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Never once before has a New World lay before our eyes like M
Never once before has a New World lay before our eyes like Mars does. Bhattacharya said it, in Fort Worth and Houston told the story of the wind that blew for eons, real eons, river beds anastamosing northward, Shelbatana Flumen, Eberswalde in its crater lake, long abandoned Eberswalde, two thousand million winters—
“before Noah laid the keel of his ark.” --Robert Heinlein.
Older worlds of space, indeed: or rather older landscapes, stacked by theme and variation up from dawn and snow and lava-light.
Crystal iron and crystal water, snow of gases shining white.
Columbus saw a coastline, clouds and mountains, forest rising from the ocean, an astygmatic view of half a rocky world. Now our eyes can walk through every sandy parking lot and plain and riverbed of Mars like we were floating overhead, hanging over tower railings in the Desert Planet’s space-thin middle atmosphere.
Its lower winds at head height go to nothing. But the upper Martian gassy blanket makes a canopy of molecules thin as exospheres of Earth but thick enough to aerobrake in, bring your shields of earthen clay, when shedding delta V; K-Al-Si; lesser species, fined and sealed in fires of Earth to save your skin when dropping into other worlds.
“before Noah laid the keel of his ark.” --Robert Heinlein.
Older worlds of space, indeed: or rather older landscapes, stacked by theme and variation up from dawn and snow and lava-light.
Crystal iron and crystal water, snow of gases shining white.
Columbus saw a coastline, clouds and mountains, forest rising from the ocean, an astygmatic view of half a rocky world. Now our eyes can walk through every sandy parking lot and plain and riverbed of Mars like we were floating overhead, hanging over tower railings in the Desert Planet’s space-thin middle atmosphere.
Its lower winds at head height go to nothing. But the upper Martian gassy blanket makes a canopy of molecules thin as exospheres of Earth but thick enough to aerobrake in, bring your shields of earthen clay, when shedding delta V; K-Al-Si; lesser species, fined and sealed in fires of Earth to save your skin when dropping into other worlds.
Category Poetry / Scenery
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 944px
File Size 193.6 kB
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