Perseverence has landed!

As I write this it's still a few weeks or months before much of this goes live online, but I just want to quietly celebrate another milestone in our exploration of our solar system, as the human caveman takes another step away from our birthplace.

Today on 18th February 2021, Perseverance landed on mars.

And it got some coverage in mainstream press and tv, but lets be fair, most of us had to watch this on youtube. Why? because it's getting boring! And boring is good.

Boring is great!

Everyone remembers the first man on the moon, the first mars rovers are iconic images. When the achievement and lofty aspiration is to just... get there, you can't divert much attention to what you do once you are there. That's where you need boring. When getting there isn't the achievement, then you need to start thinking about what you are going to do once you are there.

And to do anything significant, you are going to need infrastructure. There need to be resources sitting waiting there at your destination, which means dozens if not hundreds of successful journeys laying groundwork. And, if you need to send heavy construction machinery, you want to be able to send it one, once, and expect it to land in full working order otherwise it will throw the schedule out by years. Why send one when you can send two at twice the price? Because we don't all have hollywood money, and it will be much more productive if we send twice as much at half the price, and twice as reliable!

It's not exactly rocket science, it's logistics. The first foot on the ground on mars will be amazing, the first starbucks depressing (but inevitable), but... the first office, the first school will be boring, and will mean we have finally made it out of the cave.