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Earth

Our Space is Cool

Earth
                                                                                                                                                                                             

Space! We Need More Space!

MoonStruck?

The moon is a truly interesting body. The Earth Moon is, literally, a planet-sized body. Why is it there? What purpose does it serve? How did it form? Many people ask these questions. Well, we don't agree on the answers. Why don't we 'git rid of it'? Have you ever heard that! Me neither. We appear to agree that it is important to us.

It must be important, we have based our lives on its influence. Did you know that our months are based on the moon's 28-day cycle? Hence Month or is that Moonth.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                   The Full Moon

Mars Mars!

Mars is a such a mysterious place to most of humanity. We are learning many things about this neighbor of ours. It has familiar weather features. It has shown us new possibilities. It has shown us that we want/need to learn about this planet.

It is not so different from our home world. It has frozen water-vapor clouds. It has polar water-ice caps. Its temperature is comparable to the colder regions on our world. The temperature is a bit more volatile than ours, though. Did you know that Martian days are only about 45 minutes longer than Earth days? Did you know that Martian years are slightly more than 2 Earth years?

Do we love it? Do we hate it? Right now, I think we love it. Mars has been in the limelight lately. With the recent trip to mars by the Mars Pathfinder we have begun the first real attempt at studying other worlds. Never before have we been able to look at another world on this level. Sure, we have been to Mars before. What did we learn then? We learned many things. Our first trips to Mars showed us how little we knew about that little red planet. The Pathfinder mission shows us just how we can learn more about this planet. And, eventually how we can learn more about our own world.

The Pathfinder mission's most important goal was met with much success. Pathfinder has shown us that we can go places and do it efficiently. Pathfinder cost roughly $150 million. Never have we done so much with so little. Previous Mars missions have cost billions of dollars with nowhere near this level of accomplishment. I know, we have had many years to improve technology and perfect our methods of operation. This has little to do with it, though. We have realized that we either must not do these things, or, do them cheaply. The folks in charge of our money do not believe Space is worth the investment. The men whom buy $150 ash-trays (for non-smoking offices) aren't willing to spend our money on Space learning. Pathfinder public relations sealed the future of space exploration using these new faster, cheaper, better strategies. I do not think that 'We The People' will allow future missions to be endangered.

What a view from Sagan Station, Mars!
(Get out those 3D glasses)

A panoramic view of distant, silhouetted Martian mountians set off by a rose-colored sky at sunset!
3D panoramic view of distant Martian mouontians, same as above sunset, during the day.

Photos are courtesy NASA and Hubble Space Telescope.