Mars or Bust!

So I'm channel surfing during the weekend and come across NASA officials beside themselves because we are just minutes away from learning whether or not we were able to successfully land on the northern pole of Mars. I'm talking the culmination of ten years of focused and dedicated work all to be either totally justified or considered a colossal waste of numerous resources in just a matter of minutes.


Well, the good news is it was a major success. Here it is: http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/phoenix/640/phx20080525-recap-640.swf

Just imagine, this entire team of scientists working together to build a rocket that could propel and direct this spaceship 90 million light years into space to reach a particular target area on the surface of Mars. How in the world do you do that? I simply don't have a mind that can even conceive of what it would take to make that happen and happen according to plan. Anyway, here are some photos from the surface of said planet, neighboring or not, it certainly doesn't look like home.

My other observation is that many if not most scientists have serious overlap bellies, probably because they are busy exercising their brains and not their bodies. Kind of sad considering all that they know.

So, what does all this mean? Will my grandkids be living on Mars? Probably not, but it may teach us something more about our solar system and perhaps that can help us to get the message through to our political and other parties in power that we need to pay attention to our environment and conserve in a big way.

It's really fascinating stuff, I wish I had more gray matter in the left side of my brain so I could understand a little more about it. If science isn't explained to me at the Carl Sagan level, I'm pretty much lost, sad to say.