Slashdot Mirror
Why You Should Be More Interested In Mars Than the Olympics
New submitter hugeinc sends this quote from an article by author Andrew Kessler:
"Next week, while we're all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that's 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?"
...is that golf isn't currently an Olympic sport (but has been added for 2016), and isn't being contested in London this year.
And yes -- sometimes it is these little details that can cause the non-scientists to completely ignore you. Some will feel there isn't much use in hearing your message about space science if you can't even get the details right about what is happening here on Earth.
Yaz
British SAS are far superior to the US Navy SEALs. (As are the Australian SASR, but even they pale in comparison to the pom's SAS)