August 26, 2003
My Favorite Martians
...all read The Speculist. Presented for your interplanetary enjoyment, a list they have compiled of things to do this week in celebration of the convergence of Mars and Earth.
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(This and other righteous Mars Photos downloaded from Calvin J. Hamilton's Views of the Solar System.)
FastForward to Mars
Join the Mars Society. This week, we're closer to Mars than we've been in nearly 60,000 years, but we're still about 35 million miles away. The Mars Society believes that's too far, and they're working to close the gap.
See Mars at its best: A list of resources from Astronomy.com.
Grok the Red Planet. Read this essay on Mars as part of our popular culture.
Explore Mars now. Check out the interactive Mars Base.
Eat at Mars. Mars 2112 is a restaurant in NYC.
Buy a piece of Mars. It's easier to get than you think.
Read fun Mars fiction.
Fight City Hall. Why haven't we sent a manned mission to Mars yet? Is
it a failure of NASA leadership? Some of us were discussing this over on Transterrestrial
Musings last week and we concluded that the problem might be with the job
title of the head NASA guy. He's called the "NASA Administrator."
How lame is that? Give the guy (or his replacement) a
better title, and maybe he or she can get more done.
Check current conditions.
The Daily Martian Weather Report
Read fun Mars nonfiction.
Get all Eastern and philosophical about Mars. Contemplate this haiku inspired by the long-suffering Nozomi probe.
Ruddy arid orb, |
Become a Martian.
Mars has the same land area as Earth plus a much weaker gravity well. In a
few thousand years, it will be better connected to the rest of humanity than
Earth will.
Will Mars be adapted to humanity or vice versa? It's more likely that the latter
will occur, making "terraformed" Mars unlikely. We won't need a "second
Earth". The weaker gravity will always mean some degree of adaptation by
humanity is required. This may become part of the beginning of the speciation
of the human race.
A key export product of Mars will be data from novel experimentation with social
systems in an environment more Earth-like than outer space. A successful social
experiment in, say, the Asteroid Belt might find its way to Earth via early
adopters on Mars. That is to say, the belters take the big risks, Mars then
tries it out, and finally conservative Earth slowly accepts it.
Get a telescope so you can get a good up-close look. Lots of choices here. Also here. (They're having a big sale called Mars Madness. Good name!)
Here's another possibility:
Also, they say that Mars is so close this time around that you can make out features of the planet using a good pair of binoculars.
Face the unpleasant possibilities. What if Mars is turns out to be very
different from what we expected or hoped for?
Ponder what might have been. Man Conquers Space is a fictional documentary tracing the history of space exploration had it followed the path outlined in a visionary series of articles in Colliers Magazine in 1952.
Mix up a pitcher of Stoli Orange Martians and have some friends over.
STOLI-ORANGE MARTIAN
2 shots of Stoli Orange
l/4 shot Cointreau
Slice of Orange
Shake in chipped ice, pour in Martini glass and add slice of orange, voila!!!
Fight City Hall (2). Maybe we need more than just a change of job title. Joe Katzman explains why, perhaps, NASA itself has to go.
Go completely bonkers. Resources to help you in your quest to become some kind of unbalanced, flipped-out, in-need-of-medication Mars Nut.
Remember the good old days. Mars has been on our minds a lot over the past 150 years. Here are a few of the high points:
- Giovanni
Schiaparelli and his canali
- The
War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
- The John Carter novels of
Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Percivel Lowell and the canals
of Mars
- Orson Welles' War
of the Worlds radio broadcast
- The
Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (He turns 83 tomorrow!)
- Mariner 4
- Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert A. Heinlein
- Mariners 6 & 7
and 9
- Viking 1 and
2
- Pathfinder
- Mars
Attacks!
- Mars Global
Surveyor
- Discovery of possible
ancient Martian fossils in Antarctic meteorite
- Plus, think about things to come: Mars Rovers, for example.
A great big Martian thank you to our FastForward Posse for helping put this
list together, and a warm Red Planet welcome to all new Posse members. Contributors
this week: Mike Sargent, Troy Loney, Karl Hallowell, Steve Yeago, Jeff Patterson,
Andrew LLoyd, Bob Baker, Robert Hinkley, Joanie (our number one Posse recruiter),
and Vic (our resident artist). Plus anyone I missed. Thanks, folks.
Sorry I was stuck with work all weekend!
I'm gonna eventually get that piece done...if only because it's so funny in my head!
Posted by: Da Goddess at August 27, 2003 01:46 AM