Ray has a piece in this morning's WSJ. He asks when we're going to Mars.

Sorry Ray, but we're not going to Mars. Some men see things as they are and ask why, people today dream things that never were and say, "Show me the plunder!" DZ

Fabulous op-ed piece. I can't remember the last time I had a bigger smile on my face.

If the Lord tarries, we are going to Mars. We just need to find a Madman to follow (unless we forge a madman for the task).

Of course, the Muslims may get the ball rolling. Osama bin Laden may need to find a new place to hide after we turn over every rock on earth. I'm sure we would build a better rocket to bring him back to justice.

Do you have a url? I can't find it. Is it available on line?

I don't know if this will work; the journal gives nothing away for free:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB110074138102477581,00.html?mod=opinion%5Fmain%5Fcommentaries

The link will not work.

This is the copyrighted material from WSJ.

November 18, 2004

COMMENTARY

DOW JONES REPRINTS
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit: www.djreprints.com.


Where Is the Madman
Who'll Take Us to Mars ?
By RAY BRADBURY
November 18, 2004; Page A18
In this time when our freeways are frozen in place, space travel suffers the same terrible winter. Years have passed since Apollo 11, with only faint cries for a lunar rediscovery, then Mars and beyond.
How can we thaw this deep-freeze to unlock our vision so that we see the stars once more with the same fever that we knew that fabulous night we took the first Giant Step?
Let's look at the situation 500 years ago.
Columbus, financed by Spain's royalty, sailed for India. King Henry VIII, jealous, paid Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) to track Columbus. Francis I of France, thus provoked, hired Verrazano to do the same. Of the three, only Verrazano made landfall at what became Kitty Hawk. Incredible! Verrazano sailed west and five centuries on the Wright Brothers soared east to explore space and time.
There was, then, a confluence of kings who sent their ships for spice and gold. Today there is no such desire in our Congress or our president for similar goals.
What must happen next?
Can Science Fiction writers, inspirers of futures, cause a seed change in the American imagination so that, in turn, our leaders can be influenced? For remember when Admiral Byrd touched the North Pole, he cried, "Jules Verne leads me!" Where are the Jules Vernes, alive today to change our ways?
Let me make a list of some possible alternatives. Why not encourage our original competitor, Russia, to get back in the chase.
Signs indicate that there's a slow return to Communist authority which might well mean not only authoritarian politics that kept millions in bondage, but also the arrogance which caused them to circumnavigate space with Gagarin. Properly provoked and still aggravated at our "Tear down the wall," might they not desire to beat us to Mars?
Or consider our two great enemies/friends. Germany, after all, lost two wars at our hands. France was saved from those two wars by our help. There's every reason for those two nations to hate us.
Why not irritate some new Von Braun in Berlin to invent a Mars rocket and beat us to a landing? And the French, stung by their defeats and the salvation we offered, mightn't they want to send a Foreign Legion to the deserts of Mars?
And yet again Japan, an American-conquered nation, remembering the intrusion of Admiral Perry in Tokyo Harbor. And from the ruins of Hiroshima, might they not send a rocket to touch Phobos and Deimos and move beyond Mars to Alpha Centauri.
Or perhaps Canada, that invisible nation, ignored for centuries. Might they, in a macho gesture, fling themselves into space.
Or, most incredible of all, imagine that the Vatican decided that Pope John III wished to build a spacecraft titled The Holy Ghost in order to fly across the universe in search of the beginnings of Creation. With the moon as base and Mars as second manger, that Pope might move on to study the wellsprings of the cosmos.
What then would be the effect on our prejudiced secular America? Would we not build a bigger, better, and almost more holy rocket to follow the Ecclesiastical dusts?
Or what if the Muslims . . . ?
But no, perish the thought.
* * *
Put all these together, shove them in tomorrow's slot machine and pull the handle. If the totals come up with three swastikas, three hammer and sickles, or three papal crowns with honeybee insignia, the results may well be the same.
What we need now is a competition of hatreds and loves. The final reward on Mars might well be not spices or gold, but the squashing of egos and a promise of immortality.
In any event, time is running out. Congress, as usual, is imitating Sleeping Beauty. It is time to waken from the slumber.
That footprint on the moon is being filled with eternal dust and Mars still waits to have its canals filled with our dreams. Where, oh where, is the technological madman to wake us from our slumbers and provide us with the proper destiny?
Tomorrow morning, may that madman be born.

Mr. Bradbury, a novelist, is the author, among other books, of "Fahrenheit 451."

AZ

Thanks for making Ray's article available to the rest of us as I, too, was having difficulty locating it and too lazy to go out buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

What does a world class author get for an article like that? Perhaps since it was an opinion, perhaps it was gratis on the part of Ray. But what credence he lends to such an august publication.

That was one great read.

I think Japan, France, and Russia are concentrating their efforts on missions that may actually allow us to get to Mars and beyond. They're currently working in a joint effort to provide a means of traveling great distances thru space by using solar wind. The next attempt to see if it works is scheduled for March.

"Do ya think it'll fly Orville?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
And here's a craft already flying which may help us get to Mars and back.

BERLIN (Nov. 16) - A small spacecraft has made it into lunar orbit, signaling Europe's first successful mission to the moon and paving the way for the craft to be used to study the lunar surface, a European Space Agency spokesman said Tuesday.

Over the last 13 months, the 809-pound probe has been puttering toward the moon in a mission controlled from the ESA's operations center in Darmstadt. It measures 3.3 feet on each side, and solar panels, which help provide ion - or solar-electric - propulsion, spread 46 feet.

To reach the lunar orbit, it used only 130 pounds of the 181 pounds of xenon fuel it had aboard - less than expected and a feat that has raised hopes the technology can be used to send other craft longer distances.

SMART-1, short for "Small Missions for Advanced Research and Technology," was developed for ESA by the Swedish Space Corporation with contributions from some 30 contractors in Europe and the United States. It took off aboard an Ariane-5 rocket in September 2003.

The total cost for the mission is $142.3 million, about a fifth of that required for a typical major space mission.


11/16/04 05:34 EST

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.



[This message has been edited by grasstains (edited 11-19-2004).]