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Subject: MER - MY Apollo...
Time: 8:29:00 AM EDT
Author: stuartatk
** Welcome to CARNIVAL OF SPACE readers! **
Anyone who’s read the postings on my blog, or here on the Carnival of Space, or on the Unmanned Spaceflight.com forum, or even just met me at an astronomy event will know that I am a huge, huge fan of the Mars Exploration Rovers, their missions, and all they’ve achieved. Some have even accused me of being a bit, well, obsessed by them, because of the way I drool over each and every image they send back to Earth, often stitching them together in programs like “Autostitch” to make panoramic mosaics or colourising them in Photoshop to turn the raw black and white images into things of beauty, rock-strewn landscapes with subtle hues of cinnamon, umber and nutmeg…
I’ve never really paid much attention to comments like that – until a few days ago, when someone at work asked me, quite seriously, and not to criticise or mock, just why I was so fascinated by and passionate about the MERs. It made me think about it, and after a good hour or so of contemplation the answer hit me like a well-aimed brick between the eyes.
The MER mission is my Apollo.
Why? Because, having been born in 1965 I belong to that generation of “Betweeners”, unfortunate space enthusiasts born just a little too late to fully enjoy the expetditions to the Moon, and just a little too early to enjoy the first manned missions to Mars. And the journeys and adventures of Spirit and Opportunity are possibly the closest I’m ever going to get to participating in the exploration of another world.
I was not quite5 when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the softly-crumping dusty lunar surface, so I have only dim memories of that amazing day, and to be honest I’m not even sure if they ARE memories, or if I am just “remembering” all the recorded TV footage that I’ve watched over the years. I missed all the build-up to Apollo because I was too busy with other things, little things like learning to walk and talk and eat solid food. I missed Mercury, Gemini and the frenzied build-up to Eagle’s landing, and I don’t even really remember Apollo 12. My Apollo memories begin with 13, when I can very clearly recall watching special news coverage of the capsule’s splash-down and sensing the immense relief that accompanied it. Later Apollo missions I watched on “The Big TV” at school, in the main with all my classmates, but unlike the other kids in that crowded room, who ignored the flickering TV pictures and chose instead to kick each other or pull some poor girl’s hair, I sat there entranced, staring at the screen like that little blonde girl in Poltergeist, sensing, somehow, that my life was going to revolve around this stuff, that it would be important to me from then on.
But I was a latecomer to Apollo, I missed out on the global frenzy, and a huge part of me will always regret that.
Likewise, having been born in 65, if NASA’s plans come to fruition and they meet their own deadline, if I live that long I’ll be 72 when the first man or woman sets foot on the cinnamon-hued plains of Mars. 72! I’ll probably be in a care home somewhere, asking in vain for a member of staff to switch the 100” holoscreen TV over to the news so I can watch the coverage of the Mars landing, only to be shouted down by the other residents who want to relive their youth by watching re-runs of “Desperate Housewives”, “24” or “The Simpsons”, all of which are ‘so much better than the rubbish on TV nowadays…’ I can see it now, me sitting alone in my room, watching my own little TV while everyone else is in the lounge singing along to the “classic soundtrack” of HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 9…
So, I was born too late to fully enjoy Apollo, and too early to fully enjoy the inevitable first manned expedition to Mars. Instead, I have Spirit and Opportunity, the MERs. They’re My Apollo.
Why?
Well, think about it. Apollo required new technology, a new, bold approach to exploration, engineering standards nothing short of excellent – so did the MERs. Apollo meant dramatic launches, followed by periods of quiet during the flights to their destination, then heart-stoppingly tense landings – so did the MERs.
Still not convinced? Okay, think of it this way. The Apollo program rewarded us with visits to and explorations of half a dozen previously unknown different landscapes and territories, revealing the Sea of Tranquility, the meandering depths of Hadley Rill, the foothills of Fra Mauro and all the other Apollo landing sites to be places of excitement, beauty and wonder – and so have the missions of the MERs.
