A pretty amazing thing might happen tonight on Mars

This is so much more than just saying that we put a man on the moon now we are done.

Science is a process that builds upon itself over and over again. This is the first landing of a machine on an object in the solar system with an atmosphere. This rover will have more mass than anything we have tried to land on Mars in the past. Landing on the Moon is a walk in the park compared with what they will be trying tonight.

And it saddens me greatly to think that people think just because there is not a monetary profit RIGHT NOW in something that it is not worth funding.

What profit do you think Dmitri Mendeleev was gaining when he was figuring out the periodic table back in the 1800s? Are we today glad that his generation took the time and energy to figure it out today? You betcha.

So the baby steps we are now taking in space will not be reaped by us, but it will be someday by a future generation. And it could be 500 years from now, but the knowledge gained today will be used by our children and their children. You know, making the world a better place for others and future generations.

 

We've actually landed a lot of stuff on Mars in the past 35 years. And one probe on Titan. But the rest of your point is a good one.

 

Hey, I'm with you. I'm just saying it's a really hard political sell right now.

 

But nothing this big that has had to land softly enough to do as much as this machine is supposed to do. This is way more complicated than anything that has come before. They had to invent an entirely new way of landing to give this a chance to work. That's why the NASA types are holding their breath tonight. There is very little margin for error. And if it doesn't work, that's billions of dollars down the drain -- which makes it an even tougher sell to the politicians.

 

Not like this. Not with the weight and the nuclear reactor it has powering its on board tools. This needs to be delicate. It just cannot be bounced around the surface until it stops.



This thing weighs five times as much as the previous rovers.

 

If you want a sobering comment from my professor (I just finished a 600 level astronomy course at UVA last week) on the chance of other life in the universe, he said he absolutely believes there is and was life in the universe now and before us, but before that society was able to figure out a way to communicate with other worlds they killed themselves off.

Just like he expects us to do. And I sort of agree with him.

 

I believe there's life -- probably intelligent life -- out there somewhere just because of the vastness and the numbers of stars out there. But I think it's a bit farfetched to expect to hear from them for the same reasons. The distances are just so great and finding any particular place would seem next to impossible.

 

Next to impossible for us.

Can you imagine trying to explain Youtube and a GPS to a Civil War soldier? That was only 150 years ago.

 

The universe is infinite. By definition, that makes it next to impossible, especially if you're limited by the speed of light (and really, even if you figure out a way to get beyond that).

I'd love to be proved wrong, though.

 

You are right. Until we can figure out how to make anything (a wave, an object) travel faster than light, we are limited.

 

Two points:

The attitude problem isn't political. It has to do with most of us, and our attitude of "if it doesn't benefit me, why bother?" I believe fewer people truly care if future generations have it better. I mean, who cares right? We won't be alive. So what if it's more screwed up than it is now? That mindset is why we have so many problems in society as it is. Just going to get worse.

The Event Horizon isn't limited by speed-of-light travel concepts. She travels through wormholes. The only problem is ... you can't leave. She won't let you ...