New Mars Forums

Well, the contract for the job required him to fly faster than a speeding bullet and leap tall buildings with a single bound. Said nothing about staying on horses.

Still a heck of a guy 

Marsquakes, hmm? Well, take a zoomed-in, close look at the newly-released THEMIS mosaic of Valles Marineris I posted a link to yesterday (in "Spirit & Opportunity 8", a mistake, I know, but I was so hyped about it. I apologise) and you'll see pits by the gazillion, running along what appear to be fault lines. In fact, in places it looks like that part of the (Arizona?) desert where they detonated underground nuclear explosions in the past.

(raises eyebrow in a Spock-like way.)  ???

Fascinating...

Remember in those early, heady days of Opportunity's explorations of Eagle crater, how we jumped up and down when we saw what looked like a "spherule" on the end of a stalk..?

Well... take a look at this rock Oppie is currently studying in Endurance Crater... look at how many stalks there are protruding from the left hand side there...

http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery]http:/ … 6561-7.jpg

???

(Part 2 because my whole post didn;t make it on last time... dodgy AOL connection today...)

And yes, it makes me feel frightened - and mad. I feel myself distrusting Arabs and Middle Easterners I see, feel myself blaming them, irrationally, unfairly, for the murders committed by those people in Iraq. I can't help it, it just happens. I'd never act on it, but others might - will, I fear - have less self control, and I worry that the next attack, or even the next kidnap, might lead to some form of  revenge attack. We'll be a step nearer the edge of the abyss then - but many will say it's understandable.

I'm not a racist, or anti-religious, but the fact is that these murderers shout out their backgrounds and religious beliefs through loud-hailers, so is there any wonder that there's a backlash simmering away in the background? I have no doubt at all - because I've met some of them, recently too - that the vast majority of Moslems are good, decent people who detest what's being done in the name of their faith. But there's no getting away from the fact that a minority of people who share and celebrate their faith are the ones killing people - individually with knives, by the hundred with bombs in nightclubs, or by the thousand by crashing planes into buildings - so that is what most people think when they hear the word "moslem".

It's, frankly, up to the "good" Moslems, the vast majority of the people who follow that ancient faith, to change this perception by more vocally and passionately condemning the murderers and joining together to help rid the world of them. We were told again and again on the TV news that the "good people of Iraq were revolted by the actions of hostage takers." Yeah? Well PROVE it. Stop taking the p- and prove how good you are. The house where Bigley and his American colleagues were being kept wasn't built in a cave. It wasn't standing on its own, like the Ingalls house in Little House On The Prairie. It had houses, buildings around it. It had neighbours. The hostage-takers must have been seen by people in the area. Any one of them could have notified the authorities. But didn't. That has to change.

The brutal, honest truth is that these people - the hostage takers - have no interest in religion, or in justice. No belief in the values or worth of family, no belief in the sanctity or worth of life. They don't want to see women prisoners released out of a sense of fairness, they want them out to use their knowledge of manufacturing chemical weapons so they can kill even more people. They're butchers who enjoy killing. If they can kill two people instead of one, they will. If they can aquire the means to kill thousands, or tens of thousands, they will. If they can aquire an atom bomb, allowing them to take out a city, they will, regardless of how many moslems die in the fireball.

One of the most sickening things of all is that they love the publicity. They film their atrocities on video and distribute them to news agencies. They use the internet to reach the world. They're media savvy; Bigley was obviously held such a long time in order to pressurise Tony Blair during his party's Conference, and to make political life difficult for him. This is a new enemy we're facing now - one that claims to despise our values and our way of life, but is happy to use elements of our own society to attack us: despite declaring their loathing for the West and its values, they most likely sit in the next room to their crying hostages, glugging back bottles of Bud, watching an imported widesecreen TV, glued to the rolling coverage of their activities on CNN, revelling in their high media profile.

I don't know what we can do, I really don't. I just have this terrible, glacial feeling in the pit of my stomach that this is just the beginning. We may well be approaching one of those points in history where the world is sent spinning in a different direction. I worry that we may be just weeks or days away from another terrorist atrocity in the US, to embarrass George Bush before the election. I worry that we, here, in the UK, will run out of luck soon and the terrorists will get through. I worry that the next time I turn on the TV news I'll see shaky footage of the streets of London, New York or San Francisco blurred by wafting clouds nuclear-dust after the detonation of a dirty bomb.

But we have to do something.

I remember watching an episode of THE WEST WING, a couple of years ago it must be now, and something the character of leo McGarry said made a huge impression on me. He was talking with Bartlett about terrorism, fundamentalism etc, and he sighed, in a moment of despair, "What will it take to stop this... a mushroom cloud over Mecca?"

It worries me that some people in the real world may be thinking the very same thing.

Sorry for the rant.

Cindy...

