A SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THIS ISSUE:

This issue is dedicated to the memory of a very special friend and fellow veteran who, sadly, passed away as I was preparing it…so he never got his usual “first crack” at critiquing whatever I produced. As a highly skilled and erudite writer in his own right, his reactions to my efforts were of great value. I like to think he would have applauded for this one.

Requiesat im pacem, Patrick.

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DRIVING AROUND MARS WITH A ONE TON CAR
(….NASA’s men of La Mancha….reached for that impossible…Mars)

We’ve landed rovers on Mars before, the first one not much bigger than a radio controlled toy. Our second effort let us put a pair of twin “go-carts” to scoot around to see what might or might not be there on that neighboring planet. A neighbor with tantalizing suggestions it might have similar DNA to our own Mother Earth.

But on this past Sunday, NASA’s men of La Mancha finally reached for that impossible Mars, by safely landing in one piece a one ton car on its surface. A sweet six-wheeler ride  which will now allow us to drive around it, with every kind of scientific amenity on board, for the next two years. Now that makes the label – Made in America – really mean something!

This a level of technical and engineering performance that would warrant a cartload of gold medals if it were an Olympic event.

The question is….does anyone else here on Earth really care? It’s doubtful, most are too busy killing each other, or otherwise screwing with their neighbors, to either know or understand what such an event might mean for our human race. That is, a “Star Trek” age may be just around the corner, and before anyone realizes it folks will be booking their reservations on Mars-bound “cruise ships”. The Vegas, Atlantic City, Macao, and similar gamblers’ havens will all become has-beens (perhaps even ghost towns with weed-choked boardwalks and casino lobbies).

Farfetched? Maybe so… but there’s already a South African billionaire who’s thinking in terms of setting up a pioneering condo development on Mars, perhaps as early as 2025, and at prices well within the reach of our much abused….Middle Class.

I’m inclined to support such “impossible dreams” if for no other reason that it might get rid of a lot of our excess “dead wood” population in the process, leaving the rest of us left behind here on Earth….with a lot more lebensraum and, perhaps, a much “greener” planet besides.

Well, I can remember being a passenger on the second jetliner flight across the Pacific, and that was only some fifty years back, and now, here we are, thinking about zipping off to Mars within the next 15-20 years.

Tempus sure does….fugit!

CENTURION