A week ago, as you all hopefully know, the Mars rover Curiosity touched down on the red planet. Getting to watch it live along with many others that night was a wonderful experience. Landing a rover on Mars has been done before but to me and many others…it’s absolutely amazing. Human beings built a robot which was launched from Earth, traveled through space for eight months, and landed on another planet. I don’t know how anyone could turn their nose up at that. People argue about the cost, that the money would be better spent dealing with issues here on Earth, but to deny exploration is to deny ourselves. Humans have always been explorers. For hundreds of years we sailed on the oceans to lands unknown and now we’re flying through space to entirely different worlds. A whole new generation is going to get to learn from the experiments and discoveries Curiosity makes for years to come. I truly believe that events such as these can help bring people together. Sure there are some of us who are jerks but…if we can do this and get people excited about it…we have hope.