Is anybody else feeling a disoriented disconnect to this whole Mars thing? Half the time I feel like we've (and by we I guess I mean you, ie: USA) already colonized the planet, a quarter of the time I'm horrified at this contemporary imperialist-in-space adventure, and the other quarter I'm feeling childishly dumbstruck and wowed by the fact that there's a remote control robot on Mars.
so thats a 3/4 negative and 1/4 positive response ? i guess im 3/4 pos 1/4 neg. bush is pressing for a future with man driven missions but conventional scientific wisdom points towards robotics. Im fully blown away by these color images beamed back here from mars.
I'm not sure if I'm positive or negative...more puzzled. I have ambivalence about 'big science' projects. I'm easily wowed and enthralled. Then I get scared. Then I feel ignorant. Then I go read stuff. Then I get wowed and enthralled again. etc. Just read a great article (hardcopy) on nanotechnology from Technoetic Arts - man-made microbes changing our whole basis for perception and physicality from the bottom up ---a polar opposite to clunky mechanical robots in space. The dichotomy is pretty fascinating.
acknowledged.
But what do the robots think about all this stuff? "Umm, where's the ahh, ya know, launch vehicle? For the return trip?"
If we're going to spend vast sums of money on science, I much rather have it go to NASA than to DARPA or DoD procurement. Bush's man-on-Mars program undermines that by turning NASA into a front organization for DoD's space superiority ambitions.
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- sally mckay 2-20-2004 7:15 am
so thats a 3/4 negative and 1/4 positive response ? i guess im 3/4 pos 1/4 neg. bush is pressing for a future with man driven missions but conventional scientific wisdom points towards robotics. Im fully blown away by these color images beamed back here from mars.
- bill 2-20-2004 9:57 pm [add a comment]
I'm not sure if I'm positive or negative...more puzzled. I have ambivalence about 'big science' projects. I'm easily wowed and enthralled. Then I get scared. Then I feel ignorant. Then I go read stuff. Then I get wowed and enthralled again. etc. Just read a great article (hardcopy) on nanotechnology from Technoetic Arts - man-made microbes changing our whole basis for perception and physicality from the bottom up ---a polar opposite to clunky mechanical robots in space. The dichotomy is pretty fascinating.
- sally mckay 2-21-2004 6:51 pm [add a comment]
acknowledged.
- bill 2-21-2004 7:31 pm [add a comment]
But what do the robots think about all this stuff? "Umm, where's the ahh, ya know, launch vehicle? For the return trip?"
If we're going to spend vast sums of money on science, I much rather have it go to NASA than to DARPA or DoD procurement. Bush's man-on-Mars program undermines that by turning NASA into a front organization for DoD's space superiority ambitions.
- mark 2-24-2004 8:11 am [add a comment]