Word: planetful
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...cosmos. Mars and Earth, after all, have been throwing rocks and machines at each other for eons. Last summer an ancient Martian meteorite gave the creatures of Earth the first compelling evidence of life beyond our own. This summer the creatures on Earth answered back, sending our sister planet evidence not just that terrestrial life exists, but that it is--when it tries to be--wonderfully intelligent...
...that enabled J.P.L. controllers to choose a safe spot for Viking 1's lander to touch down. On July 20, lander 1 separated from its orbiting mother ship. Using retrorockets, deploying a parachute and finally firing three descent engines, it bumped gently onto a rock-covered slope on the planet's southern hemisphere. Forty-five days later, the Viking 2 lander plopped down on more rugged terrain far to the north...
Mars, of course, has offered the perpetual test of human uniqueness, and has lately become the proof. If life existed anywhere else under the sun, it should have been there. We have always given most-favored-planet status to Mars. How would you describe an elephant to a man from Mars? If a man from Mars were to visit Earth...? And so forth. Orson Welles broadcast bulletins of our scariest Martians; Ray Walston played our favorite...
Imagination was abetted by science. If life could evolve on little old Earth, why not on another planet in the same solar system, one that was a mere seven-months' flight away? Mars had a warm, dense atmosphere, water, floodplains. Last August brought news of a meteorite, most likely from Mars, containing minerals and other evidence of a long-past microbial life; a thrill was felt around the world...
...that we are alone in the universe? In a lovely piece in the New York Times, John Noble Wilford cited with some melancholy our "cosmic loneliness." One could go anywhere with that daunting thought. We could conclude that we humans are a special breed, appointed by universal forces to planet-hop and rule. It would be like us to think that--every dead brown rock on every dead brown planet serving to exalt our life by contrast. We are the fireworks in the darkened universe, the Chinese firecrackers, the Roman candles and the sparklers. In a few short decades...