Winter Quarters, at Low Ridge Haven Options

[DFinfrock]

Since Spirit is no longer "Running for the Hills" and it appears that she will be staying at Low Ridge Haven for the next eight months or so, it seems like a good time to start a new topic.

I thought we could start with the great panorama stitched by jvandriel, and then altered by Tesheiner. We are going to become very familiar with this view in the coming months.

David


[attachment=5107:attachment] (286k)

[Stu]

Going to be serious for a moment here. In times past, explorers such as Lewis and Clark recorded the landscapes of the so-called "Frontier" with pencils and in paint, not just for posterity, to record the details of the places they had seen, but so that the people "back home" could see those places and, possibly, be moved and inspired to go there and see them for themselves. Other painters, like Albert Bierstadt, travelled out to the Frontier to paint its sunsets, horizons and wonders; his paintings of Yosemite are the finest ever created, with breathtaking colour and energy, and have inspired generations of people to travel to the valley and experience its wonders for themselves.

The panoramas you've shown us today have the potential to be just as important, I really believe that. Possibly more than any before, they show Mars as a real world, they bring it to life. Show the average man or woman in the street a Viking, Pathfinder or for that matter MER image andthey'll just see rocks, dust dunes, a pink sky... show them this image and they'll see the beauty of the light there, the stark grandeur of the landscape, and the true beauty of the New World. I know this for a fact because I printed out and showed that panorama to people at work today, and several of them were stunned. And I mean stunned, they just stared at it quietly. One told me she finally, finally "got" why Mars fascinates me so much. You really should try and get that panoram - both versions of it - Out There to the public, via magazines, websites, newspapers, whatever means you can. That's a genuinely powerful, evocative image. It deserves to be seen by as many people as posible.

But something else occurs to me. Today we treasure "antique" pictures, paintings and photographs made decades or even centuries ago that show how our town/city/country used to look. I am 1000% sure that in years to come, that panorama of Husband Hill, with Ultreya/El Dorado branded on its side, will adorn the walls of many habitats on Mars, treasured by colonists and settlers as a snapshot of how their home used to look, back when it was "the frontier".

Good work guys.