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>Do you keep up with the Mars Rovers.

No I haven't been. Like you say, it's still going and I'd forgotten all about it. As you may have seen from my recent posts I've been reading the AC Clarke book "Sands of Mars", written in 1951. So I get all the info I need about Mars from that :-)

Thanks, I'll be interested to follow the actual mission now.

Apparently we're already supposed to have several colonies on Mars, covered with pressurised domes, and there is vegetaion that absorbs water from the soil abd produces gaseous oxygen as a by-product, and animals that graze on these plants and thus get their O2 needs. I guess the rover has missed these :-)

For all feminists out there, a precis of a passage in the book, concerning the colonists' stop for tea break all at the same time in the PM, in a large canteen: "... One of the women, older than the other girls, probably a senior secretary ..." ARRRRRGH! These women, BTW, occupy a large typing pool/admin office.

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>http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/
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>Still going well outside their warranty period and Opportunity about to reach the edge of Victoria Crater.