Mars, bitches!

When I become Monarch of the Hegemon, this is the sort of thing my Minister of Important Information will be serving as front page fare...

June 6, 2005
Stuck for a Month, Mars Rover Finally Gets Back on Track
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PASADENA, Calif., June 5 (AP) - The Mars rover Opportunity resumed rolling freely across the Martian surface on Saturday after scientists freed it from a sand dune where it had been mired for more than a month, NASA officials said.
...

"We've got a working rover on Mars that cost $400 million" to build and keep working, said Jim Erickson, the project manager. "I'd like to wear it out rather than lose it."
...
The wheels started slipping April 26 during a 295-foot trip. While trying to drive over a foot-high sand dune, the explorer stopped moving, its wheels hub-deep in soft soil.

Engineers spent weeks with a mock-up of the Opportunity, figuring out what commands could free it. ...

But on Saturday morning, data showed that the Opportunity was free and had moved several feet across the dune.

The Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, have been exploring Mars since January 2004. Both rovers have long outlasted their primary, three-month missions.

First, simply, Excellent!

If you don’t “get” space flight, space exploration or what it means to have a human object rolling across the surface of another world, acting as our proxy and laying the groundwork for our greatest adventure, then I feel sorry for you. Weaponizing space? Unreservedly BAD idea. Exploration, research and discovery? Unreservedly GOOD ideas.

We are an infant species, and the time has come for us to begin to take our leave of the nest and make our way in the wider Universe. And to do so without murdering Mom.

Second, please note that this actually is rocket science, and how well it was done. The probes have already outlived their mission, and yet NASA engineers spent months of time and care to gently coax it away from danger and back on its way.

Third, just for fun, transpose over our Iraqi Debacle a few of the key phrases from this NASA episode and see just how radically a proper, critical and scientific mindset changes things.

“"We've got a working rover on Mars that cost $400 million" to build and keep working

And

“Engineers spent weeks with a mock-up of the Opportunity, figuring out what commands could free it.”

Imagine if the same time and care had been spent figuring out and carefully planning the Bush Administration’s 200-billion-dollar Iraq Folly as was spent on a 400-million-dollar-probe.

Imagine if NASA scientists were told that the plan to “Shock and Awe” the rover out of the dune had already been decided by scientifically illiterate, faith-based ideologues in the White House long before anyone actually knew what the facts on the ground were.

Imagine that a goon-squad led by the likes of John Bolton was dispatched to JPL, and scientists were bitch-slapped around and told to djinn-up “facts” that supported the Administrations hare-brained scheme, and to ignore any inconvenient realities that didn’t toe the ideological-line.

Imagine that the people that warned Bush that he was about to make a monumental mistake were fired or marginalized.

Imagine that before the hardest part of the task had even begun, Bush spent a billion dollars to land the Space Shuttle in front of a cheering crowd and step out in a Space Suit and announce “Mission Accomplished”.

Imagine that beneath all of the hype and hoopla, the actual Bush Plan for freeing “Opportunity” was “Gun 'er...then pop the clutch & see what happens. Works on mah pickup down ‘ta the ranch all the time.”

Image Bush had no idea where Mars was. Of what the probe was designed to do. Or what “very, very far away” meant. Or what might happen is he got it wrong. Or that if he got it wrong the results would be irreversibly disastrous. But was still 100% cock-sure of his plan because God had spoken to him.

Image he went ahead and did it anyway, and imagine every single fucking thing that could have possibly gone wrong, did. Irrefutably, horribly, bloodily wrong.

Preventably and predictably wrong.

Imagine the financial cost of his fuck up -- originally projected at nearly free of charge -- was 200 billion dollars and climbing, with no end in sight.

Imagine that going on 1,700 Americans died because he got it wrong, and lied about it. And that number grew every, single day.

Imagine that his response was to give Special Super Ooper Duper Medals to everyone that helped aid and abet the clusterfuck.

Imagine that the United States' role as unchallenged leader of Space Exploration lay in ruins around the world.

Image this epic fuck-up actually drove our allies away, and gave incalculable aid and comfort to our enemies.

Imagine if 51% of the voters punished this colossal, indisputable and VERY public fuck-up by not only refusing to acknowledge was starkly and plainly staring them right in the face, but by giving the person who precipitated the entire calamity his job back, and calling anyone who spoke the obvious truth a traitor.

That’d be pretty wild. And who knows? Maybe if that’s how the fate of Opportunity were actually sealed, some reporter somewhere in the United State of America might find it interesting enough to write about.

But I tend to doubt it.