Knowing how much you love dust devils, I found this picture and thought of you... 

Enjoy! And imagine yourself there watching it for real...

http://www.digitalspaceart.com/marsvisi … ays_mv.jpg

Any other Exploratorium surfers out there wondering why Spirit suddenly seems to be taking a *lot* of pictures of the sky..?

Such as...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit … ...5M1.JPG

Has someone at JPL spotted a tripod war machine stalking over the Columbia Hills or something..? 

P.S. Cindy: sorry I missed your earlier posting re the Minnesota 3D film! Didn't mean to repeat your info.

Edit: Here's a nice new sand dunes pic from Opportunity to say sorry...!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opport … ...1M1.JPG

Just stunning... 

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more, he's a very fine man and one of the most genuine "famous" Mars supporters around. He is passionate and sincere about the lure of Mars, and he's a great ally. But I'm not talking about contributing funds towards a manned mission in the future; I'm talking about doing something *now* which will help increase support and demand FOR a manned Mars mission from the public, which is the only way we'll make politicians actually commit to a landing anytime before the next ice age.

For a group and a task to succeed, it needs everyone involved to do what they do best, and the drive to send people to Mars is just the same. I can't make films about Mars, but I can give talks in schools and write kids books about it, so I do. JC can't make political decisions about Mars exploration, but he can, I'm sure, make a GREAT film about Mars which would have people in their tens of thousands walking out of theatres thinking "Wow, I had no idea Mars was so cool... we should go there!" ...

I'm not "having a go" at JC, I would just like him to use his incredible talents for us, that's all. 

Has anyone else received the Planetary Society's "Message from James Cameron" yet? For those interested, here it is...

<< Dear Friend,

Mars is our future! That is why, together with
The Planetary Society, I am Aiming for Mars!

As a writer, director and producer, I am a storyteller.
And although I often work in the science-fiction genre,
one of the greatest true stories to be told is that of
our relationship with Mars.

The story of a human Mars mission is the story of a
great quest.  The quest to find life, to answer the
question:  are we alone?  If we do find life on Mars,
that life might have the same DNA structure as us,
or something completely alien.  Either result is
stunning in its implications.  Or we might find none
at all... which also has profound consequences for our
sense of our own place in the cosmos.

But unless we bring together the resources and the people
of the spacefaring nations here -- on our own planet --
this is a story we may never get to tell. The story,
as it stands now, could end with humans forever circling
in low Earth orbit. The story could simply end on the Moon.

We have been to the Moon . . . now Mars beckons us.
It compels the human imagination.  It is a bona fide
alien planet... a complex planet that can teach us
about our own past and the early solar system, about
our climate and geological processes, about the Sun's
history.  Mars is a world of great mystery and scientific
controversy, enough for several lifetimes of investigation.
Every time we answer one question, two new ones crop up.
The Mars scientists -- the folks who know Mars better
than anybody -- will tell you there are just as many
mysteries about Mars as when we started sending spacecraft
to Mars three decades ago.  This is exactly the kind of
science challenge we collectively need to inspire us
to progress.

We need to go to Mars! We need to expand human
consciousness and unravel the mysteries of our
closest neighboring planet. We need to do this,
and we need your help.

Aim for Mars! at:
http://aimformars.org/cameron.html]http … meron.html

If humans are to go to Mars in our lifetime, if we
choose this great adventure instead of leaving it for
a distant generation, we must build up support from
the grassroots. We need to join with The Planetary
Society's Aim for Mars! Campaign to ignite our planet's
passion for human space exploration.

The Planetary Society is an independent, non-governmental,
non-industry organization that can marshal the resources
and support to put us on the path to Mars. While others
talk and posture, The Planetary Society takes
positive action.

I am asking you to take a positive action and act upon
your passion for exploration...your vision for the
future...and your drive for knowledge and discovery.
You are crucial to helping us inspire people everywhere
to aim for Mars.  Please help us spread the word - to
friends, family, colleagues and make the Aim For Mars!
Campaign a movement - a movement for humans off Earth.

Go to The Planetary Society Aim for Mars! website to
get involved in our campaign! Join me, and thousands of
others Aiming for Mars!
http://aimformars.org/cameron.html]http … meron.html

Humans on Mars is not a science fiction fantasy.
This is something we can do . . . together.
Let's aim for Mars!

Sincerely yours,
James Cameron >>

Fine words, Mr C.

Here's an idea for ya: stop obsessing about that big sunken ship and put some of your influence, enthusiasm and countless billions of $ into a *real* Mars project - maybe you could do a Mars IMAX film (hmmm, that idea sounds familiar...  :;): ) or you could even bring Kim Stanley Robinson's MARS Trilogy to the big screen or TV, as you were going to do some time ago...

