The Weather on Mars

Have I blogged about this before?

Perhaps so... or perhaps I only just intended to.

This will be quick... with little fact-checking and research, relying on memory.

I would LOVE to visit Mars!

The weather?  Well, it's a cold, small, desert planet, with amazing features like a mountain that dwarfs any on Earth, and some pretty red desert landscape.

Would I enjoy a trip to Mars?

No way!

Why not?

Well, it would take 2.5 years to get there.  It has something to do with timing and the orbit of the planet Mars in comparison with the orbit of the planet Earth.

2.5 years in a space craft... it's like 2.5 years in prison.   Can you imagine being in a building (we'll call the space craft a "building" out of kindness... though it's probably not as big as the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey) for 2.5 years?  Not being allowed outside?  That would get old pretty quick.

Would there be artificial gravity inside the craft on this 2.5 year voyage?  There'd need to be!  The long-voyage Cosmonauts all had to be carried from their spacecraft.  All but one, who was religious about exercising fanatically with rubber ropes, doing deep knee bends in zero-gravity.  He walked off.  The rest... carried off for lack of muscle strength and bone density.

What is someone on board takes ill?  How can they get to the hospital?  Well... they're already there, since that's all the hospital they're going to get.

Okay... but what if you get to go with your closest friends?

Sure... remember that long road trip with your closest friends?  How close were you at the end of that week? Ready to part ways?  Well... this trip is 2.5 years long.

The facts may not all be correct, but the feeling is mine... no trips to Mars...  I'll enjoy the red planet remotely with robots and cameras and video and sound.

Oh... but how wonderful it would be stand on Mars?  It would be awesome... I would love to go to Mars.

I just wouldn't want to GO there.

Then I should say I'd love to BE on Mars... but not go there.

Please Deposit Seventy-Five Cents

Why can't I make up my mind and stick with it?

There's someone standing right outside this phone booth looking in... they have so many more people to place calls to than I...  and yet I just stay in here, making call after call after call.

Why am I so selfish?

Get out, boy, there's only room for one at a time!

Just

From a 7-year-old boy (at least I'd estimate him at 7, that's how he behaves) in reference to a rabbit he's seen on display in the window:

I tried to be its friend.  But that didn't work.

I tried to be its admiring fan.  That didn't work either.

I tried to go back in time and never walk past that window!  No luck there either.

What do I do now? 

It finally happened

The same thing that is happening to the guy in the blue shirt also happened to me today.

It's a dark day.  Very inclement.  I don't like it.

However, I thought I'd report it since the information could be useful to a person, helping them to realize that instead of missing out on a "prize" they rather "dodged a bullet".

Carmageddon 2...

...starts tonight in just a couple hours.

Star Trek 46th

Best Google doodle in the UNIVERSE today:

(sorry, the above is just a screen print... not interactive like the real one today)

interactive Adventure!

Wunder and Frightening

Leaving El Cajon for the the Kingdom Hall this evening at about 7:15pm, it was definitely dusk.  Deep dusk.  The world had darkened.

Yet just to the east, and at a fair angle upward,  something bright caught my attention.

A nearby thunderhead was so incredibly high that its very top was white with reflected sunlight.

It was beautiful.  No camera in my possession.  Felt sad about that.  Vowed to write about it instead.




After the meeting, around 9:30pm, someone told me to go outside and look at "the light show".

A huge and tall thunderhead (I'd like to imagine it was the very same one) stood to the east, with the peak at greater than a 45 degree angle (I held my arm up to measure this) since it was so close.

The sky to the rear, left and right was crystal clear, warm and humid.   Yet in front of us was this massive white and grey mountain of cloud, glowing in the light of the nearly full moon.

Suddenly and silently it was lighted up from within.  Like a flickering white flame would look inside a paper lantern, only much quicker.. as quick as lightning.

Thirty seconds later... another flash, this time with a visible bolt of lightning coming down and then turning to the left at right angle.

More and more...   I was standing with some friends now, including a little boy in arms (Wesley, the baby that melted my heart in the hospital of his birth) and I was jumping up and down with excitement.  Wesley just soaked it in with a straight face.

Flash.  Flash & Bolt.  It was magical.

A brother driving out slowed and said out his window, "Steve.  It's just a lightning storm!"

Yes I know, but my life is generally monsoon-less and I was really enthralled.