[meteorite-list] The Human Presence in the Solar System
From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:19:10 -0500 Message-ID: <002743F2913B47CFB0D73EF127CF1900_at_ATARIENGINE2> As of today, we have a robot explorer in orbit around Mercury with a year's rent paid up (and hopefully the lease will be renewed if it does good). We also have a presence in orbit at the planet Venus, working there since 2006, and mappers clicking away in our own backyard, at the Moon. Mars is crawled with rovers, orbited by imagers, and being mapped to a sharper resolution that we have charted our own planet, and more of our machines are readying to join them. Out at Saturn, Cassini, a plutonium-powered robot will carry on its long investigation of that entire miniature solar system out there. And Spring is starting on Titan! We have been poking our noses into comets this year, after smacking them to see what happens, and snatching pieces and bringing them home. This summer, another of our robots will visit a large asteroid (No. 4) for the first time. In a year or so it will move on to the largest asteroid, while the most ambitious of long-haul robots dashes toward Pluto. We will be at Ceres when it gets to Pluto... and Cassini will still be working Saturn. There are only three planets we're not already at nor going to. We are all over the place. Does this qualify for a Golden Age? (The first one being the Voyager Grand Tour.) If the Aliens are watching, they probably have the Sol System in their books as one that already has a dominant species, have written it off for colonization, and are getting ready to move on. No, the Aliens are not the problem. I worry instead about the Wise Men of the Potomac who want to beach the fleet and burn it on the shore in order to save the Republic from the perils of exploration. Sterling K. Webb Received on Sat 19 Mar 2011 01:19:10 AM PDT |
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