When Spirit landed, for Mars enthusiasts like myself there was an almost Apollo-like sense of tension and drama. We’d followed the MER mission from the very start, from when the news broke that a mission involving not one but two rovers was being proposed. We celebrated when the proposal was approved, and then followed the design and construction of the rovers eagerly and closely. We watched calendars and then clocks as their launches approached, then celebrated their successful departures from Earth before settling down and waiting impatiently for half an Earth year for them to arrive at their destinations.
Then those hands-in-hair tense landings, which we followed on tiny, juddering, constantly re-buffering Real Player windows our computer monitors, followed by the explosions of relief and exhilaration when it was confirmed that, cocooned inside their airbags, they had survived their crunching impacts with and subsequent boing-boing travels across the sharp rock strewn surface of Mars –
Andthen, after the safe landings, punctuated by treks across distances vast to the slow-moving rovers but little more than a walk across town for human explorers, new landscape after new landscape after new landscape appeared before us so that, in effect, the missions of Spirit and Oppy have been more like half a dozen separate Mars missions than one single program. Each time a rover has arrived at a new destination it’s felt like a new rover has landed on Mars, emerged from its metal and silk cocoon and looked out upon virgin territory.
Spirit landed on the Gusev crater floor and after spending some time exploring its LZ set off for the seemingly impossibly-distant Columbia Hills. Exploring their debris-strewn base and gazing up at their lofty heights was like a second mission, as was the ascent of Husband Hill, stopping several times along the way to investigate an outcrop or ridge or ledge. Spirit’s third mission began when she reached the peak of Husband Hill and stared down on the wide open plain far below, and her fourth mission began when she descended again, edging her way down that ridge before dipping her wheels into the dark, dark, rippled dust of El Dorado. The journey to Homeplate, which had beckoned to her from the top of Husband Hill was Spirit’s fifth mission, which took such a dramatic turn when she was forced to seek refuge from plunging temperatures and the approach of the potentially rover-killing martian winter. Spirit survived, and set off again, exploring Homeplate until the evil dust storm forced her into a desperate hibernation until it was safe to come out again. But she survived that too, and now, having explored Homeplate’s fascinating layers and rocks seems ready to set off on her sixth mission, to the feature christened “Von Braun” and to the so-called “Promised Land” beyond, where many MER enthusiasts feel her ultimate destiny awaits…
Meanwhile, Oppy, half way around Mars, has had just as many missions of her own. As everyone now knows, Oppy’s landing on Mars was an unbelievable, against-the-odds interplanetary “Hole in one” – with all of the vast, open Meridiani Plain stretched out beneath her she landed slap bang in a small crater, later named “Eagle”. After studying a ledge-like outcrop of bedrock that appeared right in front of her nose the first time she opened her eyes, Oppy rolled out of the crater and headed for Endurance Crater. The entry into and exploration of Endurance was, in my mind, Oppy’s second mission, which she completed with great success, before heading south again, aiming for a much larger and potentially much more rewarding crater, Victoria, which called out to her controllers just as strongly as the Columbias had beckonedSpirit’s. But reaching Victoria meant crossing the almost Arrakian great dune sea of Meridiani, and here Oppy got stuck in a dune for what seemed like an eternity, before digging herself out and trekking on to Victoria.
Reaching Victoria has been Oppy’s – and in my opinion, the whole MER program’s – greatest achievement, its finest hour, and it was on the crumbling, gargoyle-rimmed edge of Victoria that Oppy began her third mission, a mission that was delayed by the same dust storm that forced Spirit into hibernation on the other side of Mars, at Gusev crater. Having survived the storm, Oppy rolled slowly up to the edge of the crater, then drove over the edge and down its slope towards a band of tantalisingly bright rock that might be the original “surface” of Mars that was blasted into pieces and buried by the impact that created Victoria all those millennia ago, and provide insight into the history of Mars. Finally, as she photographs, tests and examines the rocks within Victoria Crater, Oppy is fulfilling her role as a robot geologist, studying the red planet in advance of human explorers.
