Congrat's to the Mars 2020 Perseverance Team!

[Valentin Albillo]

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Hi, all:

Congratulations indeed ! A superb, most-difficult achievement, which will pave the way for future human exploration of Mars. If it succeeds in finding evidence for Martian life we might be somewhat surprised that it actually strongly resembles ancient Earth's life, meaning that life on Earth did originate on Mars and was brought here in a series of rock fragments resulting from a large impact on Mars eons ago.

Speaking of life on Mars, it reminded me of Man Plus, a 1976 science fiction novel by Frederik Pohl which I read many decades ago and at the time I enjoyed it but considered that the procedure described in it was about the worst way to proceed, Mars-izing man instead of terraforming Mars. I quote from Wikipedia:

      "To survive in the thin Martian atmosphere, Roger Torraway's body must be replaced with an artificial one. At every step he becomes more and more disconnected from humanity, unable to feel things in his new body. It is only after arriving on Mars that his new body begins to make sense to him. It is perfectly adapted to this new world [...]"

V.