Sunday, October 23, 2016

When One Space Robot Finds Another on a Different World

If you grew up with Heinlein, this isn't the dream but it's still highly damn cool.  When ESA's Schiparelli crashed, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found it.  Maybe people are so jaded by all the satellites orbiting Earth that the two space robots don't seem such a big deal but we see a huge deal when it's not even the same planet.  (Science Daily:  Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site)

Delos D Harriman is much beloved by Ithaka and he's 'the man who sold the Moon' in a novel by that name by Robert Heinlein.  He didn't sell the Moon per se but he sold the idea of going there and the mechanics needed to fund and build everything to do it.  He did finally realize his dream of going to the Moon but he died there while he sat next to a rock and looked back at the Earth.  It was a sublime ending and really it was the only one possible when anything following would have been anticlimactic for him.


It takes so long for the 'droids to get to Mars that we come to know them and it becomes almost a personal loss when one fails.  There was definitely a sadness when it was confirmed Schiparelli crashed but there's not often to opportunity to use 'indefatigable' in a sentence but the ESA team, as is always true with NASA, shows that by continuing forward with their plans undeterred.

(Ed:  I'm serious.  You should have been a preacher!)

I won't argue and I still won't get cynical.  Just don't call me a fanboy as that will piss me off.  Ha!


Maybe Ed: will be all over it if I write of the glowing visions of exploration in the solar system, the inevitable discovery of life out there somewhere, and who knows what else.  Maybe there is a challenge to the idea it's in the spirit of Man to explore and go beyond that which we know.  We always have that hunger and we're not satisfied unless we try to feed it.

(Ed:  I swear I'm sending a pulpit in the mail!)

Well, at a thousand people a day, maybe I could get a free lunch out of it?

(Ed:  now you're forgetting TANSTAAFL!)

No, no, as Heinlein was the One True God, we always remember There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

(Ed:  so you will do the gig for free!)

Nope, I still want the lunch because I've also heard from others 'play this gig for free because of the great exposure' and musicians hear that one all the time.  It hasn't ever come from any gods, tho.

No comments: