This week's "Carnival of Space" is now up on the excellent space4commerce website, and I've a post there this week about the tracks our rover buddies have made on Mars. I hope some of you will take a moment to look at it.

Even if you don't like my piece there's lots of interesting and thought-provoking reading from other people on there!

I have had a piece accepted for this week's "Carnival of Space", all about the MERs. I'd be interested to know if anyone else feels this way about the program, so I could write a follow-up piece...

Well said.
Another "betweener" (1966) .

Well done indeed, Stu!

Late Baby-Boomer myself (1963).

My only gripe is that brandishing MER as ones own 'Apollo' is suggestive that you would be happy with MER being the pinnacle of an entire generation's exploration of space. I wouldn't be. MER is my 'Surveyor'....I still await my 'Apollo'. I am as fond of S&O as anyone can be of spaceflight hardware - but I want bootprints in our wheeltracks.

DOug

I think it's pretty obvious that I wouldn't be either. You heard me speak at that Kendal astro soc meeting, and know me well enough by now to know that there are very few people as rabidly passionate about manned Mars exploration as me

The point I was making - which maybe wasn't made clear enough - was that because of when I was born I might conceivably "miss" a manned Mars program, which would mean MER was as close as I ever got to one.

I can undertand Stu but my perspective will always be that we are part of a process and not its conclusion, therefore, any step taken, previous to my birth (1974), during my short passage through this wonderful planet and after I've returned to dust again will always be faced with a smile...
Who knows if my genes will not reach Mars or beyond? For me that's what counts...evolution...and that we witness it everyday...fantastic, isn't it?

True enough on so many levels, Rui...change happens, but usually not fast enough to perceive fully over a human lifetime, the accelerating pace of technological advance notwithstanding.

What Stu seems to be trying to say (not presuming to speak for him, of course) is that the MERs were a transitional, perhaps even transformational moment in space exploration. The MERs made Mars much, much more than a rock garden, just as the Apollo flights made the Moon a "real" place, if you get my drift: a landscape, a physical reality with variations, a setting, if you will.

Rovers really are the next best thing to being there, and that's unfortunately all that we who live now will ever be able to experience...but such a gift it is! We have seen the unknown...hell, we see it now nearly every day from several worlds. Safe to say that the spaceflight enthusiasts of the early 20th Century who have not survived to the current era would have given just about anything to be in our present position....hopefully, that will also be a direct analogy to our feelings as our children and grandchildren someday touch what we first beheld.

I would trade places with them gladly as well, but I am also happy and most grateful that I am among the first to really see new worlds...

Thanks for the feedback guys, appreciate it.

nprev: you're right, that was one angle I was coming from. The MERs have given my generation its own Mars. Previous generations had the "Lowell Mars", of canals, vegetation and martians; the "Mariner Mars", a dead world of craters, volcanoes and mountains covered with the dust of millennia; the "Viking Mars", a world of emerging beauty and stunning geology. My generation has the "MER Mars", when we've discovered Mars to be a world far more dramatic and beautiful and complex and fascinating then we wver dared dream. My generation has, through the MERs, walked into craters, along ridges, up and down hills and across dune-rippled deserts, seen sunrises and sunsets in lavendar skies, and shooting stars skip across starry skies more perfect and clean than any seen on Earth. And Rui, you're right too: not a day goes by when I don't look at the images coming down from the MERs - and Odyssey, and MRO, and Express - and thank the universe that I live in a time when I can participate in the voyages of these new robot Magellans, Cooks and Darwins from the comfort of my own home, with a cat (see avatar left) curled up in my arm fast asleep. It is just, literally, magical.

But just for the record, no I wouldn't be happy if the MERs were some kind of "pinnacle of achievement for my generation". I want that to be putting men and women on Mars within my lifetime, preferably before the 2030s so I'm not so old I risk missing the historic first step because of a dash to the loo, when my bladder demands emptying for the tenth time in an hour...

...solution: 19" plasma screen remote monitor in a maritime-rated enclosure, strategically mounted in the loo!

Thanks for the thought, man. Have to start thinking about things like this, 'cause I WILL be approaching the golden years (67) in 2030....

I'm honored to be hosting this week's Carnival of Space. There are some great links this week about Kaguya, Rosetta, Comet Holmes and more.

Great job on this week's Carnival. Thanks for using my post "Precious Blue"

Edelblau, Edelblau, Every morning you greet me....

I like the CoS's - I doubt I read half the entries posted in each one, but it introduces me to blogs and sites I otherwise wouldn't know about.

Doug