Greeted last week's news that there may be running water on Mars with a blend of excitement and frustration. Excitement because water is a basic prerequisite of life. And if some is still flowing on Mars' surface, rather than being locked up in permafrost around the poles, then living organisms could be existing around it. They won't be much, of course, just some rubbish form of algae. But life on another planet is still a major discovery; and life on Mars, because of H G Wells and David Bowie, especially evocative.
Frustration because nobody's actually sure about the water yet. They've just studied patterns of rock falls and concluded they were most likely caused by a stream which quickly evaporated. Then again, maybe they weren't. They could also have been made by rocks just, you know, falling. The only way to be certain, it seems to me, is to actually put somebody on the surface and ask them if anything's bubbling out of the ground. Instead NASA continues to rely on vague, blurry snapshots taken by unmanned probes. Logical deduction based on partial evidence is sometimes a necessary part of science. But there really is no substitute to actually being there. After all, in 1492 a Genoan set off westwards from Portugal with all existing knowledge telling him that he wouldn't hit land before India.
And the chances of the life on Mars being human seem remote right now. It hasn't gone well in recent decades, our great conquest of space. We got to the nearest possible destination and then just stopped. All recent shuttle voyages have been devoted to repairing the International Space Station. The ones which go ahead, that is, because the shuttles seem to be falling apart even quicker than the ISS itself. The ISS is a promising development, and a great name, but I'm not certain what actually happens there. Probably more pictures taken of distant galaxies from which scientists can make remarkably dubious deductions.
I know space travel costs a lot. And the American government needs their funds to meet their core aims: making billionaires even richer and knocking the Middle East to pieces. But mankind, we're always told, is supposed to be an explorer. Not just a peerer and a guesser. I'm also worried that if we ever do make contact with intelligent life from the stars, the prediction closest to the truth will be Douglas Adams'. Where we're irritably told by the aliens that their plans for demolishing Earth have been on public display at Alpha Centauri "only four light years away… If you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your lookout."
Frustration because nobody's actually sure about the water yet. They've just studied patterns of rock falls and concluded they were most likely caused by a stream which quickly evaporated. Then again, maybe they weren't. They could also have been made by rocks just, you know, falling. The only way to be certain, it seems to me, is to actually put somebody on the surface and ask them if anything's bubbling out of the ground. Instead NASA continues to rely on vague, blurry snapshots taken by unmanned probes. Logical deduction based on partial evidence is sometimes a necessary part of science. But there really is no substitute to actually being there. After all, in 1492 a Genoan set off westwards from Portugal with all existing knowledge telling him that he wouldn't hit land before India.
And the chances of the life on Mars being human seem remote right now. It hasn't gone well in recent decades, our great conquest of space. We got to the nearest possible destination and then just stopped. All recent shuttle voyages have been devoted to repairing the International Space Station. The ones which go ahead, that is, because the shuttles seem to be falling apart even quicker than the ISS itself. The ISS is a promising development, and a great name, but I'm not certain what actually happens there. Probably more pictures taken of distant galaxies from which scientists can make remarkably dubious deductions.
I know space travel costs a lot. And the American government needs their funds to meet their core aims: making billionaires even richer and knocking the Middle East to pieces. But mankind, we're always told, is supposed to be an explorer. Not just a peerer and a guesser. I'm also worried that if we ever do make contact with intelligent life from the stars, the prediction closest to the truth will be Douglas Adams'. Where we're irritably told by the aliens that their plans for demolishing Earth have been on public display at Alpha Centauri "only four light years away… If you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your lookout."
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