SF Chronicle / July 22, 2010 Mars needs women -- and searchable addresses Talk about being prepared. We haven't even set foot on Mars yet and already search-engine-giant-and-likely-emperor-of-the-galaxy Google has a satellite-generated map of the entire planet -- supposedly so you can find that "undiscovered gem" of a restaurant when we eventually get there. Google.com
Google Mars (_google.com/mars_ (http://www.google.com/mars/) ) "lets you zip around the Red Planet's surface, immersed in hi-res imagery from the Mars Rovers," according to the company. Google sent this link, along with links for the moon (_earth.google.com/moon_ (http://earth.google.com/moon/) ) and major landmarks on Google Earth, with the idea of encouraging non-travel travel, staying at home and exploring through your computer. Now, normally, I'm the first person to ridicule the brain-dead concept behind "not going anywhere" and calling it travel. (The marketing hacks behind the word "staycation" better hope that the Logic Police find them before I do.) But in this instance, there's a case to be made that Google's images takes us to Mars and the moon -- transporting us by stimulating our imaginations -- in pretty much the same way "The Last Grain Race" took us to Australia, "The Sun Also Rises" took us to Spain and "Eat Pray Love" took us to Julia Roberts. (A few years back, the Chronicle Travel section put out an entire section devoted to places that tickle the imagination -- although in that case the places don't exists. Find that story _here_ (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/30/TRL0RTAA6.DTL) .) My imagination was tickled , for instance, when I learned (if I read the Mars map correctly) that there are already candidates for major tourist attractions on Mars, including a Death Valley look-alike that's about 4 miles below sea level (if there was a sea), a 6-mile deep grand canyon that could easily hold several Grand Canyons, and a volcano that at 69,000 feet makes the 19,000-foot Kilimanjaro seem like a pimple. (I can already picture the "billionaire explorers" lining up to tackle that one -- and leave their oxygen canisters littered all over Base Camp.) And as far as the moon goes, we've been there for 41 years (as of yesterday), but haven't set foot on it in the past three decades -- so who knows how many cool attractions have sprung up since then. Now you can just check the map. No street addresses, however. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
