12 Jul 2009, 11:03 am
12 Jul 2009, 11:05 pm
matsuiny2004 wrote:
the whole concept doesn't seem fun without the aliens 
Way safer without them!
Hmm… I’d be very tempted. However, safety and price would be sure to be a problem. I have a thing for deserts, so to see a planet-full of desert… Yummy! Only too bad there wouldn’t be any lizards in that desert… I’d love to see the probes and the rovers. And I’d like to find a good dark spot and watch Phobos and Deimos, as well as the starry skies and the solar system as seen from the surface of Mars. I wonder how well I’d see Jupiter and Saturn… Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris…
13 Jul 2009, 12:45 am
13 Jul 2009, 9:49 pm
Ambivalence wrote:
I understand the Martian sights (OM, VM) wouldn't be that impressive from the surface, because the horizon is too near to take in their scale.
This is not exactly the case. You cannot see the summit of Olympus from any point on the martian surface other than near the top of the mountain itself, but it is flanked by cliffs as tall as 20K feet, which is something probably fairly impressive; part of the northern escarpment includes a rise of maybe 30K feet, which is humongous (bear in mind Everest rises a paltry 12K feet from the surrounding terrain), although brute giganticness might not translate into awesome. Parts of the Valles Marineris system however would look fairly spectacular I reckon; you can verify this on Google Earth (which, yes, has Mars as of early this year
).
I absolutely would given the opportunity. I might even consider going if it was only a 1-way ticket
. Valles Marineris and surrounding features would be where I'd go first choice. Then of course there's Cydonia, which is a must-see. Tharsis volcanoes are on the list of course. Other than that it's hard to say. Some of the Chaos and Labyrinthus features are probably cool, but aside from deserts, canyons, craters and sand storms there isn't too much going on there.
Note: not that that can't be pretty. Take a look at Opportunity's "Rub al Khali" panorama sometime...
