“Rethinking Mars (ongoing series depicting indoor activities we might expect as sub-surface Martian settlements thrive over the coming centuries…and anyone is welcome to post similar images of whatever gender or imagine these women are renowned scientists taking a break from cutting edge research…). Happy Valentine’s Day.
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” (Sagan)
From The Atlantic:
“Mars may not be the hottest planet … but it is, apparently, the hottest planet. Images of Mars taken by the Curiosity rover buzz and ping around Facebook and Twitter. Elon Musk talks colonization of the planet with more and more media buy-in. Bobak Ferdowsi, flight director for the Curiosity mission, was a guest of Michelle Obama at last night’s State of the Union address.
And now, the suddenly-fashionable planet has become, quite literally, fashionable.
Nanette Lepore, the designer best known for frilly and ruffly and otherwise dreamy outfits, debuted her Fall 2013 collection at New York Fashion Week this morning. The theme? Mars. Not space, mind you, but Mars. “Moody tones and spacey surfaces define Nanette’s fall collection as she explores the contours of Mars,” the designer’s Tumblr explained. (Earlier: “Nanette’s fall fashion show inspiration is out of this world. Honey, let’s go to Mars.”)
The collection itself, which walked the runway accompanied by a beep-bop-boop-y soundtrack that perfectly captures how the ’60s saw the 2000s, is certainly spacey: It features holographic leathers; sharp, vaguely mechanical angles; and mod-style shapes … all punched up with bursts of — yep — red.”
This is the image Lepore pointed to as the direct inspiration for the collection:
“And that image, actually, is inaccurate as a depiction of Mars. The photo, a view of the Endeavor cratertaken by the Opportunity rover in March 2012, is a false-color image: It’s a mosaic comprised of a dozen or so images taken through the rover’s Pancam filters and centered on different wavelengths: 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green), and 432 nanometers (violet). The sweeping view of the crater would, with more natural coloring, appear to be dusty-red; it’s presented in false color to emphasize the textures of the Martian landscape.
And yet the false image seems to be what inspired the fashion designer: The collection not only features its shocks of bright red, but it also relies heavily on the greens-and-aquas that are present in Mars images only in faux-photographic form. Lepore’s trip to Mars is, more accurately, a trip to “Mars.” The clothes themselves — the works of art — are themselves based on art. Which seems, considering how much we have left to learn about Mars, appropriate. We may go there in the name of science; the planet lives for most of us, however, as something much more frilly, much more ruffly — much more dreamy — than that.
Hat tip Heather Horn.”
SW: One of the technologies you have been in favor of is space exploration. Why is space exploration so important to you?
RB: Because we are gonna live forever, if we go out in space, if we go back to the moon — we should’ve never left the moon — we should go back and build a base, we should go back and build a base on the moon and go on to Mars and we should put a civilization on Mars and then, 500 years from now, move out into the universe, and when we do that, we have a chance of living forever. That’s why I believe in space exploration.
SW: What should we be investing in for the future, to assure our future? What should we focus on for tomorrow?
RB: We’ve gotta reinvest in space travel. We should’ve never left the moon. We’ve gotta get back to the moon and build a firm base there, so that sometime in the next 40 years we can take off and go to the planet Mars. We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian — I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now, into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever. So our future is investing, right now, in space travel, and money should be given to NASA sometime next year to build the rockets to go back to the moon.
Brain Pickings: “Conducted by Bradbury’s official biographer, Sam Weller, at Comic-Con 2010 and recorded by Jeff Goldsmith, maker of the free storytelling app Backstory. At 90, Bradbury is as full of zest as ever, brimming with a love of life as he discusses space exploration, libraries, technology, and the importance of doing what you love. The full Q&A runs over an hour.”
