IMAX on Mars

Last night I watched for the second time
the film Contact, with Jodie Foster. This is a superb film…well, at least the first hour and a half is excellent. The
last bit about her meeting her dad in the worm-hole netherworld leaves me cold. What a dumb way to end it (I haven’t
read Sgan’s book, so I don’t know if this is how he ended it…but still, dumb).

But the point, I suppose,
is that interstellar travel is something that, lets face it, every sentient being with a gram of adventure in your
bones wants to travel into space. I mean, tell me that wouldn’t be cool. But for now, such trips are available only to
Shuttle astronauts and the perversely wealthy.

So we here on earth have to content ourselves with watching
films like the new IMAX documentary Roving Mars, which
takes a closer look at the Red Planet, as viewed on the journeys of Spirit and Opportunity. I don’t recall news of the
rovers have those massive IMAX cameras on them, so we’ll have to see where the footage actually comes from, but
this is a film I’ll likely be seeing.