MARS COLONY AND A TOWN NAMED FORTITUDE: 4 /4: For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet Hardcover – May 18, 2023 by Matthew Shindell (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Love-Mars-Human-History-Planet/dp/0226821897/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Mars and its secrets have fascinated and mystified humans since ancient times. Due to its vivid color and visibility, its geologic kinship with Earth, and its potential as our best hope for settlement, Mars embodies everything that inspires us about space and exploration. For the Love of Mars surveys the red planet’s place in the human imagination, beginning with ancient astrologers and skywatchers and ending in our present moment of exploration and virtual engagement.
National Air and Space Museum curator Matthew Shindell describes how historical figures across eras and around the world have made sense of this mysterious planet. We meet Mayan astrologer priests who incorporated Mars into seasonal calendars and religious ceremonies; Babylonian astrologers who discerned bad omens; figures of the Scientific Revolution who struggled to comprehend it as a world; Victorian astronomers who sought signs of intelligent life; and twentieth- and twenty-first-century scientists who have established a technological presence on its surface. Along the way, we encounter writers and artists from each of these periods who take readers and viewers along on imagined journeys to Mars.
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| 0:26.7 | That's Better Help, H-E-L-P.com. |
| 0:29.7 | This is CBS I in the World. I'm John Bachelor with the space historian and |
| 0:35.1 | curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Matthew |
| 0:39.5 | Schendel. His new book is for the love of Mars, the Human History of the Red Planet. |
| 0:45.0 | The Robots, the Programs Wave After Wave of Conquest, probing Mars, first a fly by with Mariner, then orbiters, then landers, now rovers, and of course |
| 0:59.0 | ingenuity, the brave little toaster that flies on the surface of Mars. This comes out of the |
| 1:05.1 | Cold War and Matt you make an ironic point that the Cold War came to a moment |
| 1:10.5 | where the US had successfully defeated the Soviets in the race to the moon. |
| 1:16.6 | And a presentation was made by NASA to then Nixon administration to reproduce the Apollo program on Mars. What happened, Matt? in where the success of the Apollo program to many was sort of an indication that, you know, |
| 1:37.7 | NASA was so good at what it did that it should continue to basically push the envelope to continue with the same level of |
| 1:46.2 | funding and you know continue the US leadership in space by moving from from the moon to Mars with a similar program. But you know the |
| 1:56.3 | the politics at home were not really suitable for that, right? |
| 2:03.0 | Like the US public had, you know, enjoyed the Apollo program, |
| 2:08.0 | but had not always been happy with the amount of money that it actually took to get humans to the moon. And Nixon, who was president at the time, |
| 2:19.3 | you know, he felt the political winds changing. He felt that it was important to shift focus to more domestic issues like poverty, like civil rights, other issues that were becoming important to the American people or had been already |
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