Curiosity

It's an absolute marvel what NASA accomplished with it's latest Mars exploration mission.  The process of sending an unmanned spacecraft 350 million miles to a celestial object hurtling through three-dimensional space at nearly 25 kilometers per second is wonder enough.  NASA's navigation was thread-the-needle perfect.  They landed their Curiosity Mars surface explorer exactly where they intended.   The way they did it was incredibly complex.  The explorer itself weighs almost a ton. Previous methods of depositing an unmanned explorer rover on the planet's surface couldn't work. So, they engineered a complex plan to make it happen. Amazingly, it worked.

So, now NASA has a new car-sized rover named Curosity on the surface of Mars. It's loaded to the gills with cameras, and instruments, and systens for carrying out complex experiments.

I'm really glad we're getting access to all this new knowledge about Mars.  Congratulations to all the scientists, engineers, and technicians who collaborated on this achievement.  Awesome job.

So, now I keep going back to the same thought.  We are seriously screwing up our own planet. The only one we have. Why aren't we applying the same level of  intellect and intense focus on the global scale challenges we have right here on Earth?  It's not because we don't have good science, or because we don't have enough smart scientists and engineers.  They are doing their job.  We understand our problems. We know what global climate change is, and we know what we must do to fix it. The science is already in place. What we don't have here on Earth is the political will and the public policy to make things right.  

Anyway, here is a wonderful piece of NASA animation that shows how they managed to land the Curiosity rover on Mars...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw