Nowhere-Fast.net

It’s big news that Mars could have, at some point in its history, supported life.  Life hasn’t been found, nor have any records of life been found (the probe there currently isn’t capable of detecting fossil remains or life, unless, of course, they just walked up and said “hey”) but there is evidence that the conditions would have been ripe for life to have existed on our red neighbor.

It’s strange to me, but we’re actually at a point where I would be shocked to discover that life hadn’t existed on Mars at some point.  No longer is the idea of extraterrestrial life something that people vaguely admit “is pretty likely” but all the while off in some far-flung corner of the universe.  No, we’re now at a point where life is understood to be so hearty and so diverse that it’s practically absurd to suggest that life only ever existed on one planet in our own solar system.  That isn’t even considering the multitude of planets that exist beyond our grasp.

Google and Virgin used the “Virgle” project as their April Fool’s joke this year.  It was an open source, private enterprise, manned mission to colonize Mars.  Any one who truly believed that they released such a project on April 1st can deservedly be called a fool but the thing is that what they proposed really isn’t so far-fetched.  Quite the contrary, many people consider it a monumental failure that we haven’t been to Mars already.

My father told me once that people would be on Mars before he died.  Sadly, that didn’t come to pass but I really do have hope that my lifetime will see that achievement.