And after Victoria? Oppy will head to yet another feature on the horizon, explore and photograph yet another new landscape. Her fourth mission will have begun.
That’s why the MER mission is My Apollo.
And yet, despite all that they’ve achieved and shown us, people still say to me, at work, or when I do talks, “Exploring Mars isn’t worth the money! The money those rovers cost would be better spent here, on Earth.”
And you know what? I’m really, really sick and tired of hearing that.
The people who say that spend more per head peryear on pet food, cosmetics or junk food than they do on “space”. They have no right to lecture me because they’re people who never get tothe counter in a burger bar or pizza parlour and say “No, I’ll give the money to an African orphanage or an AIDS charity instead”. They never get to the front of a queue in a movie theatre and in a sudden attack of conscience declare to everyone else that they’re going to give their $15 admission price to a school in India. Likewise, whenever they rent a DVD of a Hollywood blockbuster they’re expressing support for their incredibly expensive business which is nothing more than entertainment. Anyone who went to see the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie was, in effect, happy to see £112m spent in a way that doesn’t advance humen culture or science in any way whatsoever. “Titanic” cost £125m, “Superman Returns” an incredible £134m. Did people who criticise space spending feel any sense of indignation at that use of money as they watched Leo and Kate get jiggy in that carriage, or Kevin Spacey hamming it up with a handful of kryptonite?
No, and I’m pretty sure that the people who criticise space spending don’t sit in their front room, or stand in the pub or on the terraces at a sports ground and, watching teams of £100m pampered, prima-donna footballers prance about kicking a ball to each other whilst trying not to ruin their haircuts, turn away in disgust at the extravagant use of money while people are dying in starvation of Dharfur.
So, space critics, do me a favour and spare me the self-righteous speeches, ok? It’s naive at best, and hypocritical at worst. Space exploration drives technological advances here on Earth, and has given us equipment used in hospitals to save lives, satellite technology, computers, weather forecasting and much, much more. If your Government – whoever you are and wherever you are – stopped all space expenditure right now, this moment, do you seriously believe they’d channel that (little) extra money into health care, social services or welfare? Would they use it for more nurses, or teachers, or police? Would they use it to renovate your town’s crumbling school or buy new equipment for its hospital? GET REAL! They’d use it to buy another few fighter planes, or cruise missiles, or a year’s supply of ammo for their army.
Or, more likely, as expenditure on space exploration is so small in comparative terms, they’d spend it on tax breaks for the already-rich, or to top-up their election cost war chests, or their own pensions. You’d see no benefit from it, but you would see a marked decrease in your standard of living and a change in your day to day life. Much less accurate weather forecasts; no mobile phone chats with your friends and family; no satellite TV movie channels; no news or sports reports from around the world; more expensive food as farmers are suddenly less able to grow and monitor their crops as efficiently. Wars would become more likely as the ability to watch over the activities of dangerous countries and regimes with surveillance satellites was lost. And without the civilian technological and engineering spin-offs from the space program your hospital, car and PC manufacturers would all suffer from slow downs – and dumbing-down – of R&D efforts.
But possibly worse, you’d lose the glorious portraits of the universe being taken by the Hubble Space Telescope; the glorious postcards of Saturn and its moons and rings being sent home by Cassini, and the awe-inspiring panoramas being taken by Spirit and Opportunity… all of which might not have any monetary value, or contribute physically or financially to our lives or society, but certainly provide us a sense of wonder and an appreciation of the sheer beauty of the amazing universe we live in.
But the very bottom line is that spaceflight and space exploration is NOT AN OPTION. We have no choice, we have to get off Earth because we can't live on it forever. We'll run out of room or resources, or get smacked by an asteroid, the only question is which will happen first. Space exploration is nothing less than mankind's insurance policy, his lifeboat.
