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Another balanced rock!

A new balanced rock

Cool image time! The image to the right, cropped to show here, was taken by Curiosity’s mast camera this week as it surveys the upcoming terrain so that scientists can choose its route. It shows another balanced rock that is far more unbalanced than the one the rover passed last week.

In reviewing the survey images, I am not exactly sure whether this rock is located along Curiosity’s future route, as I have not been able to locate it in any of the panorama images the rover has taken. If it is in the gap they are aiming for, then we shall soon see some additional close-ups. If not, then we will have to content ourselves with some other views that, when you think about it, are really just as good.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Localfluff

    I suppose that it is the low gravity that makes these cliff hangers possible.

    They couldn’t form on the Moon because it has no atmosphere. Micrometeorites churn down a decimeter per ten million years, or something like that. The Moon’s surface is just meteoric dust. Many meters deep. But Mars is the ruins of a decaying ancient geology it once formed itself.

  • BSJ

    Layers, layers, everywhere you look!

    Are these supposed to be of wind blown deposits?

    Or volcanic or even water borne sedimentary..?

  • wodun

    To add something to the list of suspects, on Earth we get a similar looking layering from foliation.

  • ken anthony

    It’s all real estate, with enough to pay for ANY level of development… Sept 26th can’t come too soon.

    The value of that real estate, whatever the market determines it to be, should all go for transportation costs of colonists since they are the ones that will appreciate its value over time. A trust set up for this purpose solves the chicken or egg problem.

    The only reason this hasn’t already happened is because nobody owns mars and those that don’t, have no incentive to let others share in its wealth.

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