Man...putting some fuel to the fire?...
This is Stu's ground but I took the challenge.
This is it for now...I remembered some verses from a poem I truly like and follow from there...
I dare you Stu, to play the next card...

To trap the journeyer?
To silence the song of the quest?
To curtail the pilgrim’s step?
To cease?

Cease the one for whom life is only death delayed.
For whom the horizon is to contemplate, not to reach.
Not to challenge, not to smell, not to touch.

But you,
The one created by Man,
Bearing His mortality but also His will,
You have defeated the distance,
You, that are Us on another planet,
You, even tired of the roaming,
You, even missing Home,
And the Ones who gave you life,
You dare not to cease but to follow,
Freely, Beyond yourself,
Beyond us.

Until the end a Rover,
From the shiny Alfa to a dusty Omega,
Chasing, for Us, the Impossible,
Beating, for Us, the improbable,
Dreaming, as Us, with the far mountains.
Ithaca awaits,
not your arrival,
neither your triomph,
but your will to reach it.
Your will to move Onward.

Move,
Onward and do not cease,
Faitful, until the end,
To your pilgrim nature,
To the Human sparkle in you,
Your wheels, our feet, over the ground never walked,
Your eyes our eyes, beholding the never seen,

Faitful.
Until one final step, until one final look.


EDITED: I love the smell of Ultreya in the morning...

Poet Laureats all, but perhaps a touch of realism is in order? We have one crippled robot at Home Plate (sorry but she is already in hunker down mode mode in early autumn- not a sign of a healthy rover) and an ageing robot in Victoria. What these robots have achieved is amazing, but the laws of physics dictate that at some stage, and probaly not too far distant, one or both of these vehicles will expire. Forget fantasies about Icatha. What is the best return on say a three month (original mission_ 90 day venture). Heading fdown towrds the Victoria dunes seems a damn sight better than playing on the ejecta blanket!!!

I won't forget it until there's a possiblity.
I want to see this...:

...Closer...

The was an old rover called Oppy
Who's Rat mechanism was choppy
She was stuck in some dunes
Just running of fumes
For long term drive planning, that's sloppy.

I ask myself, if I were there in person would I really turn my back on this crater before exploring every bay and every cape, searching every available square metre of cliff face for something new and different (however small) that might later turn out to be an important clue? I don't think so. Just imagine the scene in 50 years' time:
"Good grief!! How did they miss that with the MER?"
"Guess they didn't look round this side."

All the hints and clues say I'm on the wrong track, I know. They'll probably retrace old ground as various team members with unfinished business at earlier locations stake their claims.

Genius. Cleverer than a fox on Mastermind, whose specialist subject is "Killing Chickens".

This is why we wanna go to Ithaca

Just feeding the myth...
Did you guys knew that one of the possible translations for Odysseus or Ulysses, the one who took ten years to reach Ithaca...the "resourcefulness" Odysseus...is "leg wound"?...
Oppy...
Oddy...
Things come always into place...

EDITED:
There will be, not so soon, a mission like this one...with such a passion, such an intense debate, where humans battling with poetry for a machine's destiny...
Not so soon...the MER mission is an anthem to Mankind itself, to the nature of each one of us but, more than that, to our nature as a whole species. Beyond...beyond ourselves...
I truly believe that.

This is something that both Jim Bell and I think, which typifies just how much a part of our lives those two machines have become.

I can't remember what my life was like before them.

Doug

Lovely words, ustrax. Whenever we do something great like this, I feel proud to be a human.

"For All Mankind"

Back in january 2004, when Spirit was not responding anymore and Oppy was a week to landing, I realised that we could loose both of them and the mission would be over before it ever realy started. I felt so bad during a full week.
Our life would have been so different...

Before I say anything else, congrats to our esteemed poets...I'm not even gonna try in the face of such emotion & inspiration, thank you!

Yeah, who'd've thought that we'd be cheering the MERs on in 2008? This epic journey may well mark the first genuine 'old-school' human exploration of another world, even though our presence has been virtual. We've seen what's beyond the next horizon, again and again; what a remarkable experience, and it ain't over yet! The bar's been set damn high for the future, to be sure.

Just curious, is there anyone here that would have Opportunity head for parts unknown
without first checking out these intriguing features on the East rim of Victoria? Show yourself.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/mult...a/pia09191.html

T'would be interesting to get a close-up view of x-sections of the anatolia-features.

---Bill

I'd love to check them out, and I was surprized we didn't take a closer look when we were out east. But it might be a question of accessiblity. The bays may be too steep to enter over there, and it's tough to examine a cliff from the top of the cliff. Indeed, it looks like we actually were above one of those "linear features" on sols 1153 to 1157 atop Tierra del Fuego. Still I think there are a couple of spots where we could get a decent view of the features.