begets, would be natural by-products of Mars' evolution.

What would it have been like to surf on Mars, before giant bombarding meteors caused the atmosphere to choke with butterscotch dust and its purple oceans to dry up? Suffice it to say that Billabong Odyssey would be having a field day documenting the solar system's largest waves. With about a third of the gravity of Earth's and surface winds reaching a whopping hurricane force of 360mph, and with oceans as deep as 3,000 feet or more, the ferocious wind (and meteor)-driven waves would rise up into the nearshore reefs and beaches with little gravity to suppress them, easily reaching heights three times that of the biggest surf we have ever seen (or heard of) on Earth. Plus, you could pop airs that would make Kelly's head spin.

And while you are surfing beneath the Olympus Mons volcano, which rises three times higher than Everest and boasts 20,000-foot-high cliffs rising straight up from the beach, you may just notice two moons overhead: Diemos and Phobos.

Phobos moves pretty fast, circling the red planet three times a sol, or Martian day of 24 hours, 37 minutes. But you're sure not to miss it, because Phobos passes less than 9 miles overhead. If the tide isn't quite right, just wait a few hours and one of the giant satellites will fly by to swing it massively.

Aside form the titan surf and stunning scenery, if it's the beginning of summer you'll be stoked to know that a Martian year lasts 687 days, which means you'll get a summer twice as long as you would on Earth. And with a recent summer equatorial high recorded at a balmy 80°F, there's no reason you can't leave your neon-red dry suit at your Martian winter pole retreat where you'll need it for the -207°F lows in that neck of the redwoods.

Yes, Mars is a place of extremes, but there's much to be said about the surf potential there both past and future. Donovan Frankenreiter's starship-like board designs may yet find their true element in the sky-high surf on the fourth stone from the sun. As Spirit (and Opportunity, we shall hope) study the rusty dust of Mars today, terraformation may soon (relatively cosmically speaking) bring water and green back to that planet so our great, great, great (to the tenth power) grandchildren can picnic and ride purple waves there once again. Forget G-Land and Tavarua. I'm planning the surf trip of a millennia (only I'll have to come back around 3000AD, minimum).

Oh well, Earth's not such a bad place to be for now. It's truly one-of-a-kind, as far as we know, so we better take care of it. But none of us are true locals here, because we all may have come from Mars, so its time to chill like the red planet until we can return to our golden home shores once again.

So I'm finally beginning to figure this all out: If watermen are from Mars, then kooks must be from...Uranus! --<--Quinn Haber

Editor's note: This isn't the first signs of waveriding in outer space. For an earlier Tripwire about surfing Mars, check out Trolling for surf on the Red Planet.

Another space-oriented story.