MountainMornings

What will be happening on Monday, August 6th at 1:31 am? An Olympic archery competition, or maybe diving? Nope. A tiny 2,000 pound robotic spacecraft, the size of a Mini Cooper, will navigate its way onto the surface of Mars at a cost of $2.5 billion dollars. NASA has named “her” the Curiosity Rover, and she will be touching down “naked” (without any protective wrapping) assisted by a parachute and a sci-fi Sky Crane. The feed of course will be delayed, but you can watch the action on NASA TV http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html or follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity…Twitter, I may just have to join your tribe.

I was listening to this podcast on NPR http://www.npr.org/2012/08/03/158100726/rover-to-look-for-building-blocks-of-life-on-mars with Bob in the car. My first question was why do we always refer to ships and planes, and most vehicles with the feminine pronoun? Is grammatical gender a feminist issue? Romance languages are replete with feminine and masculine inanimate objects, but we English speakers, not so much. Then when the scientists were discussing its mission, to dig deep below the surface in search of frozen water, and possibly find DNA and RNA and proteins that might hint at evidence of life on the planet, I turned to Bob and said, “Wow, if it’s like us, we may have to re-think Scientology!”

The story only gets curiouser. Of course I had to research the whole “7 minutes of terror” theory, when the Curiosity would leave its orbit and descend to Mars – going from a speed of 13,000 MPH to about 200. And I love the personal story of the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) team leader, engineer Adam Steltzner. “He has pierced ears, wears snakeskin boots and sports an Elvis haircut.” Here is a guy who was coasting in high school, then descended into the sex, drugs and rock and roll pit that was the Bay Area of the 70s. His first car was a 69 Cadillac hearse and his dad told him he’d never amount to anything but a ditch digger, then one day he’s driving home from a gig and thinks to himself, hey, the constellation of Orion is in a different place than it was earlier. Steltzner starts taking a physics course at the local community college, and the rest is history, or herstory! http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/08/03/33644/crazy-smart-when-a-rocker-designs-a-mars-lander/

“I grew up in an era where space was revered,” he said. “So I think there’s a kind of natural ego drive to be involved in something so sexy. And I came from rock ‘n’ roll, and there’s a lot of sexy in rock ‘n’ roll. So in terms of, really, just what I would need to measure myself, it could have been waste treatment, but I also needed a little bit of sexy.” So here’s to all those women and men, rock and roll scientists and engineers out there, you’re sexy and we know it!