What can Mars do for us, here on Earth?


Back in the fall of 1966, as a young electronics technician and newly arrived immigrant in Sydney, Australia, I got a job with an American company called Honeywell to work on digital computers.
These were data processing machines occupying a whole floor in downtown office buildings, with humming air conditioning systems.
Enter the space race which started some 10 years earlier with Sputnik, and the need to miniaturize electronic components to make space vehicles progressively smarter.
It didn't take long for printed circuit boards in commercial computers to be loaded up with integrated circuits, and the rest is history: A laptop today will do the same amount of work as a 1966 mainframe computer occupying a whole office building.
Fast forward to 2021: Today, Perseverance is sitting warm and snug on the frigid surface of Mars after a perfect landing yesterday and capable of operating for some 14 years based on output from its on-board plutonium based nuclear power cell.
Based on a tried and true design used in previous Mars rovers. The cost is extremely high, but that was true of the early integrated circuit boards as well, back in my young days.
The take-home lesson is this: What we do in space can have huge and life changing consequences back here on Earth. It is up to us to make it a positive experience.

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