Earth Invades Mars

Mars fascinates me. Always has.

As a kid I read everything I could about Mars, both fact and fiction. Mars flicks were a staple of my childhood -- monsters, popcorn and a dark theatre made for perfect Saturday afternoons. Willy Ley, Wernher von Braun, Chestley Bonestell were magic to me, the stuff of fables, of dreams. The dreams, played out in the sky over White Sands and within the pages of science fiction, aimed at Mars and beyond.

Then, as we stood on the moon, at the edge of the open door, the dream died.

The dream died at the hands of short-sighted politicians, bean-counters whose vision of the future did not extend past the next election. More importantly, it also died in the heart and spirit of the American people.

Now, as the tinker-toy Martian Rover creeps slowly over the surface of an alien world, the dream is stirring again.

For a glorious week, the lead stories on the news were about the Pathfinder Mission to Mars, the struggles aboard the Mir Space Station, the return of Space Shuttle Columbia to orbiting science. Space was everywhere; in breakfast conversation, over coffee at work, in papers, magazines and, of course, television. Images from Mars appeared on television sets all over the world at the same time they appeared on monitors at Mission Control. And along with the Martian landscape, we saw the people who worked to make it happen.

People. That's the key to the dream. The intellect can appreciate the complexities of a mission, but only emotion can grasp the heart and soul of the project. Every time I see a scientist break into a big grin I feel like pumping my fist in the air. Yes!

These are real people, seeing their dreams come true. Their excitement is contagious. They may speak in meters and kilograms while pointing at incomprehensible charts, but the language of their joy is universal.

The message that comes across is that science is cool. It's okay to be consumed by charts, test tubes, endless sheets of data. At the end of all this is discovery.

(I do wonder if there is a sign on the door to the television studio to remind them to remove their pocket protectors before going on camera.)

I've worked with people like this for years. It's great that so many people can share this moment with them, see what they are feeling. Even the press corps are caught up in it, much the way they were during the height of Apollo. I can still remember the cheers in the press stands as the Saturn V rockets lifted off to the moon.

The moon. I have to admit I'm a proponent of manned exploration. There are practical sides to this. In complex missions, things can happen, often very simple things go wrong. If people are on the site, chances are they can fix them. The Hubble Space telescope needed people. Skylab needed people. Mir needed people.

The intangable side of the dream is people. People out there, expanding our existence beyond this fragile globe.

I covered the launch of Apollo 17 for National Public Radio. A large number of science fiction writers were at the Cape to watch this last moon flight. It was the last time men would leave this earth to walk on an alien world for a very, very long time. As I interviewed them, the writers spoke of this and that, but mostly they spoke with sadness at the end of a dream, the end of a great adventure.

As the rocket split the night and turned the horizon into a glowing dawn, someone pressed a glass of champagne into my hands. I stood away from the press bleachers, on the edge of the lagoon and as the roaring, buffeting sound rolled across the marsh to hit me, I toasted them one last time with tears in my eyes. Godspeed, Apollo 17.

Mars seemed light years away.

And now Mars is back. Is it possible that the unmanned probes will rekindle the dream for manned spaceflight, capture the imagination of the public?

I sincerely hope so.

Mars Links

The latest news and images from Pathfinder can be found here. At peak times this site can be very busy. Some of the faster mirror sites that have been set up are Compuserve, Digital, and Sun Microsystems.

The main Pathfinder page, with mirror links, can be reached here. There's lots of background information for the mission on these pages.

The Pathfinder Press Kit is available in PDF format.

Live Video and Audio from NASA Select TV can be reached from these sites.

The Whole Mars Catalog, which is full of information, has a special Landing Configuration.

The Astrobiology Web has a lot of material on Mars. This is a great site.

A collection of Mars images can be found at The Viking Image Archive. Readers will note the Barsoom reference in the URL.

Looking for signs of life on Mars? Check out the Mars Meteorite Home Page

Like maps and surface photos? Check this out: Mars Explorer for the Armchair Astronaut.

Click here to go to my page of NASA and Space Links.

Books

I tried to compile a list of Mars books, but I just got swamped. Until I can get to it, check out the following:

The Whole Mars Catalog has prepared a list of Mars in Fiction.

Movies

And just because the mood hit me, I dug up a sample of selected Mars movies (the links are to their listing in The Internet Movie Database, which is a cool place to waste a few hours):

Aelita (1924)
Alien Contamination (1981)
Alpha Incident, The (1977)
Angry Red Planet, The (1959)
Capricorn One (1978)
Conquest of Space (1955)
Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938)
Flight to Mars (1951)
Flying Disc Man from Mars (1951)
Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster (1965)
Guerre planetari (1961)
Hasty Hare, The (1952)
Invaders From Mars (1953)
Invaders From Mars (1986)
It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)
Just Imagine (1930)
Lobster Man from Mars (1989)
Mad As Mars Hare (1963)
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Mars Attacks the World (1938)
Project Shadowchaser III (1995)
Queen of Blood (1966)
Red Planet Mars (1952)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)
Rocket Bye Baby (1956)
Rocketship X-M (1950)
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
Total Recall (1990)
Vampirella (1996) (V)
War of the Worlds (1953)
Wizard of Mars, The (1965)
Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952)