Hype on Mars-again

Another Mars robotic vehicle is about to land on the lifeless red planet, this one costing 2,500,000,000 dollars. Its aim, as usual, is to look for signs of life on Mars.  A pointless waste of money, material and skill that could be far better employed here on Earth.

For details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory or Google Mars landing probe.

The goals are primarily to ‘..determine whether Mars could ever have supported life’ and to check out the possibilities for a future manned mission to Mars.

This is the 40^th Mars mission, and is due to land on August 6^th, Hiroshima Day. Most Mars probes have failed, one of the most spectacular failures being the (not at all) cryptically named Beagle 2 which was to have landed on Christmas  Day 2003. The British team leader, professor Pillinger, said

"HMS Beagle was the ship that took Darwin on his voyage around the world in the 1830s and led to our knowledge about life on Earth making a real quantum leap. We hope Beagle 2 will do the same thing for life on Mars."

I would not go so far as to credit divine intervention for the total failure of the Beagle 2 mission given the false and arrogant claims made for this Mars lander and the day of its planned touchdown, but confess to feeling a profound sense of satisfaction when Beagle 2 crashed and burned on Christmas Day, when millions of people who know better that Professor Pillinger were worshipping the Lord of Life. In fact as I recall I laughed my arse off.

The materialists are determined to keep trying until they can find some alleged evidence of life arising elsewhere. They know it could not have arisen on earth. But still the rash claims, massive expense, steady drip of propaganda and the desperate search go on.

Men will never walk on Mars. Better by far to abandon the whole pointless exercise and read C S Lewis brilliant science fiction trilogy instead, starting with Out of the Silent Planet which is set on earth and an imagined Mars whose inhabitants are wiser than us. Like Darwin’s speculations, it is fiction, but much more satisfying and enlightening fiction.