Real Reality TV

I didn’t stay up last night to see if Curiosity landed, but it was the first thing I looked for upon waking. It made me remember back to 2004 when I did stay up waiting and the thrill I felt. It made me go back to look for that article I wrote at the time for HubStuff. It’s amazing how little has changed.

In 2004, the JPL sent back 3D images from Mars. Totally cool.

Previously published in HubStuff January 29, 2004

I’m been grieving for days. I’ve tried to go on with my ordinary life, but it’s been hard when my mind kept returning to anxious thoughts. First Spirit wasn’t returning any signals and then it was sending “I’m sick – very very sick” messages. For a few hours there had been hope when the first set of messages arrived, but that was crushed when the content was revealed to us in one of those hospital type press conferences.

“Get a grip”, you say. Easy enough for you. I was there when the first Mars rover landed. I watched unable to breathe as we waited those awful seven minutes for it to announce its successful impact. I went to sleep that night telling myself over and over “We are on Mars. We are on Mars.” It was the moment of a lifetime.

I have downloaded megabytes of images from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Web site and then gone into my image editing software to get as close as possible. I felt like I could pick up grains of sand and rub them between my fingers. The 3D images mesmerized me as I adjusted my vision to see through paper glasses that I didn’t even know I had until the moment I needed them for this.

Every day I went to the site to see what was new. And then the horrid moment when the news was bad.

It made watching NASA television last night even harder as they tracked the landing of Opportunity, a second Mars rover. Once again I didn’t breathe as each stage passed first from entry into the atmosphere and then to deployment of the parachute and finally the bouncing rolling arrival. Regardless of my anxiety over Spirit, I cheered with the JPL staff and waited anxiously for each new beep indicating another success stage.
And now today the news is good. Spirit is improving with cautious hopes that its problems can be fixed. I’m so full of admiration for those who are trying to repair the ailing rover. I’ve done my share of computer troubleshooting over the phone. I can’t imagine trying to do it under these conditions. Additional good news is that Opportunity is nestled in a crater allowing it to send back information more amazing than any of us could have hoped. The pictures once again send chills down my spine.

Never before have we been able to watch such extraordinary events on television or see such images on our computers. The television cameras recording the conversations, frowns, and delight of the JPL staff are not providing contrived events for us to watch. This is the real stuff. Nervous peanut munchers are real people responding to stress just as I do. When news comes across the speaker that Opportunity landed at the rate of 2-3 Gs, these people are truly amazed and they show it. I’m sure that these folks know that a camera is recording their every action and beaming it to millions of people. That might temper their language a bit. I’m sure they work hard to look busy even when there’s nothing to do for the moment. But it’s still real. Very real.

I have to say that I’m astonished when I talk to people who are hardly aware that within a three week period we have successfully landed not one but two vehicles to use to explore our nearest planet neighbor. Even those who are aware of the news haven’t bothered to go look at the photographs. Amazing. These same people watch Survivor Somewhere and call it entertainment. They are missing the real thing. They are welcome to their recreation. Meanwhile I’ll watch the rovers explore Mars taking me over ground I never expected to see in my lifetime even if I do suffer mightily at each mishap.

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