Humans aren’t going to Mars anytime soon. There’s no reason to. Robots are much better suited to such endeavors.

NASA put another rover on the Martian surface today. It was a superb display of engineering and technical prowess. It’s also proof that complex, interdisciplinary problems can be solved. Obviously something like climate change is much bigger than this as the social, political, ecological, and economic constraints are greater. Not to mention more fluid and unpredictable. But that doesn’t negate the point—when people set their minds to solve something they can do great things.

Humans can do OK in earth orbit. They can live reasonably well in a low-flying spacecraft. They can stay in shape for several months to a year in the free-fall (“microgravity” in NASA-speak) environment. Individuals have to be selected carefully for such missions. The technical skills alone are daunting, not to mention the close-quarters living and separation from loved ones. Kind of like submariners, although they can always surface and get some fresh air. Not a choice for the astronauts and cosmonauts!

Supply of such vessels is a big task. Rockets can send about 50 to 100 tonnes of material per launch into a low-earth orbit. The Saturn V of Apollo days is still the king with a 140 tonne payload. A tonne is 2200 pounds (1000 kg), so 50 tonnes is 110,000 pounds and 100 tonnes is 220,000 pounds. SpaceX is supposedly developing a 150 tonne lifter this year.

How much is that? A Ford F-150 pickup weighs between 4000-5000 pounds so let’s call it 2 tonnes. So a 100-tonne lifter could bring 50 Ford pickups to the space station! That would be a big help, eh?

100 tonnes of water, good old H₂O, is 100,000 Liters. That’s 50,000 2-L PET bottles! If you could gather that 100,000 L of water into a cube, it would be about 15 feet on a side. That much water takes one whole rocket launch.

You can imagine all the things the occupants of a space station need to survive, not to mention keeping the thing in working order and being able to do the work you are up there to do. 100 tonnes is really not that much stuff. The average American, by the way, creates about four pounds of trash, per day.

So you see that robots are far better for space exploration. I think there is a good chance that Perseverance or some other remote probe of Mars will find living things. I think it will happen in the next few years. There won’t be any little green men or Martian monsters (so disappointing!) but there will be something. It will not be “intelligent” in the sense we mean. And we mean that to say “like us.”

No, it will be more like something we find growing in acid mine drainage. Or perhaps at deep-sea hydrothermal vents. There are lots of extremophiles on earth, creatures like tardigrades that can survive and even thrive in extreme environments. You must check out methane ice worms!

Something is alive on Mars. Dormant, perhaps. Well hidden, to be sure. But I’m convinced we will have our “close encounter,” it will just be done remotely with a 20-minute time delay. That’s a good thing. If one of us was up there, fretting over our oxygen supply or return-launch window or any of the multitude of things worth fretting about, we might miss it. The instruments on the rover have a much better chance of getting the job done.

Good luck to ’em.

I like DVDs. I collect ’em. But I’m cheap. I try not to spend big money. So I spend a lot of time browsing the collection at Edward R. Hamilton, they usually have good deals.

Like this one, only $7.95 for 12 movies:

OK, so maybe this one is just twelve versions of the same movie, but you catch my drift. I like bargains.

I usually won’t spend more than five bucks for one movie. But I make exceptions if I find something interesting. I’m interested in what they call “classic film noir” which means Hollywood-made low-budget crime melodramas from the 40s and 50s. So if I find something like Woman on the Run or Too Late for Tears, I’ll spend a little more.

Movie art was very different then! Here’s what I mean:

By the way that’s the inimitable Lizabeth Scott being abused. If you are looking for the archetypal femme fatale, look no further.

Roger Corman is enjoying a renaissance with many of his 60s and 70s films being re-issued, like this enduring classic:

We just watched a mash-up of horror and comedy called Creature From the Haunted Sea which was hilarious and had a spectacularly wacky plot. No one will ever accuse Corman of making deep, thinking-man’s movies. He liked action and scantily-clad women. But that doesn’t mean the films lack any sort of theme or meaningful intent. Those things should be subordinate to the movie itself anyway, don’t you think? Corman’s goal was to entertain, and he did that on-time and under budget, which means he made money on almost all his films.