Seriously tho, JC could genuinely help us get to Mars if he put his considerable talents and bulging cheque book towards a mass-market project. I hope he will. I'd love to see him make a movie of Kim's books - tho it might take Peter Jackson's artistic eye, vision and patience to do them justice - or that IMAX film I suggested ages ago.

Come on, JC, give us - or help us raise - the money which will let NASA send a glider to Mars, fitted with an IMAX camera, and fly it down Valles Marineris and over Olympus Mons. Then we can show people Out There Mars like it really is.

Just found an intriguing little pic on Exploratorium...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit … ...8M1.JPG

Now, assuming this is a sunset view, looking west, a twiddle with STARRY NIGHT suggests that those lights are, from the top: Venus, the Sun, and - very close beside it, making the Sun look elongated -  Mercury...

And if I'm right, then Earth is just beneath the horizon, below the Sun/Mercury blob.

Of course, I may be way off here, the lights might be Phobos and Deimos or something else entirely, but nice to imagine it anyway... 

Ah. I've just set the Location and time more accurately (just got up!) and if I'm right then the "extended blob" is actually the Sun and EARTH almost touching; Mercury is too close to the Sun to be seen.

If that's true... wow... a real tingle-up-the-spine moment...

<< *if* we find life: great. No... GRRRREAT! Would be the find of the ... Millenium or bigger. For life-science, for philosophy, for a lot of things. No-one can deny that.>>

Agreed, it will be the biggest story ever. That was my point, really. Until now, BZ has been rather dismissive of the importance of martian microbes... but now there's a growing scientific and PUBLIC interest in going to Mars to look for life there, rather than going to Mars to "open up a brave new frontier" he seems to be jumping on the bandwagon and changing stance and emphasis.

< And it has to be preserved to be researched etc. And if it looks like it's dying out (quite probably so, we don't see a vibrant ecosphere,...) maybe we could give it a little helping hand. How?

By going there, and warming the place. Terraforming it. >

Well, maybe it's comfortable just the way it is, with how Mars is today. Maybe it doesn't want a "vibrant" ecosphere and is quite content with its current, stable, "cold-as-hell-and-dry-as-a-bone" one. Maybe the ecosphere has found its own level and interference from us would disturb and destroy it. Maybe by warming Mars we would be exterminating the very life we all so desperately want to find there. Any terraforming efforts would inevitably lead to major landscape re-sculpting and the subsequent destruction of any subsurface "niche" habitats. We strive to avoid this here on Earth - Lake Vostok, Antarctica, etc - so why not show the same consideration to Mars?

< I really don't think Earthbugs will be capable to kill Martian life, which (if it is there, of course, blahblahblah) had millennia to adapt rather perfectly to the circumstances, in contrast to Earth-organisms that will have a really hard time trying to survive long enough to proliferate.>

Earthbugs won't kill martian life, the physical efforts of human explorers, engineers and terraformers will. Flooding, landslides, water pooling beneath the surface drowning any organisms which thrive on the merest, tiniest breath of moisture...

< And *if* Earthbugs get a taste for Marrslife, it's the predator/prey thingy... It won't get wiped out, bcause if Earthbugs should 'eat' say 99% of Marsbugs, they'd have a hard time to find the remaining 1%, so they'd die off for lack of food. Equibrilum would be reached after a while.>

I'm not convinced of that because it's not the case here on Earth, is it? Earth-life would surely be much more adaptable and predatory in nature, because it's evolved in a more "target friendly" environment... but I'm not really qualified to comment on this as it's not my field, so to speak. I just think that if Earth-life "gets a taste" for Mars life it will be compelled to feed its hunger until Mars life is made extinct. Might has always been right in evolution...

< (Edit: come to think of it... Stu, why didn't you post this in a new topic under life on Mars or something?) >

Cos I was browsing, came across the Herald story, and with just a few minutes available to me for posting before I had to go out, this was the first forum I found that was appropriate.

The whole terraforming issue sends me crazy, honestly, I flop and flap about from side to side like a fish on a beach. Some days - like when I was writing my stories about the MER landing sites - I actually WANT terraforming, to see blue skies, fluffy white clouds and water flowing... then other days, like when I spend hours peering through my 3D glasses at the recent Dao Chasma image returned by MARS EXPRESS, I think it would be a crime against nature to ruin the Mars we are so entranced by today. I don't know, I just don't know. All I know for sure is that if we find life there we have to stop, dead, and study it until our brains bleed out of our ears before moving on to do anything which would impact upon it.

I need a lie down now...

Not often I'm lost for words  :;):  but I honestly can't think of words to describe how stunning this 3R Mars Express image is...

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/mar … an-dao.jpg

Do yourself a favour - download it, grab your glasses, then set aside half an hour to just gaze down the sheer cliff walls.

Very humbling.

S

Interesting piece here...

http://www.washingtondispatch.com/artic … 9817.shtml