WOOOOOOOOOT! TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE!
Meet Curiosity, the latest Mars rover in the NASA Mars Exploration Program:
I don’t know why, but it kind of reminds me of Number 5 from the movie Short Circuit 😀
You may not be a space nut, but even if you’re not, you have to admit…this is EXCITING! The NASA rover Curiosity just touched down on the surface of Mars after a never-before- attempted “Sky Crane” technique functioned just as it was supposed to! 😀 “NASA has described the feat as perhaps the most complex ever in robotic spaceflight.” – Reuters/AP News
I won’t go into detail here because I’m sure you’ll be able to read about it all over the news. But I wanted to mark the event, in case fifty years from now I want to be able to look back and say, “Yep. We DID it! Another giant leap for Mankind! And I was there to witness it.” I hope it is one of many, many more to come!
Imagine! It’s 352 million miles away…it took 8 months to get there…and will be there to explore and report back to us for 2 years. I am in awe that mankind has the mental ability to figure out the necessary technology to pull this off. Think about it! Sci-Fi is becoming reality! I can’t wait to see what else we can do! This is how people must have felt when men first landed on the moon. 🙂 I can go to sleep knowing that humans have done a great thing tonight. We are expanding our horizons and hopefully, our knowledge. GO, SCIENCE! YAY NASA! And if you’re worried about Martians…
DON’T PANIC! I brought a towel… 😉
~ Dragon's Dreams ~ 
Maybe they’ll find the Holy Grail of space travel do you think ??
LOL I love it! “What a strange person.” lololol Thanks so much for this, it was hilarious! Makes me want to watch that movie again for the 50 millionth time. 😀
What a strange person…him or me ???
hehehe – in that video, Bones says “What a strange person” about the “God” in the throne. 🙂 But you’re pretty strange too (and that’s a GOOD thing! 😉 )
I knew/know I’m strange…I stopped trying to be normal years ago – it was too painful and I hated it….hehehe
😀 Good for you! Why be normal? Normal = Boring. P.S. B-day pkg mailed today – not sure how long it will take for you to get it, but shouldn’t be more than a week.
Awwwwwwww – that is so nice of you. I need a boost. Kitchen leaks…$900 repair bill…car problem – $900 repair bill…ready to imagine what seppuku would feel like. Probably botch that and end up with another bill…so I guess not. Wonder how much I could get for The Son ???
😦 Ugh, sounds like Life is throwing you some huge curve-balls lately! Try to keep your chin up, chickadee! The Universe will provide. *BIG Bear Hugs*
I keep hoping so. I am sure it will eventually work out…just feeling a little overwhelmed at present. Then I look at others. A lady in town lost her husband in a motorcycle crash on Sunday (48) and a friend’s grandson (4 months) has been in hospital again (failure to thrive they call it) he looks like a newborn…and I remember that I am actually doing good.
I had mixed feelings after watching the rover landing the other night. At first I was excited for what we had accomplished…but then started thinking about our planet and how many are struggling to even eat and have shelter. A lot of money is spent to fund these missions… Are our priorities askew?
Thanks, Gayle. 🙂 Actually, I’m in agreement with you that our priorities are screwed up. I would rather us concentrate on fixing THIS planet. But I also see how the NASA research and technology has helped to make this world a better place (water purification systems, solar panels, MRI technology, etc.) and I’m torn. Because I look at the small % of the funding that goes to NASA compared to the billions that go into defense or big oil subsidies or the millions of dollars contracts we give athletes or celebrities and I ask, why can’t they put some of THAT money into helping solve the problems of hunger, homelessness or poverty on earth? Why is it okay for politicians to raise millions of dollars to spend on mud-slinging ads, but we begrudge funding for things like NASA?
I DO think we need to put more efforts into solving the big problems of this planet. At the rate we are destroying it, it would be nice to have an alternative place to go…not that Mars would be better. I try to stay optimistic about humans being able to get it together and save Earth…but the reality is that for now, not enough of the people with the money and power to DO it even care. When NASA can bring us things like greener technology (which can and do affect not just the U.S. but the world) then I’m all for it. Some of the stuff is just commercialized, but if you Google NASA Spinoffs, you’ll see that there are some important discoveries, too. Sorry for the long-arse response. In short, I agree with you, but I also love the Space Program.
