The excitement of scientific discovery filled the Pasadena Convention Center last weekend as a crowd of space enthusiasts, including several from the world of
Star Trek, witnessed a much-needed triumph in the American space program as the latest mission to Mars arrived successfully and started sending back a flood of images.
Star Trek: Voyager actors Tim Russ ("Tuvok"), Robert Picardo ("The Doctor") and John Rhys-Davies ("Leonardo da Vinci" and currently in theaters as "Gimli" in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King") were among the standing-room-only crowd in the auditorium Saturday night watching a live feed from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) during the tense moments when the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet, and mission control awaited a confirmation signal.
That confirmation came shortly before 9:00 p.m. (PST), sending mission control and the convention hall erupting into simultaneous cheers and hugs. About three hours later — close to midnight — the first black-and-white images started coming in, resulting in another wave of jubilation. While this is not the first time pictures have been received from the surface of Mars (the last being in 1997), the achievement was particularly poignant after the disappointment of two previous failed Mars missions, and the tragedy of Space Shuttle Columbia. At a press conference which was also broadcast on the large screen at the convention center, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced, "We're back."
The public gathering across town from JPL was organized by The Planetary Society, which dubbed the event "Wild About Mars" (a double-entendre also referring to the close encounter of the Stardust craft with Comet Wild-2, which took place Friday). Picardo and writer Andre Bormanis (formerly Star Trek's science consultant and now Executive Story Editor of Star Trek: Enterprise) are officers of the Planetary Society, and were part of the program along with Rhys-Davies, science-fiction icon Ray Bradbury, and Eugene W. Roddenberry Jr., son of the late Gene Roddenberry.
"It's important to explore Mars because it's the planet in our solar system that's most like Earth, it's the planet that we will someday almost certainly inhabit," said Bormanis while viewing models of past and future Mars probes and two solar sails on exhibit at the conference. "We will have, probably within the next 50 years, some kind of a base there, maybe eventually a colony. We could certainly build an outpost on Mars and survive there." He thinks it's likely that a manned mission to Mars will happen sometime between 2020 and 2050, depending on money and political will. Bormanis moderated a panel discussion late Saturday night called "Mars in the Mind of Man: Past and Far Future."
On Sunday, Roddenberry introduced a panel of scientists and former NASA officials on "Future Human Exploration of Mars" (astronaut Buzz Aldrin was scheduled for this panel, but he was absent due to illness). In his opening remarks, Roddenberry spoke of the time his father brought home an eight-inch reflecting telescope and gave him a passion for stargazing. "What really excited me most about the universe and astronomy was not what we did know, but rather what we didn't. It had been instilled by my father that humanity is really in its infancy right now, and that we are far from knowing everything there is to know," Eugene Jr. said. "Astronomy for me was much more of a creative art form than a science. The idea of gazing up into the unknown and using my imagination to figure out what it is, or to guess what it is, was something that really enchanted me."
Besides Russ, other Trek dignitaries who came just to be witness to the occasion included former Senior Illustrator Rick Sternbach, and writer Marc Zicree, story author of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "First Contact" and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Far Beyond the Stars" (the latter which mentions Bradbury by name).
Aside from the JPL feed conveying the critical mission events and subsequent NASA press conferences, and the scientific panels and discussions, the Planetary Society program included readings from the works of Bradbury by the guest actors. Picardo began with the Bradbury poem "If Only We Had Taller Been," then later that night he was joined by Rhys-Davies to perform "Leviathan 99," a Bradbury play based on "Moby Dick" where Captain Ahab chases down a great white comet rather than a whale. The Ahab part was played by Rhys-Davies, who left the audience's collective jaw on the floor with his amazingly dramatic and passionate performance. On Sunday Rhys-Davies and actress Linda Pelikan read from "The Martian Chronicles."
The 83-year-old Bradbury himself had some very inspiring words for the gathering, addressing the question of why we do things like the Mars Exploration Rover mission. "Haven't you often gone to sleep at night wondering what it's all about? Why are we here? What is our destiny?" the renowned author said. "A lot of people say, 'I think life is meaningless.' I don't believe that. The universe has saved up its energy and created us. What for?
"The universe is a vast theater, a magnificent theater, full of miracles, full of incredible things," he continued. "But what's been missing up until now, it's been missing an audience. We have been created as an audience to the miracles. We have the responsibility of looking at the universe, seeing what we see, seeing what we know, and doing something about it. We are here to see, and to worship, and to understand, and to re-create what we see.
"We are taking the message of the universe out into the universe, because as far as we know, here on Earth, we are maybe the only living things for millions of light-years. So we're here to witness and celebrate. That makes you all responsible to the gift, doesn't it? You have the gift of life, you pay back. So, you are celebrants. You are members of the audience to witness and celebrate the universe. That's why we're going to Mars. That's what this is all about."
The audience — the celebrants — in attendance all rousingly agreed.
