New Mars Forums

Could this be the best photo of the Martian landscape ever taken..?

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?show … ...try1536

Wow... bet that's your new wallpaper Cindy... 

New contender for the "Weirdest Picture From Mars Yet" pic..?

http://www.marsunearthed.com/Opportunit … ..._3D.htm

?!?!?!?!

Feast your eyes on this gorgeous 3D pic...

http://www.marsunearthed.com/Spirit/Spi … ...107.htm

VERY easy to imagine hiking up and down these hills now... 

Boy oh boy oh boy oh boy... 

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?act= … ...id=1072

Some SERIOUS sight-seeing and driving coming up for Spirit... 

VERY funny site, ES, really gave me a good laugh there at the end of a tough day, thanks 

Is anyone else wondering why there have been no hi-resolution panoramas for **ages**? I really miss those ultra-crisp takes-two-hours-to-download 4Mb spectaculars that JPL used to unveil with such pride... still enjoying seeing the daily Nav- and Pancam shots, don't get me wrong, but you can't enlarge them very much and zoom-in on interesting-looking individual rocks... I was really hoping for a hi-quality panorama of the Columbia Hills, of the same quality as those original panoramas taken in the days immediately after landing, but I think the days of the stunning panoramas are over... 

Still, at least there are still dozens of new pictures of that ************!!! sundial every day...

If you squint, I think you can just make out what look like...deep breath... outcrops on the slopes up there...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit … ...7M1.JPG

Now THAT's worthy of a "WOW!!!" 

(Tried several times to access that "wow" link, it froze every time. What was it? Anyone manage to see the page?)

Just imagine standing on this outcrop and looking down into Endurance...

http://www.marsunearthed.com/Opportunit … ..._3D.htm

Wow!! 

Life lived on Mars..?

Imagine... kids, in hand-painted spacesuits, bounding across the ruddy, rock-strewn plains, collecting meteorites, laughing as their parents warn them to "slow down! Slow down!"...

...lovers, standing hand in hand, staring at a plum-and-fire sunset, watching Earth flickering and flashing like a lantern above the gentle slopes of Olympus Mons...

...climbers, standing on the edge of mighty Marineris, peering over into the abyss, smiling, thinking "yeah, I can get down there..."

...explorers, driving through the maze-like canyons of Noctis Labyrinthus, laughing with delight at the sight of doaens of layers in the rock walls around them...

...newcomers from Earth, getting out of the shuttle, standing on Mars for the first time, legs wobbling as they stare up at the immense peach-coloured sky...

...a mother and father, waking their children before dawn to take them outside to show them Halley's Comet shining in the sky above the Columbia Hills, three quarters of a  century after it was last seen by human beings...

These things, alas, are not for us. But the people who do see them will have our New Mars posts to read, and they'll envy us for being alive at such a golden time, when Spirit and Opportunity were roving across the red planet, discovering the things they take for granted.

Hey Clark,

Wow, sorry you’re feeling so down about things, but I know where you’re coming from; I can spot a disillusioned martian a mile off, I’ve been one myself, more than  once, believe me! I’ve lost count of the number of crises of faith I’ve suffered whilst stood in front of audiences, lecturing about Mars, telling them all with a confident smile how we will fly to Mars “by 2020”, but thinking “Yeah, who are you kidding, none of us will live to see it at this rate…” to myself. It’s very depressing sometimes, I know.   

But over the years - and today, thinking about it at work (a sign of how exciting my job is I guess!) - I’ve come to realise something that makes the frustration a little easier to bear, and it’s to do with the question you asked - why? Why would anyone in their right mind want to go to that wind-scoured, frozen, dusty, bone-dry, airless armpit-of-the-universe world?

That’s just it, you see – we’re not, “in our right minds” I mean. We all suffer from a form of madness which is, I think, embedded as deeply in our genes as are the genetic codes for the colour of our hair and the instructions to make our hearts beat. We won’t go to live on Mars because of science, or the quest for knowledge, or the advancement of technology. We’ll go because we’re that mammal sitting on a branch, bright, beady eyes flitting from side to side, drinking in the world around it. We’re that 2001 ape, hurling a bone up at the sky.

