Wednesday, August 08, 2012

No little green men

I'm so old I remember being young when the prevailing meme in popular culture was that the moon was made of green cheese. We sang songs and watched cartoons about the man in the moon. Even today, if you know what to look for, you can see his face when the moon is full. Then we actually landed on the moon and no one talked about green cheese again.

The myth of little green men who lived on Mars persisted a little longer but technology overran the visions of mad science fiction writers and dragged us into a much drabber reality. Nonetheless, I'm thrilled and astounded that in my lifetime I went from seeing a monkey orbit the earth to seeing a real life photograph of a space rover landing on a planet in our solar system.

How astonishing is that? Honestly surprised that I lived long enough to see a space rover named Curiosity, sending back panoramic photos of Mars. Featured landing photo via TPM Mars gallery and more here.

The reality from the surface of the planet is so bleak but -- real life photos. Incredible.

2 Comments:

At 3:49 PM , Anonymous Marcus said...

Isn't it amazing that in an age of innocense everything is possible. The future is only limited to the imagination. Comic books and late night horror shows whittled me into believing and vowing in 1961 that when I grew up I would be the real Batman.
As I matured, I forgot that and wanted to shoot tigers and smoke cigars. So far, I am batting .333, so that aint bad.
Reading sci-fi back then, I enjoyed the story, "Something Wicked This Way Comes." I recently re-read it, and it was all the same like before, scared me because it really could happen. Then Ray Bradbury died. So with the Rover landing on Mars, and photographing nothing, more dreams are destroyed.
It's easy to believe in the tangible things in life. It's my job now to tell my grandkids that the moon used to be made of green cheese, and the man in the moon is hiding because of the astronauts landing there. Since the pictures shows nothing seems to be on Mars, it only means the little green people live underground.

 
At 4:33 PM , Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Hey Marcus. I'm sorely disappointed that there are no little green men. Another childhood dream dashed. But I like the idea that they're just hiding.

 

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