I often stare up at what I assume is Mars in the night sky and stand in awe at the clever folks at NASA having got basically a car up there.
Curiosity is still trundling around on Mars taking samples and shooting snaps of the surface. I recently saw a panorama of the crater its in It was a phenomenal shot. At once familiar and wholly alien at the same time. Vast, distant and red, the scarps of the crater edge are sensational.
I think about Curiosity and Mars a lot. Much more than the woes of our own world, which I know is not right somehow but my heart lies in the stars really. Its a sort of yearning I suppose, although I'm unsure what for.
Maybe space toys captured that yearning when I was a kid growing up in the space age, when everyone was talking about NASA, the moonlanding and zooming through the cosmos.
Is Curiosity largely forgotten now do you think? Did it spawn any toys? Are NASA an irrelevance these days? What do you think?
I think I feel the same as you about space. NASA still does amazing things but the will is not there to do the great things that it used to.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the money's not there anymore Kev at NASA? It could be an emerging superpower like China or maybe old starmen like Russia that do the next amazing thing with humans in space.
DeleteThat's true, wasn't the moon shot a significant percentage of the National budget? Nowadays, the risk assessment alone would cost that!
ReplyDeleteI think that back in the 60's and 70's whatever Nasa's endeavours there was an openness that was shared around the western world that this was the defining moment of mankind, now I feel that NASA drip feeds info to the public like they have something to hide, my own personal experience with NASA is Never A Straight Answer- Mark J Southcoast Base
ReplyDeleteSo basically what you're saying is that your heart is still a Fireball, eh? Mine too.
ReplyDeleteThat's it Kid! I'd have put my name down for a public Mars colony Mission if I'd ever had been fit, brainy and single!
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