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MUSK WANTS ONE MILLION HUMANS ON MARS TO SUSTAIN A COLONY. 3/4: 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

Society & Culture, Arts, News, Books

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

MUSK WANTS ONE MILLION HUMANS ON MARS TO SUSTAIN A COLONY. 3/4: For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet Hardcover – May 18, 2023 by Matthew Shindell (Author)

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.

By focusing on the diverse human stories behind the telescopes and behind the robots we know and love, Shindell shows how Mars exploration has evolved in ways that have also expanded knowledge about other facets of the universe. Captained by an engaging and erudite expert, For the Love of Marsis a captivating voyage through time and space for anyone curious about Curiosity and the red planet.

OCTOBER 2006 SPIRIT ROVER ON MARS

Transcript

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0:00.0

Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island?

0:04.0

Jane Gaskin did exactly that, trading in the family home to begin a new life in the

0:09.1

tropics.

0:10.1

But she soon discovers that Paradise has its secrets.

0:13.4

I'm Alice Levine, and this is the price of Paradise,

0:18.0

the island dream that ends in kidnap, corruption, and murder. Wish you were here. Follow the price of Paradise Now wherever

0:26.7

you listen to podcasts. This is CBS I on the world. I'm John Batchelor with Matthew Schendel, the space historian

0:38.8

curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, a really cool job and the book is really

0:45.8

cool.

0:46.8

For the love of Mars, it's about human history and the Martian planet, projections, interpretations, and now science.

0:55.8

Matt Descartes, died 1650.

0:59.5

Christian Huygens.

1:01.1

Giovanni Cassini, died 17 1712 Isaac Newton died 1726 these men

1:07.3

Llanard Euler of all physics these men put together what we understand to be science following Galileo's

1:17.6

groundbreaking martyrdom to what he saw through the telescope.

1:23.2

All of this is going on simultaneously with them inheriting the old world.

1:28.0

Were they seen as rebellious of the ancients when they provided these interpretations of observation and mathematics?

1:37.0

I think yes and no, right?

1:40.0

Galileo didn't see himself necessarily as being rebellious.

1:44.8

He thought he was still working within that same tradition,

1:48.7

but trying to modernize it based on new know new observations new mathematics now I don't want to try to get too

1:57.8

deep into what Galileo really thought he was doing but at least this is the way that

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