The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Perseverance probe: "Mars, this red object of desire"

2021-02-18T18:01:25.600Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - Tonight, the “Perseverance” probe sent by NASA is due to land on Planet Mars. On this occasion, the essayist David Brunat paints a portrait full of lyricism of the still mysterious red planet, but which the whole world covets.


David Brunat is a partner at LPM Communications and essayist

It is a big rough stone, peeled, arid at will, inhospitable as possible, very difficult to access.

And properly unlivable.

But which arouses more covetousness than the most beautiful and sparkling diamonds on earth.

It has caught the eye since the first day men looked at the sky.

For him, today we are swallowing up fortunes.

We examine it from all angles, we probe it, we dredge it - in the geological sense of the term -, we photograph it, we film it, we question it without end or truce, its face is spread out in the media of the world whole, she's a social media diva.

The most powerful nations dream of approaching it, embracing it, unraveling its secrets.

A star treatment!

And yet, this unapproachable star is very stingy in words, scandals, whims and love affairs.

His only known escapades are meteor falls, ice clouds, dust swirls, perverse radiations and other sidereal tribulations.

We have known since the 18th century that it has an atmosphere, but does it have an atmospheric face?

Not really.

You might as well admit it: nothing in her spontaneously attracts sympathy.

It takes all the competitions and needs of science, technology and human curiosity to find it attractive and desirable.

We feel it naturally rogue, ruthless to whoever wants to approach it, ready to devour any intruder without qualms.

It is silent, icy, dusty, lifeless apart from a few liquid traces or fossils nestled here and there in its rock bowels.

Thank you for the welcoming!

It is exciting to think that the first planet that we may one day set foot on bears the standard of the god of war, desolation and death.

It must be said that it announces the color, the red planet: Mars!

The red of passion.

The red of war.

The red poison of conquest, peaceful as long as humans don't visit it - but we bet if they do colonize it one day, they will eventually come to blows as well as ravage the scarce resources it holds, since we are made of that material.

It is exciting to think that the first planet that we may one day set foot on bears the standard of the god of war, desolation and death.

We could have instead set our sights on Venus, a planet that is also of great interest to astronomers and that poets have endowed with a symbolic otherwise pleasant.

To read also:

Charles Jaigu: "We will not live on Mars"

But Venus is even more difficult to access.

We therefore made the choice of a planet which lacks… of age and which rolls without complexes virile mechanics, with its warlike name and its male symbolism.

Indeed, did you know that the astronomical symbol of Mars is the same as that which designates the male sex in biology (this circle surmounted by an arrow directed towards the northeast and supposed to represent in a stylized way the shield and the lance of the god Mars)?

Some dream of spending vacations there and even spending their lives there, thinking of fleeing the hassle of this earth.

It takes all tastes.

Musk's taste for the red planet became famous.

Elon would see himself ending his days there (“

but not on landing,

” as he humorously put it.)

And the nations are fiercely vying for it, as they once did for the conquest of the moon.

America, China, Europe, India, United Arab Emirates (and formerly the Soviet Union) ...: the list of suitors who court him and who send him probes and rolling machines as one makes offerings to a deity marries that of countries which have global, even cosmic, technological and geopolitical ambitions.

No more in this area than in others has the god Mars deserted the blue planet: his is the scene of fierce competition.

Space and martial.

Hay of little green men, the time will come when it will be necessary to green the red planet.

We will perhaps engage in clean, organic, recyclable wars.

It has also become a fabulous spectacle.

We can follow the landing live on TV - “

the

landing

?

»- robots that will tread its ash and dust soil.

Soon, we will be able to say with Boris Vian in his Small shows: “

When are we leaving?

When the rocket is clean.

I'm not going to land on Mars with a disgusting rocket.

»Hay of little green fellows, the time will come when we will have to green the red planet.

We will perhaps engage in clean, organic, recyclable wars.

This large stone which is ultimately not so disgusting is therefore, in its own way, a remarkable object of communication, which allows people to dream, nations to stage themselves and poets to wage war with their feathers and their lyre.

Read also:

The Gafam, an extraterrestrial power

The fabulous story of the Martian conquest finally teaches us that our time is bathed like all those that preceded it in the world of myths.

The solar system is inhabited by deities - Mars and Venus, therefore, but also Saturn, Mercury, Pluto ... - the Milky Way is also sprinkled with mythological figures, and the most remote galaxies are not left out (Andromeda, Orion…).

Before you go on a certain Tuesday (literally "

the day of March

", as Friday is the day of Venus) on the planet Mars aboard an Ariane rocket celebrated by Jupiter at the Elysee, you must go to Midas, protect your computer against a Trojan horse, settle your Oedipus complex with the shrink, renegotiate your debts with your banker to avoid the torture of Tantalus and regain Olympic financial form?

No doubt, you are on the planet of myths and imagination, this ancestral home ground of humans who have their feet in clay but their heads in the stars.

To both of us, Mars!

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-02-18

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.