We’ll go to Mars, and live there, not because we find beauty on its rocks and dried seas, although some of us will, and do even now. We’ll go to live on Mars because we’re a restless, inquisitive, pain-in-the-butt species which simply can’t sit still, because no matter where we go, we’re not content to stay there.

Mankind is a species of fascinating and terrifying contrasts, as capable of creating heart-aching beauty as we are of creating unspeakable horrors. If they're out there now, aliens, studying us from space, are surely bewildered by our different sides. How, they must wonder, could a race be capable of creating such beautiful, inspiring things as a Beethoven symphony and a Turner painting, and also of murdering women and children with gas chambers or machetes. How, they must ask each other, can members of the same race view life so differently, and place such different degrees of importance to it? How can some strive to cure cancer, or keep premature babies alive, while others – breathing the same air – take delight in flying planes into skyscrapers, or blowing up buses full of children on their way to school? It makes no sense. But that’s Mankind for you.

Underneath “Mostly Harmless” in Earth’s entry in the HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, there must be a footnote adding “Native species makes no sense”.

And that’s exactly why we’ll go to Mars, and why we’ll live there, because it makes no sense. As you rightly said, Mars offers no rain, no warm winds, no fluffy white clouds. Instead it offers stale, recycled air, even staler water, permanently gritty eyes, skin turned sallow and pale from lack of sunlight… true, it will be a wonderland for Beakers - for the geologists who see beauty in rocks, for the biologists who see beauty in smears of slime glimpsed thru the eyepiece of a microscope - but for “normal” people? Mars will be a red-tinged version of Antarctica, only without the northern lights to marvel at and the penguins to laugh at.

And as someone once said, “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids… in fact it’s cold as hell.”

We will go, but, I fear, not by 2020, unless either a) an unmanned probe or rover finds primitive life there, or b) a private mission is mounted, cutting through the red tape that strangles NASA. I personally believe the Bush plan for space will wither and die as time passes – it’s too expensive, too dependant on long-term and continuing co-operation between political parties which find it hard to agree on the time of day, let alone approve the budget of a multi-billion dollar exploration initiative, but I hope I’m proved wrong. We’ll see. But regardless of the fate of the Bush plan, our efforts to explore Mars – with machines and men – will be affected by events here, on Earth.

We live in uncertain times; we’re never further than one CNN news flash away from an event which would change our world forever. They will happen, such events, and they’ll be good and bad. Before the first crew sets off for Mars, peace could come to the tinder-box of the Middle East, or it could ignite like a pile of magnesium powder. Before the first man or woman sets foot on the red planet we could see either millions of lives saved with the discovery of a cure for cancer, or we could witness millions of lives snuffed out like candle-flames with the detonation of a terrorist nuclear bomb in one of the great cities. Most likely, we’ll see both before the first boot-print is pressed into the martian regolith. But it WILL happen, of that I’m absolutely convinced. Why?

Because we always want to go beyond the next hill, over the next ocean, or up the next mountain. First, to simply enjoy the view, and to challenge and conquer our own limitations. But then the real reason – because we have to keep moving, or we die. Not physically, but inside. There’s a yearning in us that won’t be satisfied, and probably won’t ever be, not even when we stand on the bridge of a starship looking down on the Catherine wheel of the Milky Way. Then other galaxies will call to us.

The evidence for this is written in deep history, running through it like a vein of gold through a hillside. Life has always kept moving, always kept striving onwards. A billion years ago, Life peered out of the murky waters of the infant Earth at a beach, and felt itself drawn to it – and when it eventually scrabbled up onto the sharp sand Life saw hills and trees in the distance and felt drawn to them next. Millennia later, Life peered out from a cave, or burrow, saw the world burning furiously in the aftermath of the KT asteroid impact, and survived because of its stubbornness. Millennia later still, Life climbed down from the trees and learned how to make tools, and communicate, and walk, and when it learned how to walk it headed for the horizon – and hasn’t stopped walking since.

