I was all excited when I heard that today we were going to see pictures from Mars. For years, we always said that aliens from space were ‘martians’. There have been so many songs about Mars, TV shows about Mars, and even movies i.e ‘Mars Attacks’. The mystery of Mars has been forever with us, and now we finally get to see what all the fuss was about.
Well, you can just imagine my disappointment when I got online, and went straight to CNN to check out the pictures. When I left for work this morning, CNN was having this special report with excited journalists and scientists and everything. This was going to be big. However, as you can see above, all I saw was two pictures of…gravel. Shit, I could go out my back door and take a picture like that and wack it on the internet!
Now I realise that probes like the NASA Mars Phoenix Lander have been important techonological tools for us to discover the secrets of our solar system, and I am sure many scientists who happen to stumble across this blog will eat me alive. But I just cannot get excited over gravel and dirt! Show me a distinctly Martian mountain. Show me an unearthly formation that we have not seen ever before. But for God’s sake, if you’re going to simply show dirt, and stones, then at least doctor the photos with some unidentified shape in the distance to dress it up!
“It’s surprisingly close to what we expected and that’s what surprises me most,” said Peter Smith, the mission’s principal investigator. “I expected a bigger surprise.”
Now let’s be very clear here. This is the mission’s principal investigator. This man supposedly has scientific qualifications coming out of every hole in his body, and this is the best he could come up with when asked for his deep scientific analysis? Oh please. What he is telling us is that all along, we knew that this is what we would see when that day finally came. For this amount of financial outlay, I want suprises, and a hell of a lot of them! To simply sit back and say “its suprprisingly close to what we expected” must be the ultimate scientific let down. How can they all sit back at NASA and be thrilled at ‘what they expected?’
They’d better find something remarkable pretty soon, or I for one am going to wonder why they’ve spent US$420 Million.
May 26, 2008
Millions of dollars worth of gravel.
Posted by damob under Social commentaryLeave a Comment
I was all excited when I heard that today we were going to see pictures from Mars. For years, we always said that aliens from space were ‘martians’. There have been so many songs about Mars, TV shows about Mars, and even movies i.e ‘Mars Attacks’. The mystery of Mars has been forever with us, and now we finally get to see what all the fuss was about.
Well, you can just imagine my disappointment when I got online, and went straight to CNN to check out the pictures. When I left for work this morning, CNN was having this special report with excited journalists and scientists and everything. This was going to be big. However, as you can see above, all I saw was two pictures of…gravel. Shit, I could go out my back door and take a picture like that and wack it on the internet!
Now I realise that probes like the NASA Mars Phoenix Lander have been important techonological tools for us to discover the secrets of our solar system, and I am sure many scientists who happen to stumble across this blog will eat me alive. But I just cannot get excited over gravel and dirt! Show me a distinctly Martian mountain. Show me an unearthly formation that we have not seen ever before. But for God’s sake, if you’re going to simply show dirt, and stones, then at least doctor the photos with some unidentified shape in the distance to dress it up!
“It’s surprisingly close to what we expected and that’s what surprises me most,” said Peter Smith, the mission’s principal investigator. “I expected a bigger surprise.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/26/mars.lander/index.html
Now let’s be very clear here. This is the mission’s principal investigator. This man supposedly has scientific qualifications coming out of every hole in his body, and this is the best he could come up with when asked for his deep scientific analysis? Oh please. What he is telling us is that all along, we knew that this is what we would see when that day finally came. For this amount of financial outlay, I want suprises, and a hell of a lot of them! To simply sit back and say “its suprprisingly close to what we expected” must be the ultimate scientific let down. How can they all sit back at NASA and be thrilled at ‘what they expected?’
They’d better find something remarkable pretty soon, or I for one am going to wonder why they’ve spent US$420 Million.
Enjoy your day.