On Friday, July 23, 1999 2:56 PM Rik van Riel <riel@nl.linux.org> wrote:
>> Am I dismissing it out of hand? Yes. People have been crying
>> wolf for the last hundred years. If an idea doesn't merit
>> investigation, I don't bother.
>
>The idea of an alien civilization leaving marks for us
>might be far-fetched, yes. But that doesn't mean we
>should not examine the area...
>
>If the structures were made by aliens and we waited 100
>years before finding it out, we would be very sorry. And
>if it was made by geological events, that place would be
>_the_ place to do research on them...
>
>So no matter what the outcome is, it'll be a great
>learning experience. (IMHO, of course)
IMHO, it might be a big letdown. The structure, from what photos I've seen, don't look all that interesting.
Mars has a lot to offer, but, for now, it's expensive to get there and do geology. However, if I was given the chance to choose one target specifically for study, it would NOT be the so called face. It would most likely be Mariner Valley (forgot how to spell the Latinized version:) or the poles or Olympus Mons.
But to move the discussion to another level, why do you believe there might be alien ruins there? What sort of sifting to you do ahead of time to decide that? I'm asking this in a general way because there are plenty of enigmatic features all over the solar system. And only so much time and effort that can be devoted to any of them. Now, if there truly were some alien race that left some stuff behind, I'd rather get to that stuff first. (Not that I believe that. I believe there are no alien remains anywhere in the solar system.)
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/