Six Ways Brine on Mars is Inspiring
When I was young my grandmother watched the first step on the moon with me on our black and white TV.
She did not believe it was occuring. She thought it was staged. I was certain it was true and the most exciting thing I would see in my whole life. Now a NASA team discovered evidence of brine — indicating contemporary liquid water on MARS. It is even more exciting than Neil Armstrong’s first steps. Why?
Liquid water on earth almost always means life.
In the ocean, on land, in a frozen wasteland, in the air, once there is water, life finds a way to survive, even when the water is intermittent. We only know our own story. But if there is life on other planets, it is probably on Mars. Mars life is likely to be under the crust, deep down in bodies of liquid protected from radiation and thin air.
As a David W. Dunlap article suggests, it is time to unleash our imaginations. I confess that when I read C S Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet it was hard to enjoy. It seemed so far fetched. Back then we thought all the water left the planet billions of years ago, if it was ever there. The lack of vision was my own.
C S Lewis revealed as a visionary, a Jules Vernes.
C S Lewis has long been one of my favorite authors. This almost makes up for the day I found out there was no real Malcolm writing C. S. Lewis letters behind his book Letters to Malcolm. I’d always wanted to read the other side of the arguments. Malcolm was all in his imagination.
Newly discovered potential for life tickles the imagination and catalyzes hope.
It is like finding out we are pregnant, before we know if it is a boy or a girl.
We’ve only discovered 3% of the life under our oceans. We won’t even know at first if the life we’ve found on Mars is common with or distinct from life on Earth.
Gazing at NASA’s images provides hints at next season’s designs from the master artist who made our sunsets and mountains.
They are like a sonogram of an embryo. They are like learning there could be new Picasso’s hidden underground. Will Martians be smart? Will they think we are just food? Will we be able to communicate with Martians? Will Martian creatures be a new food source, bringing to Modernest Cuisine a new dimension?
This time, the team had women in line positions.
Congratulations to the whole team!! I am sure that the team is much larger than the picture at left. While there were no visible women in the project list during development, there are women on this chart of the surface operations team.
Reaching Mars represents overcoming …
a distance challenge, a hostile environment challenge, in an endurance feat for individuals and organizations. It is a giant leap for mankind.