Thanks for your long-arse response, Corina…I appreciate it! I don’t look at just the NASA-spent money but all the other ones you pointed out too. I’m excited about learning all we can about space and other worlds out there but my thoughts always come back to taking care of what we have going on here. I think there should be a cap put on politician’s mud-slinging funds…I’m so sick of hearing that crap! In short, there needs to be some common sense spending going on…we waste so much..it sickens me.
Haha, loving your sense of humor Corina! It is amazing indeed! I saw a little commentary on tv here and for a moment I wished I could go up there too 🙂
Thanks, Blaga. 🙂 The end graphic and comment are based on Douglas Adams’ “Hitch-hiker’s Guide” series. I hope that we both live long enough to see a manned Mars mission.
Are you just slightly a science geek 😉 … I have rto say I’ve always been a huge fan of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy… Big Bang Theory seems to have cemented this era as being the ‘Golden Age of Geek’, as one Twitterer calls himself. I love BBT… never thought I was much of a science type though.
Just “slightly”. 🙂 Yeah, Hitchhiker’s Guide is such a classic series! I don’t watch much t.v. but have seen a couple of episodes of BBT (Soft Kitty was one of them) and found it to be pretty entertaining. You don’t have to be a “science type” to appreciate Science. It’s my sincere hope that Science will be what saves Mankind from himself, in the end. Btw, I love that expression, “Golden Age of Geek” 😀
lol …. my fav lines “… hang the sense of it all, and just keep yourself busy. i’d rather be happy than right any day.” Arthor: “and are you?” Maker: “well, no … that’s where it all falls apart, of course.”
awesome blog, it DOES look a little like number five ….. iNNNNNPUUUUTTTT …..
and they’re doing the new version of total recall …. what sort of scares me is that we might have come to earth after destroying mars, OR … maybe earth was originally a penal colony of mars, but then something happened on mars and killed off the overlords ………… or it’s the original home of those giant humanoid skeletons they show on the internet, that are 40 feet tall …. and need to be that big to withstand the gravity. maybe they were the gods who came here, and we gave them colds and wiped them all out ….
🙂
Thanks, Eileen. 🙂 There are SO many good lines in that series! Yes, exactly what I thought, re: #5 (INNNNPUUUUUTTT) lol. You know, I’ve often wondered the same kind of thing….is Mars what happened when we used up THAT planet? I wouldn’t place it out of the realm of possibility. Especially the part about us wiping them out with the common cold! Hey, it’s happened to several non-indigenous communities all over the world on this planet, why not inter-planetary, too?
Love science, love learning and love discoveries, even vicariously. 🙂 Love this. As you mentioned, so many amazing things of great value come from forward thinking and stretching the limits of our intelligence, to achieve wonders like this. Oh, Ford Perfect says he’s quite proud of you, and said your towel is stunning.
😀 Thanks, John! So glad you enjoyed it. How IS Mr. lx anyway? I figured he would be able to appreciate a 7th generation Betelgeusian towel. *grin* Now I’m going to have to go back and re-read all those books again. Just talking about them has got me in the mood to experience them all over again. And I never did read the Dirk Gently stories or his collection, “The Salmon of Doubt”. Hmmm…sounds like some good reading is in my future.
Enjoyed this too, Corina. For me, it’s important to press forward…we are born for the pursuit of knowledge and I am a reluctant scientist. I do agree that it’s a quandry though…how can we balance the needs we have to grow and the needs to care for what we have here. But then, life doesn’t give us easy answers. I remember so clearly the 1969 landing on the moon.
Thanks, Victoria. Sorry I am so late in this response! I had missed it before and just now saw it. You are so right that life doesn’t give us easy answers. But then, maybe that’s part of what makes it so beautiful – the challenge of finding those answers? I wish I would have been alive to witness it when it happened. My mom and dad and uncles and grandparents all recounted their own versions of how it was and although each version was a little different, they all agreed that it was one of the most important and inspirational memories of their lives. 🙂 I’ve been a bit swamped lately, but am planning to make some time to visit my favorite blogs soon. Hope to get by yours tonight, Gods willing.
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