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No, not the redhead, the NASA Mars Probe. After 296 days, 422 million miles, the Mars Phoenix Lander made the first successful soft landing on Mars since the Viking landers in the 1970s. Over the next few years, we're going to learn so much about Mars, and by extension the world around us. The data from the Phoenix Lander is going to give us information that will be hugely valuable should we ever decide to send humans to Mars. (I'm not going to get into the whole "Manned exploration is (not) useful debate other than to say: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Some things, machines just can't do.)
What got us there? Not prayer. Kneeling in a building, mumbling to the magical sky man did not get us there. Thinking happy thoughts did not get Phoenix to Mars.
What got Phoenix to Mars?
Science
So the next time Ben Stein and the rest of his ilk are trying to make science out as nothing but a shop of horrors, look up in the sky, and think about a rather fragile bit of physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, working tirelessly to send us knowledge that no amount of praying and bible-thumping ever could.
You want to spend your life on your knees fearing the universe and denying what's out there? That's your damage. Me, I'm going to be learning something and doing a little happy dance every time we reach a little farther.
Or, to paraphrase Animal House...on your knees and terrified is no way to go through life.
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Science, Science is worth the money, Science rules!, NASA, Mars Phoenix Lander
Posted by John C. Welch at 21:30 | Permalink
Comments
I feel compelled to remind people they, too, can wear the succinct form of this post on their very shirts!
Wil Wheaton does it ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/puja/1260405514/ ), so why don't you?
Posted by:
cthellis 
|
May 26, 2008 2:30 AM
They were going to wind up the first "Creation Science" symposium in St. Louis in 1986 with a debate as to whether the Earth revolves around the sun or vice-versa, but they couldn't find any one of their number willing to defend the Copernican theory, even in fun. I wonder how the navigation on a mission like this would have worked out if their crap had been getting "equal time" in science classes ever since, the way they wanted?
Posted by:
Gatesbasher |
May 26, 2008 3:22 AM
That XKCD slogan looks great on the back of my iPod touch.
Posted by:
Moeskido |
May 26, 2008 11:06 AM
