[meteorite-list] The Human Presence in the Solar System

[Sterling K. Webb]

As of today, we have a robot explorer in orbit
around Mercury with a year's rent paid up 
(and hopefully the lease will be renewed if 
it does good).

We also have a presence in orbit at the planet 
Venus, working there since 2006, and mappers
clicking away in our own backyard, at the Moon.

Mars is crawled with rovers, orbited by imagers, 
and being mapped to a sharper resolution that 
we have charted our own planet, and more of
our machines are readying to join them. 

Out at Saturn, Cassini, a plutonium-powered 
robot will carry on its long investigation of that 
entire miniature solar system out there. And 
Spring is starting on Titan!

We have been poking our noses into comets 
this year, after smacking them to see what 
happens, and snatching pieces and bringing 
them home.

This summer, another of our robots will visit
a large asteroid (No. 4) for the first time. In a year
or so it will move on to the largest asteroid, while
the most ambitious of long-haul robots dashes
toward Pluto. We will be at Ceres when it gets 
to Pluto... and Cassini will still be working Saturn.

There are only three planets we're not already at 
nor going to. We are all over the place. Does this 
qualify for a Golden Age? (The first one being the
Voyager Grand Tour.)

If the Aliens are watching, they probably have the 
Sol System in their books as one that already has 
a dominant species, have written it off for colonization, 
and are getting ready to move on.

No, the Aliens are not the problem. I worry instead
about the Wise Men of the Potomac who want to 
beach the fleet and burn it on the shore in order to 
save the Republic from the perils of exploration.


Sterling K. Webb