Curiosity On Mars

Last week NASA landed the planet rover CURIOSITY on Mars. The nuclear-powered vehicle suffered little damage to its recording and testing devices, however the scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab have set the CURIOSITY on 'dream' mode during a four-day upload of software for its initial exploration of the Gala Crater. The mission system manager didn't say what kind of dreams the rover was experiencing in the shut-down, but I guess that they would have to be almost seering visions into the future and past with each update to its brain. Once awake then the JPL will program the CURIOSITY'S destination as Mount Sharp Scientists have been poring over pictures of the landing site snapped by Curiosity and spacecraft circling overhead. The pebble-strewn terrain where the rover landed appeared easy to traverse but the landscape gets more rugged the closer to Mount Sharp. The base of the mountain is five miles away. The rover will arrive in the foothills by Christmas. Its top speed is 300 yards a day. Slow, but not going nowhere is slower.

Earthlings Go Home

Walt Disney Pictures lost about $160 millions on JOHN CARTER OF MARS, despite worldwide ticket sales of almost $300,000,000. Mediocre reviews of the sci-fi adaptation of a Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel in tough economic times doomed the movie at the box office. BBC film critic Mark Kermode stated, "The story telling is incomprehensible, the characterisation is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it's a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long." During my stay in Thailand, I thought about purchasing the DVD, but every vendor said the film was a bomb, however I endured the movie on a flight between Bangkok and Tokyo on August 6, the same day NASA was landing the nuclear-powered Curiosity by sky hook on the planet Mars. As part of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission the rover's dowser will will insert neutrons underneath the surface of the Gale Crater to seek out signs of habitability, ie water on our distant neighbor. So far the Curiosity has yet to discover ice or any artifacts from Burroughs' lost civilization of Barsoom, but the search continues for NASA and man. The cost of this exploration is approximately two weeks of the War in Afghanistan. Bring the troops home.