Please sign this petetion if you feel it is at all significant for manned missions to mars to take place. The mars Society has already pushed NASA to launch a man to mars by 2020 but we need MORE focus on mars. Make this age the age of true and awesome exploration, and let it be known through history.
Thank you.
Name:
Anonymous2006-10-01 15:02
This seeming dichotomy makes sense when you consider the political -- rather than the scientific -- climate around Mars today. While radical ideas like the possibility of artificial structures on Mars and even our own well considered (and substantially verified) Mars Tidal Model are rejected out-of-hand by the NASA funded "scientific establishment," quiet, high level political interest in these ideas remains at an all time high -- even in the wake of the "9-11" attacks. We have it on good word that it was a high level White House figure that demanded that NASA take the April 2001 full-face Face image in the first place, and this is consistent with the earlier well documented interest of the Bush family in our work.
NASA, clearly reluctant to go along with the demand, took the image, then withheld it for two months while they wrote a highly negative "hit piece" on the subject and created a fraudulent "MOLA image" to reinforce their fallacious arguments. Maybe it's coincidence, but within a few months of the publication of our response, NASA Administrator Dan (silence is) Goldin suddenly decided that "retirement looks like a good option." President Bush has subsequently replaced him with Sean O'Keefe. O'Keefe has close ties to the Bush family and Vice-President Dick Cheney, and can be counted on to carry out the wishes of these two senior Administration officials in his new NASA post.
We strongly suspect it is this change in leadership which has led to the change in attitude that will make the Face an early target of the Odyssey suite of instruments, along with the promise of an "immediate" release of the data. And perhaps these results will be used to advance the agenda that the Bush administration is clearly laying out. Just a few days ago the President announced that he had budgeted about $1 billion dollars for the development in the very short term (five years) of orbiting nuclear reactors that could be used to power electrical ion engines, or other propulsive technologies that will dramatically cut travel times (or dramatically increase payloads) to distant worlds -- like Mars.
And -- back to that timing thing, again -- around this Mars mission, of all of them, NASA has made a big deal about a unique concert and CD, commissioned "in honor of the Mars Odyssey Mission." The concert, by Vangelis, performed at the Temple of Zeus in Greece on June 28th, 2001, is aptly named "Mythodea" -- an obvious reference to the role of "Mars" in our terrestrial myths. Shades of Hoagland's own case for a "Terrestrial Connection" in his recently updated 2001 Edition of "The Monuments of Mars." Never before in its history has NASA celebrated a concert in honor to a planetary mission. So, what makes Mars Odyssey so special ...? Maybe, because it has finally been decided that this will be the Mission which will actually confirm the presence of ancient Martian civilization ... with profound terrestrial implications ... at Cydonia, on Mars.
So we are hopeful that we are about to enter a new era where radical ideas are simply tested, openly and honestly, rather than being squashed under the weight of a self-serving and protectionist "scientific establishment." Maybe, just maybe, somebody has decided it's time to admit we've been "a little bit pregnant" for a long time.