July 29, 2005
Mars
After many delays, inspections, waiting, and hoping, the shuttle finally launched on Tuesday. Since then, my love of space has been rekindled. I use to dream about being an astronaut. Even thinking about it gives me such a feeling of “everything down there is meaningless.” I suppose people, by nature, already have that impression about everyone who they percieve as “lower” than them, but that is another story.
I’ve been to Space Camp a couple times. I think I was 7 the first time I went. I remember watching videos of the trip afterwards and wondering who on earth could hold a camera so unsteadily. My second time I remember running all the way around the enormous dive tank astronauts use to simulate weightlessness and train for missions. It always amazed me that, as we were not content to be confined to our planet, we developed a way to explore areas outside of it. Since I also have an interest in radio transmissions, i suppose you could add “monitoring extraplanetary radio frequencies” to my list of dream jobs. Alright, maybe not so much “dream jobs” as, “that’d be fun to do for a little bit.”
Some amazing things are happening in terms of Mars exploration. The Mars Express team has produced some very-high-res imagery of Mars, including a pretty cool one of some ice. The Mars Homestead Project is developing plans for the first settlement on mars. They expect to be ready in as few as 20 years to house 12 people in a permanent facility. There’s a good article summarizing their work over on Wired.
Anyone else into stuff like this?
