Great article, Max! I enjoyed this a lot, and frankly, I had no idea the possibility of microbial life was a point of contention with the Viking lander. I would be curious to hear more of your personal thoughts about how you imagine this fear of other, specifically microbial, life being discovered anywhere in our solar system. This is such an interesting scenario; I'm curious how it would affect geopolitics, etc...
Also, do you know of Kelly Richardson's work? She's a Canadian video/digital artist and uses a lot of space/science fiction themes in her work (she was also my thesis supervisor for my Master's degree). She has a really cool Mars video she made: https://buffaloakg.org/artworks/20132a-c-mariner-9
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! Excellent question you pose, and it would be terrific to explore multiple perspectives on that question. What are your thoughts on the impact of life being found?
Thank you for the recommendation of Kelly, I was previously unaware of her work! I will be exploring her art more. Looking forward to staying connected and supporting one another’s work!
Viking, and later the Voyager missions, expanded our scientific understanding of distant worlds in ways we could never have imagined. And they did so half a century ago.
Since the New Horizons mission, there have been virtually no other scientific feats on that scale.
Will we return to the Moon? Fine, but have we forgotten about the other planets? Or do we think we already know everything we need to know?
I lived through the era of those space missions: they represented the very best that science and technology could offer—not just for a single country, but for all of mankind.
Today, that era is over; we’ve turned the clock back to the “Moon” era, and from there we want to start over, following a much more limited and treacherous path.
Great article, Max! I enjoyed this a lot, and frankly, I had no idea the possibility of microbial life was a point of contention with the Viking lander. I would be curious to hear more of your personal thoughts about how you imagine this fear of other, specifically microbial, life being discovered anywhere in our solar system. This is such an interesting scenario; I'm curious how it would affect geopolitics, etc...
Also, do you know of Kelly Richardson's work? She's a Canadian video/digital artist and uses a lot of space/science fiction themes in her work (she was also my thesis supervisor for my Master's degree). She has a really cool Mars video she made: https://buffaloakg.org/artworks/20132a-c-mariner-9
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! Excellent question you pose, and it would be terrific to explore multiple perspectives on that question. What are your thoughts on the impact of life being found?
Thank you for the recommendation of Kelly, I was previously unaware of her work! I will be exploring her art more. Looking forward to staying connected and supporting one another’s work!
Viking, and later the Voyager missions, expanded our scientific understanding of distant worlds in ways we could never have imagined. And they did so half a century ago.
Since the New Horizons mission, there have been virtually no other scientific feats on that scale.
Will we return to the Moon? Fine, but have we forgotten about the other planets? Or do we think we already know everything we need to know?
I lived through the era of those space missions: they represented the very best that science and technology could offer—not just for a single country, but for all of mankind.
Today, that era is over; we’ve turned the clock back to the “Moon” era, and from there we want to start over, following a much more limited and treacherous path.