Nice summation, Sterling. I look forward to your posts and always come away with something fresh to think about. It's three o'clock in the morning here and I'm plagued with situational anxiety ... That's where one would rather be awake than asleep out of fear you'll miss something. It's also during these sleepless times that the more provocative questions arise.
Your itemization of our off world precolonization work raises the question that we just might be the very alien life form that we apend so much time looking for. As the cartoon character said "We has metn the enemy and it is us." I propose we are the dominate life form, not only in this solar system, but perhaps the galaxy and that we arrived on this planet through panspermia and are now proceeding to exploit our surroundings. I have no doubt that we are, shall we say, genetically predisposed to do this and we retain a programmed cellular memory that relentlessly advances our evolution and constantly directs us. This is certainly not an original hypothesis, but I think timely in light of your summations. Count Deiro IMCA 3536 -----Original Message----- >From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[email protected]> >Sent: Mar 18, 2011 10:19 PM >To: Meteorite List <[email protected]> >Subject: [meteorite-list] The Human Presence in the Solar System > >As of today, we have a robot explorer in orbit >around Mercury with a year's rent paid up >(and hopefully the lease will be renewed if >it does good). > >We also have a presence in orbit at the planet >Venus, working there since 2006, and mappers >clicking away in our own backyard, at the Moon. > >Mars is crawled with rovers, orbited by imagers, >and being mapped to a sharper resolution that >we have charted our own planet, and more of >our machines are readying to join them. > >Out at Saturn, Cassini, a plutonium-powered >robot will carry on its long investigation of that >entire miniature solar system out there. And >Spring is starting on Titan! > >We have been poking our noses into comets >this year, after smacking them to see what >happens, and snatching pieces and bringing >them home. > >This summer, another of our robots will visit >a large asteroid (No. 4) for the first time. In a year >or so it will move on to the largest asteroid, while >the most ambitious of long-haul robots dashes >toward Pluto. We will be at Ceres when it gets >to Pluto... and Cassini will still be working Saturn. > >There are only three planets we're not already at >nor going to. We are all over the place. Does this >qualify for a Golden Age? (The first one being the >Voyager Grand Tour.) > >If the Aliens are watching, they probably have the >Sol System in their books as one that already has >a dominant species, have written it off for colonization, >and are getting ready to move on. > >No, the Aliens are not the problem. I worry instead >about the Wise Men of the Potomac who want to >beach the fleet and burn it on the shore in order to >save the Republic from the perils of exploration. > > >Sterling K. Webb > >______________________________________________ >Visit the Archives at >http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html >Meteorite-list mailing list >[email protected] >http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list ______________________________________________ Visit the Archives at http://www.meteoritecentral.com/mailing-list-archives.html Meteorite-list mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
