How ironic is it that previous landings beamed back pictures of a lifeless, desolate planet; a place where (as far as we know) life never began, while Ray Bradbury wrote of Man striving to Mars to escape the threat (and eventually actual) nuclear war which turned the Earth into a lifeless, smoldering cinder?
Bradbury, and before him Burroughs, wrote of martian deserts, but ones that contained life, and a sentient race. Their stories ignited dreams and fantasies in millions; many of the scientists and engineers who have worked in NASA to develop and launch these probes grew up dreaming of one day traveling to the Red Planet.
Yet, in the same year that we have just achieved an engineering marvel, sending a craft on an 8 month + journey covering 325 million miles, our shared dream of one day landing a human on Mars is further away than ever.
Though we no longer face the imminent threat of nuclear war, terrorism, and especially bio-terrorism by the hands of a few individuals threatens us more than the Russians or Chinese ever did. And our Space Shuttle fleet has been retired; no more does man travel into space in a re-usable vehicle.
Bradbury would be both thrilled at this latest achievement, yet melancholy at the thought that while we have robots on Mars, the dream of boys digging their toes into the red sands of Mars is further away from reality than ever.
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