Steve Squyres Q & A - The Mp3 Options

[ljk4-1]

I finally got some free time today and listened to the interview.  Like everyone else, I thought Doug did a great job - thanks for doing it!

Towards the end, when asked about Carl Sagan, Steve mentioned that someone sent him an e-mail with a quote from Cosmos about a future rover mission.  I cracked my copy open and think I found the passage - hopefully I transcribed it correctly.  Have a read, it's very prophetic...

Excerpt from Cosmos by Carl Sagan (1980), “Blues for a Red Planet”, pp. 129-130:

Replace "television screens" with "computer screens" and he's got it.

Carl Sagan also mentioned two robot Mars rovers in his 1985 SF novel, Contact, one of which had a prophetic incident:

"They approached L’Orangerie, in the annex of which was a special exhibition, so the poster proclaimed, “Images Martiennes.” The joint American-French-Sovict robot roving vehicles on Mars had produced a spectacular windfall of color photographs, some—like the Voyager images of the outer solar system around 1980—soaring beyond their mere scientific purpose and becoming art. The poster featured a landscape photographed on the vast Elysium Plateau. In the foreground was a three-sided pyramid, smooth, highly eroded, with an impact crater near the base. It had been produced by millions of years of high-speed sandblasting by the fierce Martian winds, the planetary geologists had said. A second rover—assigned to Cydonia, on the other side of Mars—had become mired in a drifting dune, and its controllers in Pasadena had been so far unable to respond to its forlorn cries for help."

[AndyG]

Hi Doug,

I'm one of the 200+ downloaders and I got an hour to hear the interview today. I don't normally post "me too" replies, but I have to say the interview was well done, informative, and a cut above the usual level of reporting we find in the media. SS's humanity came through well (I haven't really heard him speak before.)

In summary (apart from the occasional wind noise) an excellent job.

Thank you!

Andy G

[Redstone]

Doug, I've now listened to the interview twice. A second time through was rewarding because there is so much good information packed into 50 minutes. Thanks for putting it all together.

Odave, thanks for the quote. It helps put Steve's comments in context.

And for David, ElkGroveDan and SFJCody, I put on the headphones, cranked up the volume and deciphered Steve's answer to the 3rd Rover Site queston.

Melas Chasma, you know, down in the Valles Marineris, that was really tempting. That would have been a good one. Its a scary site because a lot of it's covered by sand dunes, like 30% of that site was covered with sand dunes and you come down on the dunes, man, you're screwed. But, it would have been spectacular topography, and really cool layered rocks, so that would have been a good one.

I guess we have to remember a dune is not a ripple!