Movies are the ultimate collaborative art form. They require, at the very least, dozens if not hundreds of people to make. The big blockbusters cost tens of millions to produce. Over the years I’ve found that cost and quality are not necessarily connected. More expensive films look and sound better, but they aren’t always better films. Much of the appeal of classic film noir is the restricted palette. The producers and directors had to be brisk and efficient and work with what they had. They learned to create tension and urgency in the story-telling with a minimum of fuss.

I’m perfectly capable of being a movie snob. I took a film class in college. We watched (and analyzed) Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni and stuff like that. I can discuss auteur theory and semiotics and Russian Formalist Criticism if I have to.

But mostly I like to watch movies in the comfort of my own living room. I need breaks for things like using the toilet and re-filling my bourbon glass, and you can’t do that in the theater. Plus you have to be around a lot of noisy people and you have to watch what’s being shown instead of what you put in the DVD player.

Now I don’t mean to say anything bad about the theatrical experience. I still remember watching An American Werewolf in London in a packed theater and everyone in the place screaming and jumping at the same times. It was like being at a ball game! And I’ve made a point to go see a few movies when they came out, like Pulp Fiction (fabulous) and Eyes Wide Shut (terrible), but you can see how dated I am. If I go to a movie theater more than once in a decade that’s a lot! I think the last two films I saw in person were Master and Commander and The Simpsons Movie, and those were 2003 and 2007 releases.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Those are only the most recent major motion pictures I’ve seen in person. I have been to our local film festival in the Scott Valley which unfortunately focuses on documentaries (which I can’t stand) instead of feature films. I did see the excellent Bullit County in 2018, though.

So you can see I prefer the humble DVD. I don’t even stream movies or use Netflix or Prime or Hulu or any of that stuff. I like the actual, physical plastic box with its disc nestled inside. Believe it or not I keep up on some contemporary cinema. My lovely bride is a big Star Wars fan and we’ve watched all the latest films in that series. We both like the Mad Max franchise and we own the latest, Fury Road (2015). The most recent movie in the collection is probably 2017’s Small Town Crime. You usually have to wait a few years for recent releases to find their way to the DVD market and then a few more years until they show up in the bargain bins.

Now if Jason Statham and Amy Smart would get off their asses and make Crank 3 all will be right with the world!

I used to do a lot of Nordic skiing back in the day. Otherwise known as cross-country skiing. I’m a downhill skier these days, but once in a while you have to use those old X-C skills.

The best spot at the Mt Shasta Ski Park isn’t actually in the Ski Park but in the adjacent Forest Service lands. You get their via a chairlift, but you have to cross the boundary to access the area.

Today the off-piste skiing was hard going and we had to get around on the groomed runs. Fortunately the killer powder stash was in good shape and we were able to get in some big, fun, freshie runs. The road back to the Ski Park had not been plowed or groomed so it was a bit of work getting out the first time. A couple of guys had broken the trail so it wasn’t too bad. Soon enough a flock of powderhounds had hit the same slope and the same route back and the return trail got easier.

It’s a good workout, walking and/or skiing on a relatively level surface. At one point I loosened the top buckle of my boots so I could effect more of a kick-and-glide style, but with alpine (fixed-heel) bindings, there’s only so much flex, and it isn’t very efficient. I did a lot of old-fashioned tromping, not to mention plenty of vigorous poling, to propel myself. And there were spots where one could get a good skating rhythm going. That’s always satisfying because you can get up some speed and feel like your knocking off the yards quickly.

The sun came out and the blue skies and mountain views were spectacular. As much as I enjoy downhill skiing, I miss the peace and quiet (and lack of crowds) that come with cross-country skiing. It’s a whole different world outside the resort boundary. I think I need more of that.