The Phoenix Lander has spent the last ten months flying to Mars, and a couple of days ago it, well, landed. The mission is to boldly go where no man has gone before and dig up the dirt.
That's right, we spent millions of dollars sending a toy truck to Mars.
I know what you're thinking. Last time I was complaining about how we haven't done anything cool lately, and now I'm complaining that this isn't cool enough. Well guess what, skippy, it isn't.
I watched the Nasa channel while the Phoenix was landing. It was exciting- You could practically feel the nerdgasm that was going on in mission control. Then I started doing a little research.
July 20, 1976. That's when we did this for the first time with the Viking Lander. It did pretty much the same thing in the same way. Remember, 1976 was before the Apple II computer, way before the PC, eight years before the first Mac, and it was THIRTY TWO YEARS AGO.
So way to go, Nasa. You've repeated a mission that your fathers did in their generation.
Sure, it's neat to run a remote control car from millions of miles away. Hey, it's neat to fly my little remote controlled helicopter around my living room, too. What Nasa is doing is basically the same thing, just on a grander scale. You wanna impress me? SEND A PERSON THERE. Robots don't impress people, unless they're the Impressbot 3007, which was specifically designed to impress people.
Long story short, we should have been living on the moon 20 years ago, and walking on Mars at least 15 years ago.
But anyway, cool picture from Mars.
I'm a month late in reporting this, but guess what? Someone from EVERY CONTINENT IN THE WORLD HAS READ THE MANLY MAN CANDLE COMPANY BLOG. I got this email on December 22 of 2008.
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