Monthly Archives: February 2021

Feb 18th (2021) – Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars

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Feb 18th Don’t miss the MARS Perseverance landing on February 18th – Show starts at 11:15 a.m. PST / 2:15 p.m. EST / 19:15 UTC

It seems like only yesterday CURIOSITY landed on Mars, but that took place in 2012, August 6th at 05:17 UTC. I set my alarm and was up at 3:00 AM ET, listening to what seemed a live Sci-Fi broadcast, sitting on the edge of my seat, during the Seven Minutes Of Terror.

But hearing that NASA communication stream of the Curiosity landing was like attending a masterclass of Sci-Fi writing–– a first hand grasp of space chatter and the excitement of the rover descending towards the surface, on its own. This is something every Sci-Fi author has attempted to write.

Looking up into the pink sky at what first appeared to be a meteor entering the atmosphere, we jumped back when a large parachute deployed, slowing what looked like a charred disk beneath it. We watched, trying to make sense of what it was just before a cover jettisoned and the object detached from the chute and began to free-fall in silence towards us. I grabbed the hand of my life mate, turning us on our heels as we began to run, finding cover behind an outcropping. We settled there in the dust and could hear the crackle of rapidly firing thrusters, then nervously peered out at the slowing object and could clearly make out something curled within as it dropped down and dangled from tethers, unfurling as it was lowered onto the surface. The drone above hovered in place, chattering in rapid fire, then the pop of small explosives detached the tethers and the drone arced above and away, crashing into the hills beyond, leaving this alien behind. We watched for some time as it sat motionless, then an arm was raised and perched above it a head that began to rotate in our direction. We ducked out of view, pressing our backs against the jagged wall, breathing rapidly, and having nowhere to go without being seen. We would wait for nightfall and slip away, hoping others have seen this.

 

Don’t miss the MARS Perseverance landing on February 18th – Show starts at 11:15 a.m. PST / 2:15 p.m. EST / 19:15 UTC

News briefings and launch commentary will be streamed on NASA TV, NASA.gov/live, YouTube.com/NASAJPL and Ustream.tv/NASAJPL. On-demand recordings will also be available on the YouTube and Ustream pages after the live events have finished.

Advantageous – Sci-Fi that makes you think

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I so much enjoyed watching a Sci-Fi on Netflix called, Advantageous. A great film… a thinking person’s film. As someone once said, ‘everything has already been written’, and I believe that to true. Advantageous is not a new concept. Robert Sawyer’s Mindscan, which was one of my all time favorite Sci-Fi reads , delves into the reality of mind transference. But unlike Mindscan. Advantageous feels too close to home. There was one line in the film where the protagonist states, ‘There is too much data for the human to process’ and she went on to indicate this as the downfall of current society–– the root cause of so much emotional suffering. Just like COVID was the catalyst for amplifying remote access working, something that has been talked about in my generation, but never a great need to push this concept with face-to-face teams and city living doing so well. Then COVID hits and now the need is viewed differently and the millennials have their generational change as we did ours. Remote commuting is here to stay and the idea of concentrated work forces, I believe, are in the rearview mirror.

So that line in the film, Advantageous….. It got me thinking of something I have felt for some time, that eventually, for humanity to survive, it needs a quantum leap and I mean that literally. The problem with humanity is that it is based upon a binary system: On/Off, Up/Down, In/Out, Good/Evil, Right/Wrong, Yes/No. This is certainly evident in our current day society, amplified by social media. There does not seem to exist any middle ground and the polarization of a world society is being fed upon this system.

Then quantum theory comes along, not based upon a binary system but a system of three: On/Off/The other thing…..

So it makes sense to me that the evolution of humanity will be as different as wampum is to cryptocurrency. “With change comes casualty,” but through change, humanity will survive, synthetically–– a handing over of the baton to AI (based upon a quantum platform). Not until then will humanity be looked upon as an advanced galactic species acting as one. Everything is cyclic and where we began as one, we will become one again.

Advantageous depicts the dawn of an intermediate container species, just as the CD/DVD was to digital streaming.