Is there anybody there?

[Michael McNeil]

I want to send a tiny toy to my friend Mars for Christmas. I want it to be a very small toy for even though Mars lives in a very tough neighbourhood, I just know he will take care of it.

I thought perhaps a smallish bouncy ball with something hi-tech inside. It has to be small as postage is so expensive. Another thing is the postal service will tend to drop it like a hot potato. It isn't so much that there will be any heated exchanges over there but that, well to put it politely, thew atmosphere can be a little stretched.

I know most of you will be wondering why I would trust such intimacies when there is a perfectly reasonable argument for keeping my distance. You know with modern technology and stuff... I could just send him some sort of satellite tech toy that could you know... well.... errrr....

Erm....

Anyway I took a leaf out of the Hubble book and sent it all off half cocked. I hope it gets there OK. Has anyone heard anything?

I know what the post is like at this time of year.

Ah, well. Perhaps tomorrow eh?

[Bob Eager]

See:

[Michael McNeil]

the useless previous landings there must be some sort of life on there by now. We sent it.

Or was this expedition there to see if the stuff we planted has taken?

Either way a system of fully functional weather satellites would have been a better proposition for both Mars and Venus rather than sending out all those bloody toys!

[Abdullah Eyles]

What happens if there IS life there? are they planning to sell mobile phones to them? or what???

[The Ghost In The Machine]

In sci.physics, Abdullah Eyles

wrote on 26 Dec 2003 07:01:05 -0800 :

We send them a copy of H. G. Well's _War of the Worlds_ and then ask them nicely not to invade, of course.

:-)

[Mark Martin]

The value of discovering indigenous life off Earth is for the same purpose that people usually explore: Man does not live by bread alone. We (though this may not necessarily include you) want to learn, aquire insight, to appreciate the genius of nature. It ain't gonna happen by sitting here on our butts.

-Mark Martin

[PoP]

Unfortunately a by-product of seeking life elsewhere is bound to include capture and conquer at some stage, as it is in mans makeup to overwhelm others.

I very often muse about what would happen if there were another race in another solar system which had evolved to more or less the same extent as h*mo sapiens, but had never felt the need of monetary reward. I expect that dear friends in the mould of President Blair and Prime Minister Bush would appear from the woodwork, invent some hotchpotch story about WoMD, conquer and install their own government and introduce this wonderful thing called "money" to kickstart their economy.

PoP

Replying to the email address given by my news reader will result in your own email address being instantly added to my anti-spam database! If you really want to contact me try changing the prefix in the given email address to my newsgroup posting name.....

[Michael McNeil]

They could use leaves if they don't have printing presses. Different species of leaves would conform to our different coins. And there may be enough variety to spare so that different parts of their planet could have different economic structures and confuse their tourists and/or poison them.

And grow thorns instead of taxes. That would be good. And in the Autumn it would all turn to gold. But in the winter, silver.