Our recent history has been just the same. When the Wright Brothers gazed up at birds wheeling and cawing in the sky above Kitty Hawk, they vowed they would fly higher, and faster. Only a handful of years later, Chuck Yaeger broke the sound barrier for the first time, shattering it like dropped crystal, but that wasn’t enough. Soon after he wrenched back the stick of a faster, sleeker jet and headed straight upwards, aiming for the sky, determined to fly higher than any non-astronaut pilot had ever done before. He kept going until the clouds were far behind him, and the stars began to appear through what was left of the atmosphere above him, knowing that space was where Mankind’s future lay. Soon after, cosmonauts and astronauts looked down on Earth regularly from orbit, fulfilling the dream which had haunted man for centuries – but still they weren’t content, and through the tiny windows of their Vostok, Mercury and Gemini capsules they looked longingly at the Moon as it rose up from behind the Earth and heard it calling to them, even though they knew it was an airless world of rock and dust, and the opposite of the beautiful blue and white world shining beneath them. A mere decade later, astronauts stood on the same Moon they had seen rising up from behind Earth, and STILL they weren’t content; turning their backs on the planet of their birth they surely looked at the ruddy spark of Mars, shining in the ebony-black sky, and knew where they must go next…

THAT’s why we’ll go to Mars, because it’s the Next Place We Can Go. It’s the next hill to walk over, the next stream to wade through, the next mountain to climb. Mars is just the next stepping stone in the line which runs across the great river of Time, and even though it’s slippery, and looks dangerous from the safety of the stone we’re presently balanced on, we’ll reach out for it because we can’t turn around and go back.

And we’ll put up with the recycled air, we’ll tolerate the recycled water, and we’ll endure the lack of rain, blue sky and fluffy white clouds because Mars isn’t the last stone. Many, many others stretch off into the distance. We’ll go to Mars, and learn to live there, because it will let us reach out for the next stone in the line. We’ll stand on Mars, turn our backs on Earth, and gaze longingly at Jupiter and its empire of icy moons. After reaching them, we’ll stand on the fractured ice plains of Europa and gaze longingly at Titan, shining like a golden spark beside butterscotch-hued Saturn. And after reaching Titan we’ll strike out for the icy wastelands of Miranda, Triton and Pluto, because each one offers us a view of the next hill and the next horizon. The journey will go on beyond that, too.

And the thing to remember is that that journey won’t “start” with us reaching Mars, because it started long ago. That journey won’t stop dead if we don’t go to Mars in our lifetimes, it will just pause, catch its breath. We’ll go when we’re ready, and not until.

But we will go. And I find that thought comforting when I’m standing in front of a room full of kids, wondering if I’ll live to see one of them waving at me from the edge of Valles Marineris, or if they won’t even see their own children doing it.

So please Clark, don’t give up, ok? It’s early days yet.

Sorry for the train-of-thought rant. I'll go have a lie-down now!

Stu

VERY nice... 

http://www.lyle.org/~markoff/collection … 103nav.jpg

Sorry No Life On Mars, I've been away all weekend, can you send me a link to the thread which announces your election to the position of Board Guardian? Can't find it anywhere...  :;):

Seriously tho, you're being waaaaaay too harsh there. You should actually feel lucky that you get to see all Luca's wonderful pictures and animations; he must take ages over creating them and then uplinking them for us all to share and enjoy here. And with the flow of imags coming out of JPL being... well, shall we be kind and call it "erratic"... I for one now rely on people like Luca to keep me up to date with hi-quality images of Endurance Crater and the Columbia Hills.

And think about it. If it wasn't for Luca and others like him all we'd have to "enjoy" would be pictures of that frelling sundial...

Keep up the good work Luca!