To boldly go

Ok, today's photo -- which accidentally ended up to be one of my most truly pointless creations ever -- is going to take some explaining. In honour of the Mars Curiosity Rover landing, I was going to take a picture of the Apollo mission models that I played with when I was very little. I thought I knew where they were in my closet here at Dad's, but that box turned out instead to have plastic Inuit models in it. An igloo, a man in a kayak, a polar bear... I have no idea why I have them.

Then I thought I might know where the Apollo stuff could be downstairs. No luck, but I did find my collection of patience cards (you know, those mini cards you use for playing solitaire. I like solitaire. I liked it even as a kid. That's probably sad, isn't it). I wasn't in the mood to delve into searching the store room just for some plastic models, so in the spirit of something spacey I decided to pose C-3PO on the shuffle board (I didn't pose the shuffleboard rocks. They were already there). Then I added Jasper the Bear (whose faded sign says CANADA. Well, where else would you find Jasper the Bear?) and an assortment of small boats because my family keeps weird stuff.

It, erm, made sense at the time.

Also, I need to clean the cat hair off of the shuffleboard. I notice that you can see Max's launch pad to the basement window ledge in the background...

Anyway.

I didn't stay up for the Mars landing, and to be honest I was astonished that it went off successfully. When I saw the descriptions of what was supposed to happen I could understand what the JPL was calling "seven minutes of terror" or however they put it. It just sounded so unbelievable that something so complicated could work. But it did, and I imagine that it wouldn't be hard to find a few happily hung over rocket scientists in California today.

I bet my two fans are waiting now for me to tell them that I've always been a huge fan of the space program and... no. I'm not going to be saying that, actually. I'm interested in the space program and I'm not against it by any means, but I'm not one of those who follows each mission with fish breath (you know, baited). I was a little too young to understand the Apollo missions (although I'll admit to being alive during all but the first moon landing. Well, I was alive even then, I suppose. Just hadn't made my entrance), I don't remember Skylab. I was aware of the Shuttle program and, as a reformed Trekkie, was sort of nerdily thrilled that they named the first one Enterprise, but that's about it. Yes, I remember where I was when the Challenger blew up (I had a spare first period that day and was watching the whole thing on live television as I got ready for school, in case you wondered), but then that's not the kind of thing you forget even if you don't really care about space exploration.

So why am I even bringing the Mars Rover up if I'm not a space junkie? A few reasons, I guess. First... IT'S ANOTHER PLANET. We've landed something on another planet. And we've done it more than once. A small step in the grand scheme of the universe, yes, but it's a pretty big thing for our species. We have the opportunity to study a whole different planet, and I think some of us forget just how science-fictiony that really is.

For those who deplore the waste of money, well, I see your point. Really, I do. If a person has to look at things from a purely economic standpoint I suppose I could bring up the old saw of the potential spinoffs (think of Teflon and Tang. No, wait. Not Tang. That's a myth. Tang wasn't developed for the space program), but you've already heard that from other people so I'm not going to bother with it. I guess I fall more on the side of those who say it's important for humankind to keep exploring, although I don't do it with nearly as much enthusiasm as the space evangelists out there.We are more or less programmed to explore, though, and have been since our ancestors left Africa.

Oh, I just outed myself as an evil evolutionist there, didn't I? Well, I'm sorry, but despite what my beliefs about how life did or didn't start on earth are (and, frankly, you can't claim to know what they are even if you think you do), I can't ignore the masses of evidence that show that I wasn't created from Adam's rib.

We need to keep learning. We need to discover. The worst thing we can do is stagnate. We need to learn, and we never really know what benefits that learning is going to give us. That's my true interest in things like this. The science is pretty cool on its own, but the fact that we'll be able to look back at things like this fifty years (or less) down the road and see that this led to that which led to that which led to that is even better.

And I'm going to stop going down that particular blather avenue now before things start to sound preachy.

For any of my two fans who are now wondering if I'm excited about the prospect of people on Mars, I might surprise you a bit again by saying no. I'm not. We're not there yet, in terms of our capabilities. We likely will be someday, and maybe even in my lifetime, but not now. I'm all for working on figuring it out, but at the moment I'm far more excited about these rovers and the things that they might teach us. Let's learn a bit more before we take the next step, I think.

And in the meantime, I'll be following Mars Curiosity here.