It's a no-brainer. If you're stranded on a desert island you don't sit under a palm tree drinking milk from a coconut, you start hacking down trees to build a raft. So, here we are, on a planetwith melting ice caps, diminishing resources, a rocketing population and inconveniently truthful global warming. Do we just sit on the sofa in our socks and underwear, playing on our XBoxes and listening to our iPods as the forests die and the waves lap around and then over our feet, or do we start working towards making or finding other homes "out there"?
Whatever the real reasons for its genesis - Superpower politics, Presidential ego or national pride - Apollo proved that Mankind can be a space-faring species if and when he wants to be. How do we get to Mars? Easy: we decide we want to, and are going to, and then do what we have to do to go.
Realistically though, that's not going to happen anytime soon because no leader or leaders have the vision or passion necessary to kick start a martian Apollo, and I'm far from convinced that the Vision for Space Exploration will lead to bootprints being left in the red planet's dust. But the MERs have revolutionised our view of Mars and laid firm foundations for the first manned mission, whenever that happens.
And at the end of it all, that’s what I think makes the MER mission most like the Apollo program, and makes it My Apollo. They have got into my head, and the heads of many other people. Each and every day I get up and after feeding the cat, putting the kettle on and switching on the TV for the early morning news I fire up my PC, go online, and check out the latest images from Mars, just as I’m sure, in the 70s, people following the Apollo missions put on their TVs and bought papers to let them see new images from the Moon taken by the Apollo astronauts. Ever since their landing days I’ve followed the missions of Spirit and Oppy on the pages of Exploratorium, NASA websites and the Unmanned Spaceflight.com forum, seen almost every single image they’ve sent back, and have never, ever taken them for granted or felt uninspired by them.
In the past 4 years looking at “the dailies” from Mars has become as natural and essential part of my life as walking, breathing or eating, justas space enthusiasts living in the 60s and 70s placed so much importance on following the news about crew selections, landing site decisions and hardware problems and then the activities on the Moon itself. Apollo was a different age in a different world. There was no internet in those days of course, no astronaut or Mission Control blogs to get information from… I often wonder how different things would have been if there had been those things; maybe we would have seen an Apollo 18, 19 and 20 after all…
Just as Apollo was to space enthusiasts and the public alike in the 60s and 70s, the MERs have become part of daily life in the 2000s for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people all around the world. When Spirit and Oppy finally fail, they will leave huge holes behind, and as exciting as the mission of the “Mars Surface Laboratory” will be, the MERs have been so new and exciting that I’m not sure that those holes will be filled until astronauts return to the Moon around 2020 or reach Mars in 20Whenever.
When the first man or woman sets foot on Mars, backing slowly down the ladder in front of a holo-TV audience of several billion, chances are they'll have been inspired to follow that path by the success of the MERs a generation earlier. The first human being to walk on Mars will have been a space geek kid in the early 2000s, who sat in their room for hours on end, staring at a flickering computer screen at one raw Exploratorium image after another, stitching them into panoramic mosaics, colourising them in Photoshop and posting them on internet forums like Unmanned Spaceflight.com for all the world to see.
I won't be that brave explorer. But Spirit and Oppy have been My Apollo. And I’ll miss them when they’re gone.
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I totally agree with you about the rovers. The MERs are amazing engineering and science work.
I am a space lover as much as you. I wouldn't mind if countries and their governments spent loads of money in space technology and exploration. Nothing would make me happier.
However, when you point that space critics shouldn't criticize space exploration merely by the fact that you that think they aren't contributing to increase the wellbeing of the human race themselves, you immediately lose the discussion. This comes from the fact that your argument does nothing to emphasize the good things that space exploration might bring us. You're lowering the quality of the argument to the point of a childish discussion, like: "You can't tell me that I am doing something wrong because you are also doing something wrong!".
I hope I was able to express my point. It's just so frequent to hear that the biggest argument that "space folks" have is merely something like: "because we love it!", and keeping that way is hard to captivate more and more people into our side.
André -
I was born in 1965 too! Tammy
10/22/07 6:15 PM
Stu