A Lot of Wasted Space

The Hubs, LW, 1/2 Point and I all watched the Curiosity land on Mars live last night with much of the rest of the world. What a huge accomplishment and a huge project.  2.5 billion dollars, more than 5,000 people from 37 states, over 10 years of planning, creation and engineering, 352 million miles and just over 8 months of travel time so we can learn as much as we can about our neighboring planet.

If there were alien life on Mars, the smaller rovers we'd sent previously could have been overlooked.  But how does an alien race overlook something the size of an SUV landing on their planet?  I kept waiting for the first pictures to be of an Alien holding a sign with the picture of earth crossed out.

Or maybe a whole bunch of them protesting!

Of course, that's not the kind of life they're looking for there, but as our exploration into space continues to move forward, and our technology advances you can't help but wonder in all of this great big universe, could there be life as developed as ours out there?  

To quote Jodie Foster in Contact "If we are alone, it sure would be a lot of wasted space."   Let's hope this is just the first step in a much bigger journey.  That like the moon landing before it, that our kids and their kids will be inspired by what we learn here, by the huge accomplishments we make, and continue to push the boundaries of what we know our universe to be.

To continue the journey to "go where no man has gone before".

And let's hope that any aliens we find are friendly.  Amen.

Seriously.. Thoughts