I have been watching and drawing the surface of Mars. It is wonderfully full of detail. There is certainly no question about there being mountains and large greatly elevated plateaus.
The Mars rover Curiosity has sent back images of some odd things on the surface of Mars, and some people think they could be UFOs. Here's my question. If we're on the surface of Mars, aren't we the UFO?
I am trying to represent design through drawing. I have always drawn things to a high degree of detail. That is not an ideological position I hold on drawing but is rather an expression of my desire to design and by extension to build. This has often been mistaken as a fetish I have for drawing: of drawing for drawing’s sake, for the love of drawing. Never. Never. Yes, I love making a beautiful, well-crafted drawing, but I love it only because of the amount of information a precise drawing provides
The surface of Mars is bathed in ultraviolet light, bathed in radiation. Mars's magnetic field is essentially gone, so the surface of Mars is essentially sterilized.
I think we need to move to the moons of Mars and learn how to control robots that are on the surface. It's not the impatient way of getting there, but Mars has been there a long time.
The surface of the Moon is not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical as a great number of philosophers believe it to be, but is uneven, rough, and full of cavities and prominences, being not unlike the face of the Earth, relieved by chains of mountains and deep valleys.
As we visit Mars multiple times, we will build up infrastructure on the surface to expand the capabilities and reach of humans on Mars.
The best way to study Mars is with two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars... and then on the surface.
Here is Mike Wallace, who is visible to the public, and I have been watching him since the early '50s. Smoking up a storm and insulting his guests and being absolutely wonderfully evil and charming too.
You know what's been interesting about my career? It's been this slow rise with long plateaus.
The communications delays between Earth and Mars can be half an hour or more, so the people on the ground can't participate minute by minute in Mars surface activities.
I work on stretched linen canvas, sized so that the surface already has a sense of tension when I begin. It is a very rich and reactive surface. I begin by drawing on the canvas with a kind of loose line, very simply and freely. I paint very thinly, which allows me to change the drawing if I want to.
Did the Pilgrims on the Mayflower sit around Plymouth Rock waiting for a return trip? They came here to settle. And that's what we should be doing on Mars. When you go to Mars, you need to have made the decision that you're there permanently. The more people we have there, the more it can become a sustaining environment. Except for very rare exceptions, the people who go to Mars shouldn't be coming back. Once you get on the surface, you're there.
The famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).
I personally think going to Mars, if it takes two years or two and a half years, that's doable. Certainly, the first people who go there, that's going to be a big motivator, being first getting to Mars.
Doing Tim's film is always going to be the most pleasure. Let me just put it that way. So, without drawing favorites one way or the other, getting back with him and doing Mars Attacks! was certainly a special treat.
Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar examined, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked and even blasted. Still to come: Mars being stepped on.