OH WAIT! – Nobody seems to care…..
I have been asking around as I travel for work (doing my own inconsise poll of sorts) asking if and what people think of the Mars MSL program.
I am sadly a bit disturbed that most have no idea it is even going on let alone care what and why we are doing these sorts of missions.
I was also amazed to see how little "Real News" coverage the mission got even on the day of the landing and now it seems it is gone from any major news channel.
As far as I am concerned it is unhuman to not support and follow these incredibly important missions. Set aside the Olympics – put it on DVR for a few hours and watch and follow something that is possibly a life changing event that only happened once… Most did not even tune in…
When I say most I mean most "normal" people. The ones that go through life simply not caring about anything larger than themselves and when the next starbucks stop will take place.
People if we are ever going to make anything happen, "Real People" really need to do some head pulling out of their butts and start to leanr and understand what things are important and what we all need to unite together with to find results.
I was not lucky enough to be old enough to be involved with the last space race. If I could time travel I would make that one of my first stops… To be united as a nation and in many cases as a world to watch those events must have been an incredible experience.
Oh by the way: Japan is still suffering from the massive natural disasters they have had bust most have put it out of their minds… The Gulf coast in the US is still a mess from the oil spill and in many cases from Huricane damage but peopel let that go after only days?
I am not sure what that says about our society today? Are we so shallow that we cannot or will not retain in our minds the massive and important issues?
+Leo Laporte said something on a show today that Olympics happen every 4 years but the MSL happens once in a lifetime…
He got that right…..
Do not get me wrong – I know many of us watched the landing and support +NASA and many of these massive scientific undertakings…. but trending on the same night were some of the dumbest things to follow or talk about I have seen…
So I ask everyone here…. What is wrong with our society that we tend to clasp onto shallow issues and topics and never look at the bigger picture? Do we really need to hide behind these shallow trending topics? What good do they actually do for us? Or have we as a society really dipped to that level?
If Lady GaGa lands on Mars, that will be the first time I give a damn about anything related to Lady GaGa… or any mainstream figurehead….to have that kind of power in social media for example and not use it to actually improve society is mind boggling to me…
Come on people with Social power and massive followings – Teach society what they really need to know more about…
SCIENCE
Then maybe when we all are a bit smarter, we can fix politics….
Take a minute to drop a note to +NASA or use that Twitter account to say thanks.. post one less photos of your dinner or instagram of your cat and do something with that time that will advance us as a civilization.
Take a second to think what a time traveler or historian in the future would think if they were reading your posts….
I can say I would not be happy with all of mine…..but I will work on that and that's all we can really ask of everyone…
Go listen to smart people and try to wrap your brain around massive issues that make your head hurt…it will do you good and force you to really think about what you do day to day…
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It is amazing how little interest there is in this amazing accomplishment.
Society is in the midst of the age of entitlement – it's all about ME – and I don't see it getting better in the near future. Since this project doesn't affect people personally, it's a back burner item.
We keep talking about it at work, but then my coworker has his degree in astrophysics. We both plan on getting any Lego or matchbox versions celebrating this historic achievement.
und nach der erde , werden wir den mars beherschen wtf 🙁
Couldn't agree more +Brent Burzycki .It's sad how few people I know outside of social networks that actually know we're back on Mars. And when they find out, the overwhelming majority of them don't care… 🙁
I am just too close to this to be objective. It took 2.5 Billion (2,500 million) for the landing. I have parts on Mars and on the way to Jupiter and have worked on countless space, missile, aircraft and other projects for 53 years (since '59 indeed) and feel no need for thanks whatsoever. But it certainly would be nice if society would afford a slight bit of respect to science instead of what is now respected and adored. (Back to work on the D800E setup with one count on the shutter. 🙂 🙂 )
Great post +Brent Burzycki 🙂
Thanks for all the comments… all great….
+Daryl Butcher – Really? can you tell us what missions?
Great post! An I totally agree with you.
In fact, it was really interesting to follow my G+ stream and my FB stream during and after the landing.
Such a huge difference.
there is a documentary I've seen recently called "The Century of Self". It says so much about the society we live in.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
+Brent Burzycki I can't begin to list everything from 50+ years. But how about Polaris, Poseidon, Trident, Minuteman I, II and III, F-16, Space Shuttle, Mars DS2, Jupiter/Juno, F-14, legions of space sensor R&D programs, over 140 integrated circuit designs … mostly military/aerospace but also commercial. 18 design releases in the last two years. Three projects active now. Oh, my. You might get me to braggin'. Actually none of this is exceptional at all … just dogged work.
Well +Daryl Butcher thanks.for.your efforts….. as someone that works without the need for thanks per say .. I say thanks for moving us forward…if I was going to do it all over I would be doing something related to space exploration…
+Brent Burzycki If I were going to do it over again I would probably opt for being a starving photographer. Doing technical things dooms you to be an "outsider". Few know or care what you are doing. It is pretty thankless as you point out. If you can't take pleasure inside yourself you would probably go nuts. Don't know that I moved anything forward really. Mostly a lot of Brownian motion (JPL/NASA are masterful at that) but after enough work sometimes things happen. It is NOT the institution. It is a bunch of individuals triumphing over institutions.
I cannot disagree….I think my work now is like that sometime….
Mars? What about our own planet? What about the fact no one gives a shit we're invading other countries for oil on a now regular basis? No one is doing anything about anything. Well the mass majority aren't anyway. Dumbed down by the mass media, just how they want it!
+Martin Beaumont I believe we lost interest in out planet long ago and as mentioned above we are entitled to do whatever we want to do right now…..
This all stems from society only caring about themselves and our politicians all being huge idiots that no nothing other then how to follow the money and manipulate the masses of sheep..
Unhuman ?!? Unhuman ?!? That is unhuman: http://mldc.unblog.fr/files/2009/05/vautourcopie.jpg
How many children could have been fed with all the money used for Curiosity since the first drawings ?!?
It has been decades – do not forget about all the children dying every day because others just don't care.
Dirty water kills more than 4,000 children a day
I understand what you meant, but be carrefull when using the word "unhuman"
+Laurent Dinclaux I have seen the photo, and I know there are other issues in the world.. we cannot solve them all – the entire world needs to help solve those issues and many are not going to be solved with money… sadly…
There is always a counter argument for everything, the unhuman aspect of our society does not care about any cause only themselves…
If we were able to make or educate people in general to be smarter about what they do daily – issues like hunger and famine and poverty would take care of themselves, thou I must say there would be many tyrannical dictators that would need to be pushed aside first…the cause of many of those issues…
There are so many more important things, that I would personally ask people to care about before Curiosity … That's all I wanted to say.
(I followed the landing and I watch from afar the progress of the mission)
Still, the selfishness of the so called "modern" society disgusts me.
We all have the things we feel are important…… I will never debate that… I guess it is all about perspective for each…. That said we probably all need to raise the bar on the what's important list…
What a lot of people never realize is the benefits we have received from NASA and their scientific endeavors. We would not have seen duct tape, aluminium foil, or microwave ovens to just name a few. So who knows what we could see come from this mission.
+Kevin Gault I know I would not have a tempurpedic mattress….
I made a post linking the NASA site for what has come from their research. It is even more than I thought. +NASA Spinoff