It Takes a Planet

To Go to Mars

Last night’s/this morning’s successful landing of Curiosity into Gale Crater on Mars is a fabulous piece of work by teams of thousands of people around the world who labored to design, build, send, and deploy the spacecraft and all its many parts.  Some of those parts are in Curiosity, which will begin her second full Sol on Mars later today.  The rest of the parts are the delivery bits, some out in space around Mars, and others scattered in the same crater as the rover.  It wasn’t one person who did this; it was a nation, accompanied by hard working people in other countries.  And they all deserve a huge round of applause and continued support in their work.  What they do contributes much to our global village. More so, I dare say, than the political figures who seek to destroy any future we may have in space, or indeed, even in science education.

Think about this:  the total cost of the MSL/Curiosity mission to each American taxpayer is just about $7.00.  Period.  That’s less than a pizza. It’s the cost of a venti drink and a brownie at Starbucks.  People waste more than that on their data plans tweeting about what they had for breakfast or how much we should shut down government so that the rich don’t have to pay a fair share of taxes.

So, the next time somebody gets all pruney around the mouth about how much “space” costs, as if the money is being spent “up there”, remind them that for $7.00, we get to look at more of Mars.  We get the good feeling of seeing the exultation on the team’s faces as the mission landed. THAT alone was worth it for me.  And, the money got spent here on Earth, in salaries and R&D, which translates into people being able to afford groceries, homes, cars, phones, to pay their taxes, etc.

We grow as culture when we do good things like this.  It took people around this planet to achieve the exploration of another. That is NOT a bad thing at all. We should do more of it!

Today, we’ll see more images from Curiosity, plus an image of the spacecraft as it headed to the Martian surface, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. So, keep your eye out for MORE Mars.