First it’s getting to Mars. A friend sent me this Utube video, a simulation of the Curiosity launch, flight, and touchdown. It appears to have been created at NASA, as it has real scenes in the control center. If you haven’t gotten it yet, then take a look, it beats most of the sci-fi films you pay to see.
Wouldn’t it have been fun to be the subcontractor, probably SpaceX, who flew along side and filmed the flight? And what about the air bags around the landing module? Just like the landing in Red Planet. In fact they should have spliced in that part of the sci-fi film. Probably couldn’t get the rights without paying bundles of money. The simulation does fine. Wonder what it cost them?
And, yes, I am very critical of sci-fi movies and TV shows, classifying most of them as candidates for Deep Six, leaving these few in the great category: Alien (original), Predator (original), Red Planet (Val Kilmer), Fifth Element (Milla Jovovich, how could you not like it?), Galaxy Quest (better than the Star Trek films it satirizes), Men in Black (all of them), Mars Attacks. and I can’t believe I’m saying this, the second Battlestar Galactica (beats Lost, a bitterly disappointing conclusion), The Island of Dr. Moreau, another good one with Kilmer and Brando, and Grimm is better than Fringe. Well you may not like my list and may not be able to figure out just what I like, but neither can I.
So back to Mars. Recent observations [see article here= Mars Ice] have seen dry ice snowing down on the southern Martian ice cap (so which is north and which is south on Mars?). There is also regular ice on Mars’s ice caps as well.
First thing that came to my mind is that we just need an ice age to clean the CO2 out of our atmosphere. Ironically, Mars needs to keep the CO2 in its atmosphere to warm the planet since its polar temperature is -193 Fahrenheit, the temperature required to freeze CO2 and why it snows dry ice.
Then I wondered, are we in sync with Mars? When Mars snows dry ice, does Earth’s average temperature also drop? Could studying Mars help us understand our climate? Our climate is complicated by water and air, their associated currents, biological and human activity. Mars has none of these complications, so observing Mars might reveal the pure solar system effects on climate. Maybe we need to send a missile to Mars that is equipped with a MIRV-like warhead, delivering probes in an array over the planet’s surface. These would gather data to model the Red Planet’s climate and hopefully provide us with a calibration point for Earth’s climate.
So which great sci-fi films did I miss? Oh yeah, good luck Curiosity, live long and find life.