Right now, the Olympics is happening. And it gives an… interesting perspective.

1 man can run a hundred meters in 9.63 seconds.

Now, when you think that many men and women, working off the shoulders of many more, fired a rocket at Mars, and successfully softly landed a 1 ton automated laboratory on a planet tens of thousands of miles away, using the most ingenious delivery system ever devised, with a margin of error so small it makes my head hurt, does this achievement by one individual not pale in comparison? I wish I knew someone who was involved in designing, testing, or even scrubbing a part on the curiosity delivery system just so I could congratulate them. Instead my tax money goes towards a project 5 times as expensive that I feel about as involved in as… well… a rover on Mars.

Anyway, the title is most specifically about the delivery system. It is… insane. All the last set of rovers were delivered in similar pinpoint accuracy using a bouncing ball method. This involved being slowed by parachutes, then the capsule is completely surrounded in air cushions so it becomes a ball. This is fine for a 100kg capsule, that could sri-mech itself flat then release the tiny payload to run around mars. Its not fine for a one ton behemoth that would’ve needed massive cushions and massive parachutes.

So someone then came up with the idea of using rockets to slow it down, as a parachute would need to be the size of a lake to slow it down enough.

But rockets would kick up a LOT of dust at the surface,  and would be unpredictable close to the surface so a traditional rocket based landing would be risky.

So some genius had the fantastic idea of using rockets to hover, and lowering the one ton rover, naked, down to the surface.

When I first saw this plan I thought there was absolutely no chance it could succeed. Well… it did.  And thats the greatest achievement humanity has made this year.

So, when I read this, less than an hour after the rover successfully touched down on Mars, it rang through my head all day (link may not work, try this). The quote, “nothing will be withholden from them, which they purpose to do” (or something along those lines) is taken from Genesis 11, verse 6, when God chose to scatter us around the earth and give us different languages, as we were progressing too quickly.

I wonder what it means, that we seem to be beyond that limitation. Russell Kirsch imagined digital photographs, and the internally programmed computer, and made it so. NASA thought up a delivery method for dropping a ton of lab equipment softly on Mars, and actually did it. We live in a great time when these things are possible. The list of impossible things is getting shorter everyday, and that’s fantastic.

So, I address this last point to myself, more than anyone. If you think that great thing you want to do is impossible, make it your goal, and strive for it. It could just happen. And it definitely will if God wants it done.