I watched a great program on Nova called Mars, Dead or Alive. It was fascinating to see how design, engineering, project and crisis management come together to achieve the overall vision of being able to drive an “intelligent” vehicle on Mars. What an amazing achievement!
The following morning I’m sitting in my car and look at the gas gauge. It tells me that I have about a quarter of a tank left. Well, actually it tells me that i have about four “cubes” (I guess) of gas left, maybe in your car its “lines of gas”. I’m instantly amazed about the gap between what some of the most brilliant minds in the world can do in space, and what we can’t do here on earth. What we can’t do on earth apparently is build a gas gauge that tells me, numerically, how much gas is left. I want this gauge “2.5 gallons left or roughly 50 miles”, what I don’t want to do is guess what 4 lines means.
Man, sometimes I read these posts back to myself and hear the voice of Andy Rooney and I want to cry.
