Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally jazzed about interplanetary exploration, have been for decades. But could we have picked a less boring planet than Mars? Would you visit a resort on Tatooine? (Mars makes Tatooine seem lush.) Maybe Curiosity will find the secret cave that leads to the underground complex of Martian cities, but ’til it does, I’m holding out for the Venus rovers.
Link: Curiosity rover on Wikipedia. Actually a very cool contraption:
The rover is a nuclear-powered, mobile scientific laboratory and part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission by the United States. The MSL mission has four main scientific goals: investigation of the Martian climate, geology, and whether Mars could have ever supported life, including investigation of the role of water and its planetary habitability. Curiosity carries the most advanced payload of scientific equipment ever used on the surface of Mars. It is the fourth NASA unmanned surface rover sent to Mars since 1996, and at 900 kg is slightly heavier than the 840 kg Lunokhod 2 robotic lunar rover from 1973.
I still prefer the Bradbury version…
Totally agree. Hardly a thing is more exciting than space exploration. Going to Mars is the fun, exciting part. So far, ‘being’ there is, well, remarkably boring. Not one single truly interesting thing has been discovered. Hopefully that will change …. but I doubt it. Dead planet, rocks, dirt …. boring. It will never be colonized: decreased gravity alone will prevent that. ‘terraforming’ Mars ? Absurd. The most Mars will ever be is a stepping stone to other places. For that matter, if we ever do ‘colonize’ anywhere it will most certainly be beyond our solar system. That will require Warp travel – which, though theoretically possible, is a LOOOOONNNNG way off in the future. Mega congrats to all the people who put us on Mars and what we’ve learned about getting to places like Mars??? Amazing! Invaluable lessons!! but Mars itself? Booooorrriiiinnnng!